Today: Mar 28, 2024

Registration process runs smoothly

Desteny MaraghReporter

Registration is a continuous effort to perfect, but faculty is working hard to ensure the process runs as smooth as possible.

“My preparation for registration is never the same. Every semester is different, but I think after three years working registrar, we are much closer to a functioning system,” said Alicia Carroll, registrar.

Carroll said this registration cycle has been the smoothest she’s seen since she’s been at the university.

Something new this year was a mass personalized email to each student specifying dates and times for registration. In the past, there would be an email sent out with a chart of dates and times and students would have to navigate where they fit into that schedule.

Political Science major, Anne Bolisk, a junior said. “I got the email, and it was honestly a great reminder, I already had the date on my calendar, but it was good to get the update.”

Carroll’s office also prepares by having technical meetings with the IT support staff and Elusion, the product owner for the Banner Web registration system.

“Preparing for it consists of monitoring what we predict the expected enrollment turnout will be and we track how many students show up in the first hour and first day of registration year to year,” said Carroll.

She calls preparation for registration a “collaborative effort.”

There’s a registration work group that consists of the Dean’s offices, advising staff and registrar’s office that meet monthly throughout the year.

When it is close to registration time, Carroll says this committee meets more frequently to have more conversations around the number of classes offered and what classes students need.

Outside of using IT and Elusion for preparation, they also team up on registration day. They are on a day-long open call, to await anyone who might need assistance with technically issues.

Interim Vice President for Enrollment Management, Julie Edstrom, said registrations open on Monday, Nov. 2 for graduate and postbaccalaureate students and on Wednesday, Nov.4 for seniors.

Edstrom said, COVID-19 has not impacted the registration process, but has meant that advising is mostly being done virtually. It also means that very few courses are being offered in person.

“Campus residents will still register by class, but they will have a short window of priority on their opening registration day for on ground or hybrid courses only,” said Edstrom. “This is because many students committed to a year-long housing contract with the expectation they would have at least one on ground course.”

In fall of 2020, many course modalities changed from on ground or hybrid to fully online after students had signed their housing contracts.

So for spring 2020, “we wanted to offer residents some opportunity to sign up for on ground or hybrid courses,” said Edstrom.

At the prior request of students in the Student Government Association, the wait list function is up and running, and being used as a tool to monitor course wait lists so that sections can be added.

Edstrom said “so far, registration is going very well. Each class is divided into groups based on the number of credits earned so that fewer students are trying to register at the same time.”

This was to reduce the chance of overloading the registration system. The idea originated from other CSCU schools.

Originally, Southern was one of the only schools having severe problems with site crashing issues during what seems like every single online registration.

Carroll said “truly, this year went way better than any other year and the proof is in the calls they’ve received.”

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