Registrar Update

September 8, 2014

Topics• Policy changes & reminders

• R grades and academic load• Removing grade conditions from transfer credit• Course evaluations and grade submission• Cross registration

• Initiatives• Electronic dismissal appeals• Academic Advisement Report and Degree Tracking

Tools Assessment and Improvement• Six Sigma Project to Improve the Posting of Transfer

Credit

R grades and academic load

• Resigned courses will not count towards a student’s full time status that is reported to the National Student Clearinghouse.

• For example, if a student is enrolled for 12 credits and resigns 3 credits, our next report to NSC will indicate that the student is ¾ time.

• Primary impact is on loan repayment, but may also impact insurance, car payments, or other benefits granted to full time students.

• Impact to financial aid is unchanged. (FA was handling this manually.)

Removing Grade Conditions for Transfer Credit• Per clarification from Dean Andy Stott 2/4/14:

Transfer course grade requirements must be consonant with UB course grade requirements: If a department has evaluated the content of a transfer course and determined that it should be articulated to a UB course or accepted for a requirement, the required grade shall be the same as if the course was completed at UB. Students may not be required to earn a higher grade for a transfer course than the same grade accepted for the course or requirement at UB.

Course evaluations and grade submission• All courses will be using the same online

course evaluation system this fall.• We have been requested to wait until course

evaluations close before generating grade rosters.

• Instructors can submit grades the day after final exams through one week after the last day of finals.

Cross Registration

• Continuing policy from spring 2014 • UB students may cross register at participating

institutions only when an equivalent course is not available at UB, the enrollment capacity has been reached in all UB offerings of the equivalent course, or the student has reached the limit for repeated attempts of the course.

Cross Registration Spring 2014  NCCC Cayuga CC Daemon GCC Empire State ECC D'Youville TotalTotal Number of Students 7 1 1 1 3 33 2 48Class Conflict 1 0 0 0 1 13 0 15No UB Equivalent 2 1 1 1 2 4 0 11UB Class Closed 1 0 0 0 0 8 2 11

Second course needed at host school to get transfer credit 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 4Not Offered at UB this term 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 4UB Class Seats Reserved 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

Student Repeating; Dept Not Forcing 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

Student not in WNY; Host course is online 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

Thoughts, questions, or comments?

Academic Review

Total Students Probation Dismissed

Spring 2012 18090 1300 (7.2%) 417 (2.3%)

Spring 2013 18530 1269 (6.9%) 400 (2.2%)

Spring 2014 18320 1221 (6.7%) 379 (2.1%)

APPEALS

Appealed

Deferred by

Committee

Deferred by VPUE

Dismissal Upheld By Committee

Dismissal Upheld By

VPUEAcademic

Withdrawal

Spring 2012

163 (39.1%) 80 2 75 6 NA

Spring 2013

175 (43.8%) 95 1 71 8 NA

Spring 2014

143 (37.7%) 87 2 39 7 8

Electronic Dismissal Appeals

• Process fully online• Considered all submissions; even those that

weren’t complete• Feedback received and to be incorporated:

• Print button added; bugs removed• Complete and submit the form online rather

than uploading as attachment• Clarify and improve communications about

the process• Your feedback?

Academic Advisement Report and Degree Tracking AssessmentTools: AAR, Transfer Credit Report,

Undergraduate Catalog, departmental guides, websites, etc.

Full report on our website for faculty and staff: http://registrar.buffalo.edu/office/aa/index.php

Send us your feedback!

AAR Assessment: Process & FindingsProcess: Inventory of tools, surveys, focus

groups, peer institution and literature review

Surveys found that the majority of students, faculty, and staff are satisfied with the tools, although faculty and staff were less satisfied than students.

The technical tools should be just a part of the university’s larger initiative to improve student success and retention.

Overarching Recommendations• Encourage and train departments to articulate transfer courses as

much as possible as opposed to doing exceptions to improve pre/coreq enforcement and prevent ‘lost’ exceptions.

• Data must be kept up to date, including timely entry of all information such as UB courses, exceptions, and articulated transfer credit.

• UB should develop a well-communicated and enforced policy regarding the official source of requirement information. All tools in use then MUST reflect this same information.• Use one database to populate as many tools as possible.

• We should leverage reporting capabilities of the HUB Academic Advisement Report and Planner for course planning and student intervention.

• Transfer articulation policies and procedures need to be clearly developed and communicated.

• Data should be used to support communications and specific messaging.

• We should make greater use of SIRI to create prepackaged data sets.

Recommendations Related to Specific Tools, such as:

• AAR Accuracy: Data needs to be up to date; repeated courses need to be accurately reflected

• AAR Training and Utilization• Eight Semester Plans and Academic Planner: Coordinate

HUB, Catalog, and FIF plans to support timely progress for all students

• AAR Functionality: Properly mark requirements as “In Progress” rather than “Satisfied;” remove duplication of requirements in acceptance criteria and major requirements

• HUB TC Report: expand legend, improve formatting

AAR Assessment: Next Steps

A number of the recommendations have already been taken up by the appropriate office, such as:• Advisor Center• Improved What If functionality of the AAR• Include live links in the AAR• Customization to ease exceptions processing

Next steps: • Get feedback on the recommendations from key

constituencies; • Develop an action plan; and • Implement the highest priority recommendations

over the short or long term as appropriate.

Posting of Transfer Credit

Admissions/Registrar Team went through the Six Sigma process:

• Define: Goals – reduce time between transcript receipt and posting; and reduce number of errors

• Measure: Created process maps• Analyze: What can go wrong, impacts, causes,

and procedures for detecting problems• Improve: 37 actionable items identified• Control: We will monitor for response time and

error rate.

Posting of Transfer Credit: Action Items• Some already complete, such as:

• Office of the Registrar fully responsible for continuing and reentry students

• Improvements to Nolij• Publish and promote preference for

electronic transcripts• Additional temporary staffing in Admissions

Posting of Transfer Credit: Action Items• Some small scale projects, such as:

• Improved monitoring of time and quality from Focused (scanning company)

• Improvements to HUB and Nolij (mostly related to the entry of transfer credit)

• Staff training

Posting of Transfer Credit: Action Items• Some large scale projects, such as:

• Automated workflow in Nolij (document imaging system) – target of July 2015

• Student self-entry of transfer credit into HUB - proposal expected October 2014

• Import of data from scanned and electronic transcripts – proposal expected March 2015

Questions?