Add/drop moving online for next Fall

Five days into term 2091, known outside of registration as Fall 2008, an eerie calm filled the… Five days into term 2091, known outside of registration as Fall 2008, an eerie calm filled the ground floor of Thackeray Hall, ground zero for students to add/drop their classes during the first two weeks of terms. Two students discussed their scheduling requests with the registration employees in the room, a scene quite different from four days before. The busiest add/drop days were the first three of the semester, when students filled the rows of chairs in the office and stood in a roped-off line that snaked out the door and down the hall. Starting next year, the first scene may become more common than the latter, as the registrar’s office, which oversees add/drop, registration and scheduling classes, will enable students to self-register and add/drop their classes online. In the first week of school, the add/drop office processed 2,737 requests from students, not including the add/drops processed by department advisers or those processed over the summer. On Friday, the final and notoriously busiest day of the add/drop period, the crowd-control ropes in the hall outside the office had disappeared, and three students milled around the add/drop office, one checking the courtesy computer’s PeopleSoft system, two talking with registration workers. ‘This last day is kind of strange,’ said assistant registrar Dave Carmen. ‘Kids were far more prepared this year. In years gone by, today would’ve been a very busy day.’ As the office’s 4:45 p.m. closing time neared, the add/drop employees tallied numbers and helped the few students still straggling in before the add/drop period deadline. Usma Chatha, a sophomore following the pre-med track but undeclared for a major, stepped into the room minutes before the door closed and the add/drop period ended. Except for those receiving special permission, she was the last add/dropper of the term. Once Chatha had processed her add/drop request, a registration employee tallied the 1,685 add/drops that the office processed that week, with around 500 coming in on the last day. This put the total add/drop transactions in the office for the first two weeks of the term near 4,500. Before Friday, Chatha had trekked to the add/drop office at least three times the past week. This final trip was to drop her seminar in peer helping course, a one-credit School of Arts and Sciences option that prepares students to become peer leaders at the Office of Experiential Learning. After solidifying her 16-credit schedule for the fall, Chatha said she’s been waiting for the add/drop process to change to self-registration. ‘I think it’d be much easier if you did it by yourself,’ she said. Add/drop on its way to DIY Chatha’s wish will be granted before she graduates. Registrar Sam Conte said a self-registration system will be available for Pitt students through the PeopleSoft system this spring to register for the fall 2009 term. In October, students at Pitt’s four branch campuses in Johnstown, Greensburg, Bradford and Titusville will have the option to register their Spring 2009 courses on their own computers. The PeopleSoft computerized registration system that Pitt uses on the my.pitt.edu portal has been able to support self-registration since 2006, but Pitt has waited to enable the option. ‘We wanted to make sure the right system was in place and that we approached it in a logical and sequential manner. I certainly would have like to have had this workable sooner,’ said Conte. Of the 60 research universities that are members of the Association of American Universities, Pitt and MIT are the only schools to not offer self-registration for students, according to Conte and information published on the schools’ Web sites. Pitt ranks among the top seven American research universities in the 2007 evaluation of this group by the Center for Measuring University Experience. Purdue University, a fellow AAU member, offered a self-registration option for the first time this fall. The University of Texas at Austin is another AAU school that offers self-registration. On the university’s Web site, comprehensive directions guide students through the registration process: First, meet with an adviser to gain registration clearance, look up your academic standing, then go online at an assigned time to register. Currently students must see an adviser before registering either through their department or at Thackeray Hall’s registration office. This won’t change with self-registration because students will gain access to the registration system only after meeting with their advisers. Once they’ve gained an adviser’s clearance, students will have set times they can log into the system and complete their registration. ‘It will be done by appointments, since you can’t have 30,000 students logging on to the system at the same time,’ said Conte. ‘The registration system will stay the same as it is now, but students can do it on their own.’ Once registration is over, students will not have to see advisers nor visit the registration office to add/drop their courses. For students who need assistance with registration or who choose not to self-register, advisers and the add/drop office will still be open to them. One component that will change with self-registration is students’ adherence to prerequisites. Currently, the system has the ability to check for co-requisites, like labs and recitations, and prerequisites during registration, but students can bypass them when they add/drop courses. Conte said they’re working on making that no longer possible with self-registration.