Registrar's Office struggles with glut of requests

JULIA TIERNAN/YH WAITING ROOM: Yalies anxious to get copies of their transcripts sent to internships and graduate schools currently face a five-day wait.

If Alison Hammer, JE '01, were to grade the Registrar's Office's performance, she would probably give it an "F."

"I got my grades for classes I took over the summer too late to be able to choose the option where they don't appear on your transcript," she complained. "Then last semester they printed an `F' for one of my classes even though my professor had turned in my revised grades. I had to straighten everything out and it was a really big hassle."

"I still don't have the grade for one of my classes," Darin Dalmat,
JE '01, said. Other students expressed frustration at delays in processing transcripts and not being able to access the Student Systems website to check grades over the winter break. "I tried to log in several times to check my grades, but the site was down," Kathryn Gonnerman, JE '01, said.

But according to Barry Kane, registrar for the faculty of arts and sciences, such delays are rarely the fault of the Registrar's Office. "Grades from classes are not actually due from the professors until Jan. 4," he said. "Then it takes our staff a week to process all the grades. As for students with incomplete grades in classes, those are automatically converted to an `F.' They need to make up any work with their professors by Jan. 13. It is not a new policy." Likewise, Ernst Huff, Director of Student Financial and Administrative Services, explained that the Student Systems website was down temporarily over the break because of routine maintenance. "We try to choose the least disruptive times to do maintenance," he said.

Huff said the two-year-old site is part of an ongoing upgrade of Yale's administrative database. "Yale is installing a new, integrated computer system that will make dealing with bureaucracy a lot easier for students," he said. "Originally, each different office had their own standalone hardware and software platforms, and transferring records was a nightmare." The process began in '95 and has cost $5 million since its inception.

Students can already access their grades, addresses, and financial information online, but in the future it may even be possible for undergraduates to register for classes each semester on the web. "The Law School will have Web registration available for fall '99," Huff said. "It is more complicated with Yale College, because students need written permission from their faculty advisor. We are looking into some way of doing electronic permission."

Kane said he appreciated the new computer system. "It used to be very complicated to transfer student records from Admissions to the Registrar's Office," he said. "Now there is a seamless connection from the time you are an applicant, to when you are accepted, to when you graduate." Ever since the fall of 1998, whenever the Registrar's Office enters a student's grades into the database, they appear automatically on the Web.

Despite initial complaints, Huff said the Student Systems website is a success. "When the website had just been put up, in the fall of 1997, we received a few e-mails from students with complaints and constructive criticism," he said. "But this year, most of the bugs have been fixed and the majority of the e-mail we receive is positive."

Currently, the Registrar's Office's primary problem is not processing grades, but delivering on transcript requests. The office
was swamped with requests for transcripts in January, leading to delays as long as
10 days.

Kane explained that from year to year, January is consistently the heaviest month for transcripts, with over 3,000 undergraduates and graduates coming to the office to put in requests. "It's a predictable problem," he said. "It happens each year and we know that it's a problem. We have brought in three evening temps to help process the transcripts, but even then it's hard to stay on top of the volume."

Kane emphasized, however, that if a student had an urgent deadline, the Registrar's Office would process his or her transcript faster. "Students are very vocal when they have a deadline," he said. "They certainly let you know."

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