The Registrar’s office has teamed up with SGA and academic advisors across campus to form a registration task force in order to discuss potential and upcoming changes to the course registration process. The task force convened on Wednesday, Feb. 24 to decide on Phase I registration changes and discuss further plans.
“We’re looking at making registration easier for everyone and really reforming the system so that students aren’t stressed out during the process and advisors aren’t overworked,” said Jimmy Williams, third-year BME major and Vice President of Campus Affairs.
The task force is looking at several of the major problems with registration for students and advisors such as credit hour caps and registration time tables. Such changes can include the addition of a waitlist function on OSCAR, which could be implemented by spring 2011.
“The wait list function [is] one of the things that the registrar’s office has really pushed,” said Craig Womack, associate registrar. “It gives students the opportunity to see [where they stand]. If you are waiting on math 1502 for Dr. Morley, you can see that there are 21 people waiting in the queue. You can probably see that you should register for someone else.”
Members of the task force also noted the issue of students holding classes for other students as a major problem.
In response, the task force proposed limiting the number of hours that students can register for to 17, which led to mixed feelings from certain members of the task force who felt that the original 21-hour cap was necessary for some students.
Due to heavy discussion at the task force meeting, leaders voted to increase the credit hour cap to be 18 hours instead.
“By doing this, it will allow a longer amount of time for undergrads for registration and it will really allow us to extend time tickets. We can have a full day for seniors, and then juniors. So there won’t be a complete rush in registration,” Womack said. “The reason behind that is to prevent people from holding classes. And in Phase II registration, the hours will be flipped.”