Next year's course pre-registration changed: For the better?
by Bonnie Gelbwasser - Assistant Director, WPI News Service
In the "Philler" column that appeared in the September 13 Newspeak, WPI students "Laurel" and "Guinevere" detailed "the joyous things one can do in the way of registering" from using the REGI pre-registration system on the wpi computer to course-change forms to wait-lists and long lines.
In a September 20 letter to the editor, Registrar Kari Blinn commended the authors for their presentation of the issues and "insightful observations." She further stated, "I want you to know that I take the issues you raise very seriously." She assured the students that administrators were working with ideas that had the potential for producing a better system. Message heard - changes forthcoming!
For the 1995/96 academic year, the first phase of these plans will be put into practice:
- The course schedule was intentionally NOT included in the 1995/96 undergraduate catalog.
- The 1995/96 course schedule will be published in a separate booklet which will be distributed through student mailboxes on February 6.
- By doing this, department heads who each establish their course schedules,were given the necessary time to confirm the budget resources needed to deliver these courses;
- Department heads also got additional time to work out a problem that often influences student schedules - courses scheduled at the same time. They committed to research the history of student requests and to separate these courses in the schedule, if it is reasonable to do so. The result is expected to be that more students will get into more of their first-choice courses. No guarantees, but a hoped-for outcome.
- Academic Advising Day has been changed from February 2 TO February 16. Classes held on February 2; NO CLASSES held on February 16. It just didn't make sense to hold an advising day BEFORE students got schedules.
- REGI (pre-registration of desired courses) starts on Thursday, February 16, and ends on March 24. REGI will be open over the term break which occurs during this time.
- Course schedules will be distributed to students in EARLY April. Again, the hope is that students will have a better satisfaction rate than in the past.
- An on-line drop/add opportunity will be established BEFORE the end of D-term. Students will have an opportunity to adjust their schedules and get a printed result, BEFORE leaving for the summer.
"The satisfaction of our students is upper-most in our minds," said Chuck Kornik, Administrator of Undergraduate Programs, who handles the scheduling of classes in cooperation with department heads. "This is not an experiment," he said. "It is part of a carefully thought-out long-range plan. We will take this step, listen to our students' opinion, fix it if necessary, make it work well, and add improvements next time."
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