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The Rice Thresher
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by Olivia Allison thresher editorial staff After completing what he calls a successful first semester as registrar, Jerry Montag is looking to improve many areas of the registration process, beginning with preregistration for the fall. Montag, who has been the registrar since July, said he thinks this semester has gone more smoothly than previous semesters. However, he said he believes many problems in the Registrar's Office would be solved by instituting a preferential preregistration system and online registration. He also said he will enforce the enrollment cap, a policy he attempted to implement during preregistration for this semester. Montag said he would like to see seniors preregister on Monday of preregistration week, juniors on Tuesday, sophomores on Wednesday and freshmen on Thursday. Friday would be open to all undergraduate students. More specifically, students with last names beginning with A through L would register in the morning, and those with last names beginning with M through Z would register in the afternoon. The two groups would switch times the next semester. Montag said he would like to use this preferential system in April for fall preregistration. He said he believes this system will make registration for courses with limited enrollments more fair and help the Registrar's Office to assign classrooms. "What I'm trying to do is stabilize one of our problems on this campus," Montag said. "One of the problems we have with that is that we never know true enrollments in classes. ... It's going to have more benefits for the students, it's going to be better for the faculty, it's going to be better for the concept of what registration is all about." Montag said professors can specify the number of seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen they want in their classes. However, Montag said he will not begin using this system unless students, faculty, staff and administrators support it. He added that no one has opposed the idea so far. "I know what I want to do, but ... if everybody says it's a crazy idea, I'll drop it," Montag said. "I don't want to come up with Jerry Montag ideas and thrust [them] upon Rice University because it won't work like that. I want it to be fair, diplomatic - I want my voice to be heard." Montag will meet with divisional advisers Feb. 12 to discuss the preferential system. He said he plans to meet with heads of each department at the end of February and the Student Association by mid-March. Montag said online registration would complement preferential registration. Last semester, Wiess College freshmen tested out online registration. Montag said a similar testing process would be used this spring to preregister for fall courses, and the system should be ready to go by the fall. "We're on the fastest track possible to bring Web technology to Rice," he said. How academic advising will fit into this process is not yet known, but Montag said he thinks students will still meet with their advisers, who will authorize students to register for certain courses. Then, the students will register online. The procedure for adding and dropping courses will remain similar, but students will be able to add and drop courses online any time after preregistration. "Right now you have one week of preregistration, then you have to wait until the very first week of classes. You couldn't touch your courses," Montag said. "This way, as the semester starts, you will have your courses exactly as you want them to be." Montag said most courses with caps on enrollment were kept within the limits set by the professor during preregistration for this semester. Preregistration sheets were kept in order of the date they were received by the Registrar's Office, he said. If the number of students who enroll for a course exceeded that course's limit for enrollment, the first students to register were placed in the course. Montag said the policy was put into effect for last semester's preregistration, but 27 courses were overregistered accidentally. He said he asked the professors if some students should be removed so that the course would be within the maximum enrollment. About half of the professors did not remove students from the course, Montag said. For the other courses, professors decided how students should be removed from the course. Some professors specifically chose which students should be allowed in the course, while others removed students by seniority or date of registration. History Professor Allen Matusow, whose America Since 1945 course has a maximum enrollment of 80 students, said that although 104 students were originally preregistered for the course, he asked that the number be reduced to 80 based on the date students preregistered for the course. Matusow said he was happy with the way the Registrar's Office handled the problem. "I was very pleased that they solved it," Matusow said. "At first I was disturbed, but they were responsive to the problem and solved it, and I take that to be a good sign about the future of the office." Matusow's seminar, Foreign Policy of Nixon and Kissinger, has a maximum enrollment of 12, but 35 students preregistered for that course. He said he selected the 18 students who were kept in the course. Montag also said he is considering changing deadlines for adding and dropping courses, but he said these deadlines will not be changed soon. "Right now I'm not going to look at that," Montag said. "I'm still going to let them register to their heart's content, to drop/add to their heart's content." Montag said these changes will make Rice's registration process more like that at other universities. "Most other universities have a time for registration, a time for drop/add, and most other universities have caps on class enrollment," he said. "We're looking to standardize how Rice does it, and this is done at most other universities." Jones School of Management Professor Michele Daley said her class Introduction to Accounting was overenrolled, but the problem was solved relatively quickly. Daley said Montag has been very responsive to professors' complaints and has worked to solve all problems to which he has been alerted. "Jerry is very proactive, he is very interested in finding out what the problems are and making sure they don't happen again," Daley said. Matusow also said he thought other faculty members were also pleased with the way the Registrar's Office was being run. "I have a feeling that there is a positive attitude toward the new regime there," he said.
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