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The Rice Thresher
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by Elizabeth Decker thresher staff A pilot Web registration program for freshmen and a redesign of the Registrar's Office have contributed to a relatively smooth start for classes this fall, although long-term problems with room assignments and scheduling persist. One updated aspect of the office was another test of Web registration. Freshmen at Baker College and Will Rice College were given user names and passwords during Orientation Week to access Web registration. O-Week coordinators and advisers were trained to assist the freshmen, and College Computer Associates were on site at the colleges to solve technical problems. Currently, students who have been given online accounts by the registrar can access their information from any computer on campus and complete their registration form, which must then be printed, signed by an academic adviser, and turned in to the Registrar's Office. Students can also access their academic transcripts, financial aid information and billing information online. Paper registration forms were virtually eliminated at Will Rice, while a few persisted at Baker, Administrative Dean for Enrollment Barry McFarland said. The main problems encountered were computer malfunctions and forgotten passwords, McFarland said. This was the third test of Web registration. The process was tested at Wiess College for spring 2001 pre-registration, and at Will Rice for fall 2001 pre-registration. "[Wiess] was a good learning experience for us," McFarland said. "It was probably not positive for the students, but it did tell us things that we needed to improve." McFarland hopes to implement Web registration for all students in time for November pre-registration for the spring semester, also adding a feature to evaluate students' courses to check if they have fulfilled their degree requirements. "One problem that needs to be discussed before then is the future relationship between registration and advising," McFarland said. "I don't want to change the academic advising at Rice. I think it's critical that we have person-to-person interaction." Registrar Jerry Montag said the beginning of his second year at Rice has been smoother. The space in the Registrar's Office has been redesigned to improve efficiency. As a result, Montag said the lines have been short. "We had as much done as we could ahead of time," Montag said. The Registrar's Office has also changed the location of the list of distribution courses. The courses are not listed in the General Announcements this year and have been moved to the registrar's Web page (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~reg) by a joint decision of the provost and the deans. The change will hopefully eliminate some of the confusion caused last year by discrepancies between distribution course lists in various places. "It's only a distribution course if it's being offered as a distribution course when a student is taking it," Montag said. The online listing of distribution courses will make clear which classes count for distribution during each semester. Isle said the General Announcements might also be published solely online in the future to eliminate discrepancies between what is printed in the hard copy and what is actually offered during the academic year. Despite these improvements, there were some problems during the first week of class. Like other years, some students reported that their classes had been cancelled or moved. Decisions on whether to cancel any classes this semester have not yet been made, many deans said. But the list of cancelled courses will be available early next week by the deans and associate deans of the individual schools, Associate Dean of Engineering Ahmad Durrani said. Vice Provost Walter Isle said there is no university-wide policy for deciding when or why a class will be cancelled, but when less than five students show up for a class, the professor and the department chair may consider canceling it or making it an independent reading course. Other students found their classrooms changed on the first day of class. Associate Registrar Laura Branch was in charge of making room assignments. While some mistakes were made, Montag said, "[The process was] 100 times better than last year. ... Every class has a room." Although classes have places to meet this semester, the long-term issue of classroom assignments remains problematic, Durrani said. "Between the time that a faculty [member] requests a room for the course and the [time the] room is assigned, there's a whole chain of events that occur, and some of those links are not very effective or efficient, and information is getting lost in the process," Durrani said. Durrani hopes to examine this process and work with the Registrar's Office to solve the problems by spring semester. "One of the constant concerns that people look at is the allocation of rooms," Isle said. "There has to be a fair and efficient way of doing that." Students complicate the problem by shopping for classes up until the add deadline, which makes it more difficult to predict the size of the class and the room most suited for the class, Isle said. Time conflicts between classes is another problem that Isle and Durrani agree needs to be examined. "Everything is 10, 11, 1 on Monday, Wednesday, Friday," Isle said. To eliminate conflicts, Isle suggested that class times should be better planned. Another change for this semester was the introduction of peer academic advisers who served in the colleges during O-Week to assist freshmen with the registration process. "This was a very significant improvement of the advising process where peer student advisers were playing a significant, and I think very important, role in bridging that link between the freshman advisers and the divisional advisers," Durrani, a divisional adviser, said. Montag said the Registrar's Office would continue to work toward improving registration. "We're going to keep examining every day, every week, every month, our processes and procedures," he said. "And if there's a way to make it better, we're going to try to make it better."
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