The Daily Bulletin Archive

By Tony Astran

Summer Session Course Registration Begins Earlier
Based on recommendations from the Enrollment Management Retreats in December and January, the Registrar’s Office is pushing up the dates for Summer Session course registration for nonmatriculated students by five weeks this year, to April 21. Traditionally, these students began registering for classes in late May.

Registrar Mark Bausili believes the change will help with recruitment and revenue. Historical data from the Registrar’s Office show that about one of every six students on campus during the summer months is nonmatriculated.

“This will be helpful for students who go to other institutions but are from the area and want to earn college credit while they are home for the summer,” he said. “It provides an earlier opportunity to secure a desired class and might put Buffalo State in a better position compared to other local schools,” he said.

Bausili also thinks the earlier registration will provide better reporting for deans, department chairs, and instructors to help them gauge demand for particular courses and sections.

Summer Session registration for current Buffalo State students began April 8. First-year students—the final group to register—begin registration tomorrow, April 17. Because of this year’s advanced schedule, Bausili recommends that faculty advisers encourage all current students not to delay in registering for summer courses and ideally to register within two weeks of their start date.

In addition, new transfer students for fall 2009 will be allowed to register five weeks earlier than last year. University College will begin to register new freshmen on May 18.

New Advisement Tool
The Registrar’s Office recently unveiled a new tool within the course listings to help faculty advisers more easily determine academic requirements for students. Now when the mouse cursor hovers over the advisement code for a course, a pop-up window shows both applicable codes and definitions.

For example, COM 100 Media Literacy, a class that meets in Summer Session A, fulfills requirements for humanities in GE2KA, GE2KB, GEC, and IF. Additionally, it fulfills an IF requirement in Technology and Society and a GE2KB and GEC requirement for Applied Science and Technology.

“Faculty have asked for this for a while,” Bausili said. “Fortunately, we were able to implement it faster than we expected. Faculty now do not have to go back and forth between the online listing and the legend of codes.”

Full-Load Scheduling
Bausili also said the recent push for students to take 15 or more credit hours each semester is going well. One hundred thirteen additional undergraduate students took 15 credit hours or more in spring 2008 compared to spring 2007. This semester, that number has risen by 222 over 2008.

Bausili said the new statistics are positive; the increased course loads help with retention and support timelier graduation rates.