One of the constant issues that the University administration annually endures is the class registration process. Following an evaluation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), the University determined that it was time to make changes in the way students register for classes.
Academic Vice President Orin Grossman started a committee to rework the system, led by Mary Francis Malone, the associate academic vice president.
The result is a system that has been improved but is still in the process of getting better. It is the first step in the right direction, but there is still room for additional work.
Every year, the registration process causes unnecessary anxiety for students and faculty alike. Students are forced to stand in long lines in the Registrar’s office in the Kelley Center and also often do not get the classes they need or want. According to Malone, those problems will soon be a distant memory.
In this age of technological improvements, those problems should not exist.
Finally the Registrar has caught up to the times and is in the process of switching to a completely online and paperless system. The new system will also allow students to be put on a wait-list, a process which was tested last year in order to gather data. The wait-list is a good way to give more students the opportunity to take the classes that they want and need.
Another change, one that will most likely not be met with anywhere near as much enthusiasm as less lines in the Kelley Center, is the change of time slots for turbos. Weekday turbos have been moved into earlier in the day and will now start at 8 a.m., stretching until 10:30 a.m.
This will be disappointing to students who dislike waking up in the morning but enjoy the opportunity to be in a class just once a week. In the end, the change will benefit more students than it hurts, as it will open up more classroom space for a variety of other classes throughout the week.
A change will also be made to preferential registration, as that part of the process is being phased out. University scholarship recipients, who in the past were able to register before all other students, will now register just before peers of their class and year. The scholarship program has been revamped to eliminate preferential registration completely starting with the class of 2013. However, this has potential to upset the current fellows, who were told when they enrolled in Fairfield, they would have registration ahead of everyone for four years.
The ball is now in the student’s courts. As changes are made, glitches will arise. Malone and her colleagues are open to feedback and anxious to get it. Take the opportunity to get your voice heard and avoid unnecessary frustrations later.
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