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Registrar's Office Annual Report

2015-16 Annual Report (Full report, print version [PDF])

2015-16 Executive Summary (PDF)

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

Annual Report 2015-16

HIGHLIGHTS 2015-16:

• Finalized the new schedule of classes which took effect summer term 2016
• Implemented student access to Faculty course assessment data to expand their resources for course planning
• Implemented an initiative to track, prioritize, survey, and assess our delivery of student and faculty services
• Provided departments/programs with standardized data warehouse reports on dashboards to facilitate their operations
• Supported faculty research with data to help them improve their teaching
• Developed data warehouse reports to improve Registrar operational functions and end office dependencies on outdated technologies (VMS, TrueBasic)

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 and faculty 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
• administer DegreeWorks degree audit to support progress towards the degree and academic program planning
• 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 multiple internal, cross-divisional and institution-wide projects
• act as the primary liaison with IT for faculty members' administrative system implementations
  
• provide extensive 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 Senior Leadership Team
• 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
• participate as board members in regional and national professional organizations
• advocate for higher education policy issues that impact our students and faculty
• Provide other Dartmouth 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 seek continuously to cultivate an environment that encourages growth, supports academic integrity, protects student confidential data, promotes teamwork, encourages staff/constituent investment, and respects each individual.

Production

 

"Production" activities are those that are required in the usual academic cycle.  Additional time is spent on "projects," which are described in the next section, and “service”.  Below are representations of our main functions and some general measurements of time spent on production.

• Communication and student data processing consumes the largest amount of our production time (28% and 20%)
• Summer term has the largest number of production items
• May, June, and September have the most production items (as expected, with graduation, two course elections, deadlines for major declaration and initial D-Plan selection occurring in the spring, and with the arrival of new students and the start of the academic year in the fall.

In summary, we focus 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 such as phone calls, emails, faxes and walk-in service.

 

 

 COMMITTEE WORK - Registrar

• Committee of Chairs
• Committee on Instruction
• Committee on Withdrawals
• Enrollment Committee
• Classroom Subcommittee
• Student Systems Oversight Committee – Chair
• Dartmouth Information Security Council
• Curricular Review Committee
• Language Waiver Committee
• Committee on Student Life
• Multiple ad hoc committees

• AACRAO – American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Vice President for Leadership and Management Development
  
• AACRAO 102nd Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ
  
• AACRAO Leadership Meeting, Washington, DC
• NEACRAO – New England Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers
• NEACRAO 67th Annual Meeting, Newport, RI
  
• Ivy+ Registrars Annual Meeting, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
  
• CAPACRAO Annual Meeting, Ellicott City, MD, speaker
• GACRAO Annual Meeting, Athens, GA, speaker

• NEACRAO 67th Annual Meeting, Newport, RI (1 attendee)
• Ivy+ Registrars Annual Meeting, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (1 attendee)
  
• NEBUG Annual Meeting, (1 attendee)
• DegreeWorks Conference, Denver, CO (1 attendee)

 

Staffing

• Replacements
  • Senior Associate Registrar, April 2016
  • Service Specialist, June 2016
  • Student Intern - Application Support Specialist, January 2016
• (Very) part-time Data Warehouse/Data Analysis support - October 2015

 

Academic Year	Official Transcript Total	Paper Transcript Total
2009	19,159	19,159
2010	17,245	17,245
2011	16,561	16,561
2012	13,819	13,819
2013	12,237	9,839
2014	9,257	4,625
2015	8,076	3,601
2016	8,112	3,264

• Unofficial Banner Transcripts were made available to students in December of 2009
• Unofficial eTranscripts were made available to students in January 2013
• Both have contributed greatly to the continuing decrease in the overall official transcript 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.
• Official transcript volume is split 60/40 between eTranscripts and paper transcripts.
• Paper official transcript volume is down to 3,264.

 

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The Dartmouth Course Approval Routing System (DCARS) supported 772 courses in its first full year of implementation. Additionally, 118 courses were newly cross-listed in the system.

Type	Number
New Courses	328
Courses Updated	444
Total Courses Supported	772
Cross-lists Created	118

 

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Managed scheduling and offering of 2,099 courses:

Academic Year	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Total	2,024	2,039	2,062	2,106	2,177	2,168	2,168	2,099

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.

 

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Assigned 2,006 courses to classrooms from the academic schedule*, and 861 courses to classrooms for final examinations.

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

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Reviewed and processed 1,035 student petitions to the Registrar

Petition Type	Petition Count
	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	5-Year Average
Change in Grade	259	123	121	151	136	158
Add Course After Deadline	134	122	81	108	116	112
Drop Course After Deadline	36	19	28	46	39	34
Additional 2-Course Load	43	40	47	48	71	50
Additional 4-Course Load	30	28	35	2	4	20
Unlimited 2-Course Load	1	5	2	4	4	3
NRO After Deadline	2	4	0	0	0	1
NRO Grade Chg After Deadline	0	0	0	0	0	0
Repeat Course for Grade Only	4	3	3	4	1	3
Postpone Summer Term	8	8	12	28	22	16
Waive Summer Term	53	47	64	59	62	57
Exempt Summer Term	20	20	23	19	20	20
Additional Term in Residence	85	84	77	87	73	81
Five+ Year Enrollment Pattern	83	89	84	85	104	89
Reduce Sr Yr Residence Req	343	305	288	328	349	323
Late Exchange of Courses	19	39	13	15	19	21
Late D-Plan Change Fee Waiver	20	8	16	8	6	12
Reduced Tuition	4	12	4	5	9	7
Total	1,183	989	921	998	1,035	1,025

Aside from a peak in 2012, grade change petitions appear to have settled into a more regular pattern.

After a downward trend in senior year residency petitions, the number has continued to climb.

Two petition types have increased notably this year, the Five+ Year Enrollment Pattern, and the Additional 2-Course Load (perhaps related); requests to postpone the summer term are much higher for the second year in a row.

 

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 Processed 1,838 enrollment verifications, 1,726 of which were provided electronically

	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Manual Verifications	1,385	1,549	1,332	754	430	Over 273*	514	112
Self-Service Enrollment Verifications	0	0	0	294	1,727	1,845	2,275	1,726
Total	1,385	1,549	1,332	1,048	2,157	Over 2,118*	2,789	1,838

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.

2015-16 has seen a sharp decline in both electronic and manual verification requests. This is unexplained and we will investigate.

 

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We supported 53 students studying away on non-Dartmouth programs (transfer terms) and 55 students on exchange programs.  The total number of transfer term participants has steadily decreased in recent years, while the total number of students participating in exchange programs remained about the same as 2014-15.

Transfer Term Students

Academic Year	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Summer	71	70	105	64	39	43	34	24
Fall	66	43	46	54	42	35	17	20
Winter	83	82	86	122	15	9	4	6
Spring	20	16	13	8	5	1	1	3
TOTAL # of STUDENTS	240	211	250	248	101	88	56	53

Note: The significant drop in the number of transfer term students which started in 2013 is a result of new Committee on Instruction (COI) policies.

 

Exchange Program Students

Academic Year	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Number of Students	39	39	46	37	43	33	54	55

 

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Certified 44 VA Benefit recipients

Academic Year	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Undergraduate Students	26	28	32	32	35	36
Graduate Students	9	12	8	6	5	8
Chapter 31	4	2	2	2	2	2
Chapter 30	6	3	1	1	0	1
Chapter 35	4	5	7	3	6	7
Chapter 33: Post 9/11 GI Bill recipients	21	30	30	32	32	34
Students eligible for the Yellow Ribbon program	11	25	24	28	29	30
TOTAL number of students certified	35	40	40	38	40	44

Our Office certifies A&S Graduate as well as Undergraduate VA benefit recipients. 

 

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Graduated 1,078 undergraduate students

	Graduates
Academic Year	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Summer	13	17	22	27	35	22	30	20
Fall	27	40	32	31	24	33	30	39
Winter	28	25	38	30	31	29	40	33
Spring	998	1,003	984	1,005	969	1,032	993	985
Total	1,066	1,085	1,076	1,093	1,059	1,116	1,093	1,078

 

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Registrar's Office Major Projects 2015-16

 

Student Data Warehouse - A. Hunt, A. Ager project leads

• June 2014 - ongoing
  • Build, maintain, interpret and extract needed data from the Dartmouth student data warehouse to allow for improved student data reporting
  • Provide leadership for the overall project
  • Expand faculty research capacity previously limited to Banner reporting

Improved Banner/Canvas Feed - A. Ager, project lead

• August 2014 - May 2016
  
  • Updated the Banner course data feed to Canvas to make it more adaptive to Banner data changes

National Student Clearinghouse reporting changes - A. Ager, J. Sinclair, project leads

• June 2015 - October 2015
  
  • Changed the internal reporting process to support better data transmission to the Clearinghouse and federal NSLDS which is required for student loan processing

New Class Schedule - A. Ager, project lead

• September 2015 - May 2016
  • Implemented the new revised class schedule in Banner and satellite systems as voted by the Arts and Sciences Faculty June 4, 2014

Timetable Editor Dashboard - Data Warehouse - A. Ager, project lead

• October 2015 - January 2016
  • Provided new reports for departments/programs to verify their termly classes before publication to Banner; included improved business processes and longer timeline.

Hickory/VMS Decommission - A. Hunt, project lead

• September 2015 - December 2015
  • Migrated a series of reports and small projects to the data warehouse, which allowed the office to be independent from VMS, an old technology which ITS decommissioned.

DegreeWorks Project - A. Hunt, project lead

• October 2015 - October 2016
  • A phased project which includes:
    • Enhanced reporting from DegreeWorks to improve both office operations and provide data to departments/programs
    • Expanded prerequisite checking capabilities to support departments/programs
    • An easier, more intutitive major/minor declaration process for both students and faculty
  • A system upgrade for DegreeWorks

Department/Program Reporting Dashboards - A. Ager, project lead

• October 2015 - August 2016
  • Data warehouse project to provide departments and programs with reporting dashboards and tools to review their own enrollment, major, and minor data.

Department/Program Major Requirements in DegreeWorks - A. Hunt, project lead

• October 2015 - ongoing
  • Started addition of department/program major (and minor) requirements in DegreeWorks to supplement the general education requirements students view currently. This will allow students to have a more comprehensive view of their academic progress towards completion of their degree.  The History department's requirements are completed and they are now testing current majors.

Course Assessment Portal - Student Access - A. Hunt, project lead

• June 2015 - September 2015
  • Led a major project to provide student access to a subset of Faculty Course Assessment data previously only viewable by faculty.

DCARS Updates - A. Hunt, project lead

• June 2015 - December 2015
  • Delivered various enhancements to departments and programs which improve DCARS, Dartmouth Course Approval Routing System.

Banner Landing Page - M. Braz, A. Hunt, project leads

• November 2015 - ongoing
  • Worked with “Improve Dartmouth” student representatives and ITS on ways to improve the student user experience on BannerStudent (self-service)

Names and Faces - A. Ager, M. Braz, project consultants

• December 2015 - July 2016
  
  • Worked as consultants to a project conceived by Professor Tom Cormen, Computer Science to provide faculty with an online tool to help learn the names of students in their courses.

Commencement Reporting in the Data Warehouse - A. Ager, A. Hunt, project leads

• February 2016 - July 2016
  • Built reporting dashboards and tools in the data warehouse to better track progress towards graduation, as well as run Registrar's Office commencement reporting. Reports are shared with the Undergraduate Dean's Office and other areas to allow all offices involved in Commencement to view the same information.

Faculty Position Requisition System - A. Ager, project consultant

• March 2016 - June 2016
  
  • Assisted with a Dean of Faculty project to set up a more efficient HR process for faculty. It required enhancements to faculty data recording in Banner.

 

LOOKING AHEAD

Petition Workflow System - To be determined

• Scheduled to begin September 2016, this project aims to put all enrollment-based (and other Registrar-reviewed) petitions submitted by students and faculty into an online workflow system to improve efficiency, timing, and reduce paper consumption.

New General Education Requirements – July 2016

• In May 2016 the Faculty voted to approve a new set of General Education requirements. In addition, there are related faculty initiatives such as the NRO and perhaps a new language requirement that the faculty will consider in the coming year.  This major project, which impacts multiple systems, will require a significant and probably most of our resources for the next several years.

Transcript Processing Improvements - August 2016 - A. Ager, W. Banker, project leads

• The Registrar's Office plans two improvements to the transcript request process which will significantly benefit students and improve office operations:
  
  • Streamline the process for students to submit transcripts to AMCAS
  • Outsource the production of paper transcripts to Parchment, our current vendor

Department/Program Major Requirements and New General Education Requirements in DegreeWorks - Assistant Registrar for Curriculum and Policy - TBD

• Continue addition of department/program major (and minor) requirements in DegreeWorks to add to the current general education requirements so that students may view their full academic progress towards completion of their degree. Also begin to add new general education requirements.

Advising enhancement - M. Braz, project consultant

• Consulting support with UG Advising and Dean of the College as they enhance advising to year 2

Upgrade Registrar website - To be determined

• Part of campus-wide initiative

 

Other Technical Projects

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

• System testing; A. Hunt
  • Banner 8.7 upgrade (also A. Ager) - November 2015
    
  • Banner 8.8 upgrade (also A. Ager) - April 2016
  • Annual Failover testing - December 2015
• EMS (Event Management Software - we will use to schedule classrooms) - R25 replacement; J. Sinclair, D. Choate
• Implementation of gender non-conforming and gender change options in Banner; M. Braz, A. Ager
• Enhanced the Timetable Editor by implementing cross-list validation, so departments/programs may only build approved cross-lists; A. Ager, A. Hunt
• Coordinated the change of two department names (M&SS to QSS, WGST to WGSS), along with the division of another program into two distinct programs (LING/COGS into distinct LING and COGS entities). Established protocols for future department/program changes; A. Ager, A. Hunt

Additional initiatives, outcomes and collaborations:

• SSSI (service initiative) - implemented September 2015, this project has a goal of continuous improvement to student and faculty service. As the demands on our staff grow, for example over 15,000 emails sent to the registrar email account alone, it is important that we continue to focus on this important component of our mission.
• Our work-study studentsc:
  
  • Continued to backfill hard-copy citation data into Banner (data is complete back through the class of 1988). An additional 5,407 citations were entered in 2015-16.