Home > About >  Annual Report >

Annual Report 2008-2009

Registrar's Office Annual Report 2008-2009

Our GOAL: REDUCE RISK, IMPROVE SERVICE, ADVANCE SUSTAINABILITY, MAXIMIZE RESOURCES

What do we do?

Course election, registration, class scheduling, major declaration, minor declaration, grade processing, Catalog (ORC), graduation, transcripts, enrollments, and all the usual things that you might associate with a Registrar's Office.

AND we also:

• maintain students' academic records throughout their years at Dartmouth
• develop and publish the academic calendar
• provide guidance about the academic curriculum
• act as a central information source for the College
• lead internal, cross-divisional and institution-wide projects
• manage on-line course assessment and reporting
• certify Veterans
• manage D-Plans
• manage Faculty elections
• review academic petitions for exceptions to faculty policies
• support students who study off-campus while on a leave term
• support transfer students and the transfer credit process
• report to the National Student Clearinghouse to support financial aid and student loans
• provide Degree and Enrollment verification for students
• provide Apostille notarization for international recognition of credentials
• manage Banner (student system) security access
• train and support Department/Program Administrators on course and course system management
• provide reporting services to support Undergraduate Arts and Sciences Faculty and DOF Office
• assist with First-year seminar and Writing 5 enrollments
• support the Dean of Faculty as a member of the Senior Management Team
• participate in numerous Faculty and ad hoc committees
• comply with Federal, State, and Institutional legislation
• provide consulting for the American University of Kuwait
• provide Institutional Leadership and act as a change agent

Risks include outdated systems supporting major functions which, if they were to fail, would have widespread and significant consequences. They include computer programs written in an old language no longer supported that are run on a machine soon to be decommissioned. Risks also include gaps in staff's technical and institutional knowledge and improvements needed in security protocols.

Challenges include staffing (reduction in force, turnover, retirement, training new staff, lack of needed skill sets), culture and technology shifts. Major problem is sufficient, continuous, flexible, Computing support to transition these high risk functions to stable, supported platforms within Faculty legislated boundaries. Also challenged by the quantity and multiplicity of our tasks, and trying to improve basic Registrarial functions as our constituents demand more and our peers move forward.

Despite these challenges, we have built a strong team and have had many successes this year.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND PLANS:

Reduce Risk

1. Completed several projects (6 medium sized and several smaller ones) with support from Administrative Computing. Goal is to move off dependency on True Basic code and VMS machine.
2. With support of Dean of Faculty, purchased Faculty Self Service Module from SunGard. Target implementation of first phase, on-line grading by end of summer term 09. Grading security and accuracy is a key feature.
3. Developed an on-line FERPA tutorial to educate faculty about student records security.
4. Cross-trained support staff; engaged in extensive training and documented procedures.
5. Developed department emergency plan and attended aggression/safety training.
   • Planned:
     • Major project to revise the course election process which is currently dependent on True Basic and VMS.
     • Several specifications for additional projects, including the implementation of DegreeWorks and re-write of the academic transcript have been submitted to Computing and are imperative to reduce risk.

Improve Service

1. Reorganized office to be more of a "one-stop" service model to better address student needs.
2. Re-engineered multiple processes to improve efficiency and delivery of service.
3. Re-designed music contracts for students taking applied music courses over multiple terms.
4. Faculty will now input course citations online along with grades; students/chairs will also view them online. This replaces a clumsy hand-written process.
5. Auto-email notification sent to students who have exceeded their 2/4 course load limits.
6. Improved on-line degree audit which is now updated nightly and available to students 24/7.
7. Developed a "petition process" chart outlining petitions, administrative areas responsible, and appeals process, if any, to clarify procedures for students, faculty and administrators.
   
   • Planned:
     • Ability for students to request enrollment verifications and official transcripts online.
     • Textbook prices/ ISBN available with course schedule - required to comply with HEA act.
     • On-line course prerequisite checking at course election - requested by the Faculty.
     • Implementation of social media options - blog, RSS feed, text messaging, FaceBook?
     • Redesign of Registrar website to improve information and navigation.
     • Implement DegreeWorks software program to provide online ability to declare majors, measure degree progress and plan curriculum (requested by faculty and student assembly).

Advance Sustainability

1. Moved Elective Circular to online format (only) rather than print format.
2. Reduced by half the number of print copies of the ORC.
3. Re-engineered several internal processes to improve efficiencies and reduce paper use.
4. Eliminated paper rosters and the need to print multiple emails surrounding grading issues
   • Planned:
     • Move more forms online
     • Access to unofficial transcripts online for students and advisors - currently students can only request official transcripts printed on secure transcript paper and there are blackout periods when they are not available.
     • Make more processes available online/self service as Computing support is made available (e.g. D-plan changes online instead of student coming to office.)
     • Redesign ORC so that it can eventually be an online (only) document.

Maximize Resources

1. Re-evaluated positions, updated job descriptions, and re-organized the reporting structure to better respond to the changing needs of the modern day Registrar's Office.
2. Hired new staff into replacement positions that brought a variety of skill sets and characteristics to the Registrar team.
3. Engaged in extensive staff cross-training to ensure that existing staff could improve their skills.
4. Accomplished budget reductions successfully, requiring careful monitoring of tasks, projects, and goals to ensure primary responsibilities central to our Office's mission were not derailed, appropriate priorities were established, and adequate resources allocated.
   • Planned:
     • Hire student workers to supplement workforce and allow staff to engage in higher level tasks.
     • Continue to assess and improve staff skill sets, evaluate and re-engineer jobs, streamline processes.
     • Establish self-service online standard reports for academic departments/programs.
     • Continue staff training on service, technology, process management.
     • Add a section to the web on leave term off-campus study to provide more self-service information to students and to free up staff resources to address other important priorities.

 

Committee work - Registrar

Initiated with Committee on Instruction (COI) several new regulations which the Committee passed which include:

• Changed last day to declare a minor to a later date to recognize D-plan realities
• Established rules for matching students with a Catalog year
• Established rule and process for determining graduation requirements for students who have been separated from the College for 10 years or more
• Developed guidelines document for faculty who are initiating changes in curriculum (w/Assistant Registrar)

Continued to work with multiple committees which include:

• Committee of Chairs
• Committee on Instruction
• Committee on Withdrawals
• Enrollment Committee (also Associate Registrar for Research)
• Campus Planning Committee
• Classroom Subcommittee
• Community Based Learning Grant Award Committee
• Computing Oversight Committee - Chair
• Dartmouth Information Security Council
• Enterprise Systems Committee
• Dartmouth Registrar's Committee - Chair
• Accreditation Committee
• Calendar Committee
• Dartmouth Information Security Council
• Multiple ad hoc committees
• Associate Registrar - Committee on Off-Campus Activities
• Associate Registrar - Language Waiver Committee
• Senior Associate Registrar - Dartmouth Student System Advisory Committee

 

Professional Development

• AACRAO - American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Elected to Nominations and Elections Committee (National election - committee selects organizational leadership).
• AACRAO 95th Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois. Presenter.
• AACRAO - nominated for Vice President Registrar and Records , 2010.
• NEACRAO - New England Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Past-President. Also presenter at 61st annual meeting, Manchester, NH.
• SunGard Banner Summit Conference - Philadelphia, PA. Attendee.

 

Some Data on our Operations

In the past year the Registrar's Office Staff:

• Processed 19,519 official transcripts from Banner (plus several thousand more from pre-Banner records)
• Produced approximately 4,000 "non-transcripts" per term
• Entered 2,730 D-Plan term changes
• Entered 38,870 grades, by term -
  • Summer 08: 3,352
  • Fall 08: 12,615
  • Winter 09: 11,389
  • Spring 09: 11,514
  • Total: 38,870
  • (counting grade proofing, that is 77,740 actions on grades)
• Processed 5,441 in-office registration actions (e.g. add/drop): (up from 3,184 in 2007)
• Scheduled 2,080 courses:
  • Summer 08: 242
  • Fall 08: 589
  • Winter 09: 614
  • Spring 09: 635
  • Total: 2,080
• Reviewed and processed 1,027 student petitions to the Registrar
• Processed degree and enrollment verifications for 1,385 students
• Met with 597 students individually to discuss transfer and exchange terms (up 150% in 2 years)
• Supported 173 students studying away on non-Dartmouth programs and 33 student s on Exchange programs
• Met with 63 students individually to discuss progress towards the degree
• Met with 70 students individually to discuss transfer student issues
• Certified 42 Veterans
• Typed and proofed 622 citations, by term:
  • Summer 08: 57
  • Fall 08: 214
  • Winter 09: 161
  • Spring 09: 190
  • Total: 622