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Registrar's Office Annual Report

2013-14 Annual Report (Full report, print version [PDF])

2013-14 Executive Summary (PDF)

“Registrar’s Office Annual Report” webinar with Parchment (recording)

Annual Report 2013-14

HIGHLIGHTS 2013-14:

• Proposed new 4-course legislation passed by Committee of Chairs.
• Worked with consultant on design of proposed new class schedule and classroom utilization assessment.
• Re-initiated the special community student program committee and engaged in program review.
• Created a more welcoming reception area.
• Assisted with successful implementation of valedictorian speaker selection process.
• Provided substantial ongoing training and support for academic departments/programs for online major declaration and timetable course submission projects.

WHAT DO WE DO?

The Office of the Registrar maintains, preserves, and disseminates students' permanent academic record and provides services for Arts and Sciences students, faculty, and staff at Dartmouth in the areas of academic policy, enrollment and course information. Activities include course election, registration, and class scheduling, major and minor declaration, grade processing, Catalog (ORC) production, graduation support, academic transcript delivery, and student enrollment management.

AND we also:

• develop and publish the academic calendar
• provide guidance about the academic curriculum
• act as a central academic information source for the College
• schedule centrally reserved classrooms and final examinations

We:

• manage on-line course assessment and reporting
• certify recipients of Veteran's Administration educational benefits
• oversee student enrollment patterns and "D"-Plans
• manage Faculty elections to committees
• review student academic petitions for exceptions to faculty policies
• administer support for students who study off-campus while on a leave term
• support transfer students and manage the transfer credit process

In addition we:

• report enrollment to the National Student Clearinghouse to support financial aid and student loans
• provide Degree and Enrollment verification support for students
• provide Apostille notarization for international recognition of credentials
• manage Banner (student system) processes and security access
• train and support Department/Program Administrators on course and course system management
• assist with First-year seminar and Writing 5 enrollments

And also, we:

• lead internal, cross-divisional and institution-wide projects
• provide reporting services to UG Arts and Sciences Faculty and the Dean of the Faculty Office
• support the Dean of Faculty as a member of the Dean's Cabinet
• participate in and support numerous Faculty and ad hoc committees
• comply with and educate the campus about Federal, State, and Institutional legislation
• provide consulting, such as for the American University of Kuwait
• present at national conferences such as those sponsored by AACRAO
• advocate for higher education policy issues that impact our students and faculty
• Provide other registrar's offices with systems leadership, support, and oversight from the functional/technical perspective, and with standards of practices and professional leadership

 

Goals And Focus

The Registrar's Office continued to focus on providing exceptional service to the Dartmouth Community, working closely with both academic and administrative departments to provide leading edge technology to support administrative processes. We support students in attaining their educational goals and strive for efficient and effective processes related to academic records, registration, enrollment data and graduation. We continuously seek to cultivate an environment that encourages growth, supports academic integrity, protects student confidential data, promotes teamwork, encourages staff/constituent investment, and respects each individual.

Registrar's Office Major Projects 2013-14

Online Major Declaration - K. McAdams, project lead

• March 2013 - February 2014
  
  • Eliminated an archaic paper process
  • Provided tools to students and faculty for academic program planning

Credits & Exemptions Improvements - A. Ager, J. Sinclair, project leads

• April 2013 - September 2014
  
  • Integrated new AP policy into the process
  • Reduced risk by replacing old technology with new, better-supported systems
  • Students know immediately what courses and tests have articulated and can better choose their courses

Course Approval Routing System - K. McAdams, project lead

• April 2013 - October 2014
  
  • Reduces paper consumption
  • Eliminates confusion
  • Creates a course database for reference
  • Allows faculty anywhere in the world to input curricula for approval

Timetable application - A. Ager, project lead

• April 2013 - December 2013
  
  • Created an online application for easily submitting departmental course information each term
  • Improved communication among departments/programs, Dean of Faculty Office, and the Registrar's Office
  • Added items to the Public and Registration Timetable to enhance usability and centralize information for users

Summer Faculty Balloting update - M. Blumenauer, K. McAdams, project leads

• May 2013 - July 2013
  
  • Improve the look and feel of the Faculty Balloting interface
  • CPR and Committee of Chairs elections no longer paper ballots

Topics Renumbering - J. Sinclair, project leads
Course Descriptions into Banner - M. Blumenauer, A. Hunt, A. Ager project leads

• April 2014 - October 2014
  
  • Renumber all special topics courses in Banner so that every course offering has a unique number
  • Improve ability to report on course information and how courses appear on the student transcript
  • Allow courses to be disseminated across the web and to other consumers of course information

 Student Data Warehouse - A. Hunt, project lead

• June 2014 - June 2015
  • Build a data warehouse to allow for improved Student data reporting
  • Provide leadership for the overall project so that professional and graduate school student data is also included in the warehouse

LOOKING AHEAD

Major/Minor Completions online - K. McAdams, project lead

• TBD
  • Create a web-based application for departments/programs to submit information to the Registrar on their major and minor completions
  • Speed up the major/minor certification process significantly while improving accuracy

Music Contracts integration with Banner registration process - A. Ager, project lead

• Summer/Fall 2014
  
  • Improve complex paper- and departmentally-based system
  • Provide improved tracking of courses that span several terms

D-Plan Changes Online, Phase 2- K. McAdams, project lead

• Add additional features to the current tool
• Allow additional populations of students to make online changes, such as international students and students returning from administrative withdrawal

Hickory Migration - A. Hunt, project lead

• Migrate a series of reports and small projects to new technologies that will allow the office to become independent from VMS, an old technology which Computing Services needs to decommission

Concurrent Curricula - project lead TBD

• Participate in implementation analysis of Concurrent Curricula in Banner; impacts all schools

Off-Campus Programs into Course Assessment - A. Hunt, project lead

• Integrate the Dartmouth-sponsored Off-Campus courses into the current Course Assessment tool

Student Access to Course Assessment - K. McAdams, project lead

• Provide student access to faculty course assessment reports

Other Technical Projects

We continue to serve as a resource for other offices on campus that require our expertise when possible. We also participate in projects that impact all campus users, and engage in several internal projects that do not involve outside entities. Some of the larger ones included:

• System testing; A. Hunt
  • APEX upgrade testing
  • Oracle 11g R2 testing
  • Banner 8.6 upgrade testing
    
  • System Failover testing
  • Java 7 upgrade testing
  • Data Warehouse upgrade testing
• Federal 150% Loan legislation & related Banner 8.6.3 upgrade testing; A. Ager, A. Hunt
• R25 Replacement evaluation project; A. Ager, D. Choate
• Non-Degree Student Review process; A. Ager, K. McAdams, M. Braz

Additional initiatives, outcomes and collaborations:

• Proposed new legislation for student four-course loads and passed through COI and COC; M. Braz
• Valedictorian process re-engineered and approved by Committee on Instruction and Committee on Priorities, added Banner codes to allow for reporting; A. Ager, W. Banker, M. Blumenauer, M. Braz
• Ongoing review and enhancement of the Special Community High School Program, including enhanced tracking and reporting abilities and business process analysis and change; A. Ager, M. Blumenauer, M. Braz, P. Latimer
• Participated as a member of the Curricular Review Committee and acted as a liaison with Tom Hier, classroom scheduling consultant to recommend a possible change to the class schedule; M. Braz
• Transitioned student SSN changes and check-in fee processing to Student Financial Services from the Registrar's Office; M. Blumenauer, P. Latimer
• Improved prerequisite review and update process, and added 2 departments to online prerequisite checking; A. Hunt, J. Sinclair
• With the assistance of our work-study students, completed the following projects:
  • Inventoried all storage areas, filing cabinets in the main office, and began working on individual office inventories
  • Continued to backfill citation data into Banner (most data is complete going back to 1996)
  • Completed organization and archiving of NEACRAO archives
• Renovated the office's lobby area to make it more welcoming
• Provided assistance on establishing new exchange programs with University of Otago and Waseda University; M. Braz
• Offered ongoing training sessions to department/program administrators, chairs, and faculty on new systems that improved relationships with the Registrar's Office, enhanced workflows, and improved staff and faculty's technical abilities.
• Continued to enhance and expand our selection of online Guides with new sets, including video, for the Online Major and Timetable projects.

 

Production

• Communication and student data processing consume the largest amount of our production time (26% and 17%)
• Spring term has the largest number of production items
• March, May, and June have the most production items (as expected, with graduation, two course elections, and deadlines for major declaration and initial D-Plan selection).
• Fall is also busy with the arrival of new students and the start of the academic year.

In summary, we are focusing more than ½ of our production time on our key priorities: service (communications), records work (student data processing) and reporting service. Note, this does not include service data we are unable to capture here such as phone calls, emails, faxes and walk-in service.

Production Items – Explanation/samples from each category
Communications: Sending of formal memos to faculty and department and program administrators; Sending of e-mails (including VOX Daily) to faculty, students and other departments and programs; Mailing major and minor standings; Publishing updates to the Registrar’s website
Course Processing: Timetable, priorities and prerequisites data entry; Course Election processing; Course Assessment; COI meetings
Data Integrity: Proofing distributives, course titles and other timetable data; Checking for missing grades; Faculty Load error processing Events: ORC Dates and Deadlines; Board of Trustees meetings; Events in other offices such as Admissions, Student Financial Services or the Dean of the College area that generate tasks for the Registrar’s Office
Reporting: All formal and ad hoc Registrar’s Office reports; Internal reports such as course election snapshots, graduation reports, and lists of faculty teaching by term; Reports to external sources such as the National Student Clearinghouse and AMCAS
Student Data Processing: Transcript production; Processing major and minor cards; Graduation processing; Processing transfer term applications; Transfer student credit evaluation and processing; Repeat course processing; 2/4 course processing; D-Plan selection and changes; VA certifications
Systems Management: General Banner settings (GTVSDAX, SOATERM); Configuring Check-in; Setting e-term records; Configuring Course Election; Configuring Course Assessment; NRO setting

• Committee of Chairs
• Committee on Instruction
• Committee on Withdrawals
• Enrollment Committee
• Classroom Subcommittee
• Computing Oversight Committee – Chair
• Dartmouth Information Security Council
• Dartmouth Registrar’s Committee – Chair
• Curricular Review Committee
• Language Waiver Committee - (Associate Registrar for Curriculum & Graduation attends)
• Committee on Student Life
• Presidential D-Plan Review Committee
• Multiple ad hoc committees

• AACRAO – American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Appointed to national Public Policy Committee – Year 4; Co-Chair - AACRAO Program Structure Task Force
  
• AACRAO 100th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO
• NEACRAO – New England Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, Executive Board
• NEACRAO 66th Annual Meeting, Newport, RI - Presenter
• Ivy+ Registrars Annual Meeting, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
  
• Faculty at AACRAO/Vanderbilt Institute for Senior Professionals in Academic and Enrollment Services, Nashville, TN - Year 3
  
• Northeast Registrars Meeting
• Consulting: American University of Kuwait, Carleton College, Emerson College

• AACRAO 100th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (1 staff Presented)
• AACRAO, Vice-Chair LGBTQA Caucus
• NEACRAO 66th Annual Meeting, Newport, RI (2 staff attended; 1 staff committee member)
• NEACRAO Summer Workshop, 2013 (3 attendees)
• Ivy+ Registrars Annual Meeting, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (2 attendees)
• NEBUG Annual Meeting,  (1 attendee)
• AACRAO Technology Conference, Tucson, AZ (1 attendee)
• Ellucian LIVE, Anaheim, CA (1 attendee)
• Northeast Registrars Meeting (1 attendee)
• Dartmouth College Transgender Student Services Forum (1 attendee)

 

Academic Year	Banner Transcripts
2009	19,159
2010	17,245
2011	16,561
2012	13,819
2013	12,237
2014	9,257

Unofficial Banner Transcripts were made available to students in December of 2009, and unofficial eTranscripts were made available to students in January 2013, which have contributed greatly to the continuing decrease in the overall official transcript volume. When the number of unofficial eTranscripts delivered in 2013-14 (7,888) is added to the official transcript number, our overall transcript delivery volume (17,145) compares to the 2010 overall volume. This allows students to use unofficial transcripts when there is no need to use an official transcript, and is a cost savings to the College.

The official transcript volume is split evenly (50% each) between paper and eTranscripts.

 

 

 

We also produced approximately 4,000 "non-transcripts" which are unofficial student grade records delivered to departments and programs at the conclusion of each term.

Managed 5,123 D-Plan term changes

	Academic Year
	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Manual Changes	4,574	4,944	4,218	3,621	3,991	3,688
Online Changes	0	0	1,474	1,619	1,529	1,435
Total	4,574	4,944	5,692	5,240	5,520	5,123

D-Plan changes were made available to students online in November of 2010; however there is still a large volume of changes that must be made manually. It is disappointing to see the manual volume remains high this year. The D-Plan Phase 2 project should help to reverse this.

 

 

Processed 583 in-office registration actions (e.g. add/drop):

Term	Academic Year
	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Summer	244	420	374	54	37	42
Fall	1,956	2,128	2,292	323	247	200
Winter	1,399	1,736	1,622	130	56	203
Spring	1,842	1,915	85	100	101	138
Total	5,441	6,199	4,373	607	441	583

New Course Election system implemented for Spring 2011 election and add/drop resulted in a dramatic drop in in-office registration actions.

Managed scheduling and offering of 2,168 courses:

 

Term	Academic Year
	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Total	2,024	2,039	2,062	2,106	2,177	2,168

Each course count represents every offering with a unique subject, course number and title combination with the exception of cross-listed courses which are counted once. Off-Campus Study courses are included. The number of courses offered this year dropped slightly.

 

Assigned 2,028 courses to classrooms from the academic schedule*, and 801 courses to classrooms for final examinations.

*Does not include classrooms assigned for small arranged courses, language drills, or other ad-hoc classroom assignments.

Reviewed and processed 921 student petitions to the Registrar

Petition Type	Petition Count
	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Change in Grade	145	121	150	259	123	121
Add Course After Deadline	104	82	93	134	122	81
Drop Course After Deadline	45	31	38	36	19	28
Additional 2-Course Load	41	34	40	43	40	47
Additional 4-Course Load	35	25	27	30	28	35
Unlimited 2-Course Load	0	1	5	1	5	2
NRO After Deadline	7	9	5	2	4	0
NRO Grade Chg After Deadline	0	2	1	0	0	0
Repeat Course for Grade Only	5	6	6	4	3	3
Postpone Summer Term	8	7	8	8	8	12
Waive Summer Term	53	58	69	53	47	64
Exempt Summer Term	15	16	20	20	20	23
Additional Term in Residence	64	75	90	85	84	77
Five+ Year Enrollment Pattern	76	73	80	83	89	84
Reduce Sr Yr Residence Req	326	318	332	343	305	288
Late Exchange of Courses	0	20	44	19	39	13
Late Check-in Fee Waiver	36	35	31	39	33	23*
Late D-Plan Change Fee Waiver	23	10	23	20	8	16
Reduced Tuition	0	2	2	4	12	4
Total	983	927	1,064	1,183	989	921

The number of grade changes was increasing, from 14.8% of petitions in 2009 to 21.9% of petitions in 2012. However in 2013, the number dropped from the prior year to 12.4% of petitions, and the total number of both grade changes and petitions was quite a bit lower than the prior year. This trend continued in 2014.

The total number of senior year residence requirement petitions dropped to its lowest number in 6 years. We still have not accounted for why there has been a drop in petitions.

*In March 2014 we transitioned this fee processing to Student Financial Services.

 

 

Processed enrollment verifications for over, 1,845 provided electronically.

	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Manual Verifications	1,385	1,549	1,332	754	430	Over 273*
Self-Service Enrollment Verifications	0	0	0	294	1,727	1,845
Total	1,385	1,549	1,332	1,048	2,157	Over 2,118*

Self-service enrollment verifications became available to students in April of 2012, which has led to a significant reduction in the office workload in this area, allowing staff to focus on higher level tasks.

*Some data missing for 2013-14.

*Some data missing for 2013-14.

 

Supported 88 students studying away on non-Dartmouth programs, and 33 students on exchange programs.

Transfer Term Students

	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Summer	71	70	105	64	39	43
Fall	66	43	46	54	42	35
Winter	83	82	86	122	15	9
Spring	20	16	13	8	5	1
TOTAL	240	211	250	248	101	88

Note: The significant drop in the number of transfer term students is a result of new policies on the part of the COI regarding participation in transfer terms.This trend continued in 2014.

Exchange Program Students

Year	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Number of Students	39	39	46	37	43	33

 

Certified 38 VA Benefit recipients

	2011	2012	2013	2014
Graduate Students	9	12	8	6
Undergraduate Students	26	28	32	32
Chapter 31	4	2	2	2
Chapter 30	6	3	1	1
Chapter 35	4	5	7	3
Chapter 33: Post 9/11 GI Bill recipients	21	30	30	32
Students eligible for the Yellow Ribbon program	11	25	24	28
TOTAL	35	40	40	38

Our Office certifies Graduate as well as Undergraduate VA benefit recipients. 

 

Graduated 1,116 undergraduate students

Term	Graduates
	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Summer	13	17	22	27	35	22
Fall	27	40	32	31	24	33
Winter	28	25	38	30	31	29
Spring	998	1,003	984	1,005	969	1,032
Total	1,066	1,085	1,076	1,093	1,059	1,116