Students majoring in Sociology, Criminal Justice, Forensics, and Chemistry partook in the Office of the Registrar’s pilot registration procedure when registering for their classes for next semester. Associate Registrar, Father Benet Phillips O.S.B., commented that the pilot ran very smoothly.

Students met with their academic advisor where the student and advisor discussed classes for next semester. Once the student’s schedule was set, the advisor would use a tool on the portal called registration clearance that would “clear” the student to register. The student would then receive an email from the Information Technology Department with a group number and registration time in it, similar to the current registration process. Students will then register for their classes at the prescribed time.

If a student is not cleared to register by their advisor, he or she will not be able to register during the registration period.

One ninth of the student population participated in the pilot. These students got to register before other students, but to level the playing field for other students, the registrar put a cap on the number of seats reserved in a course for students partaking in the pilot

The Jenzabar Academic Review Committee (JAR), comprised of various faculty and staff members from several departments, learned a lot from the pilot. For example, they learned that they will have to pay close attention to pre-requisites because the system will not let a student register for a course if it does not see that the student has taken the prerequisite.

“I guess the take away was the importance of data integrity in our registration, course and program enrollment tables,” noted Fr. Benet

The JAR Committee worked through September and October to develop the different protocols and policies. Father Benet then met with each of the departments who participated in the pilot and discussed how to do the clearance and such.

Father Benet said, “We had been thinking about it conceptually for a while, but it wasn’t until this fall semester that we really sat down to hammer out the details.”

The plan is to implement this new procedure for all students during registration in March 2013 for the fall 2013 semester.

One of the main differences with this process is that students will register for all five of their classes during their registration time. In the current process, when the students preregister, they automatically get placed in their major courses, so they don’t have to register for those courses during their registration time.

With the changes, the Registrar will have to work very closely with the department chairs in monitoring registration.

“I thought the pilot was a great success, and I would like to say thank you to the departments who participated and to the JAR Committee, who helped develop the plan for the pilot” said Fr. Benet