Enrollment Management Electronic Newsletter

Registrar teams with academic departments on Junior Year pilot program

In an effort to minimize problems that delay students' progress to graduation--and thereby improve overall graduation rates--the Office of the Registrar has been working with three academic departments across the university to develop a pilot of a Junior Year Review. The three departments are Business Administration/FACS (School of Business and Social Sciences), Communications (School of Arts and Humanities), and HPERS (School of Education and Professional Studies). During the planning stages, the review's design has been enhanced and improved with the input of those departments' faculty advisors, and will continue to undergo refinement.

The review will be provided to students and advisors in the spring semester of the junior year. It looks at the two major documents involved in graduation certification--the transcript and the degree evaluation--and offers suggestions to the student and advisor for areas of concern that will need addressing prior to applying for graduation itself.

For example, a student might have reached the junior year without having formally declared a required minor. If that student applied for graduation, the application would be held until the student came in and filed the appropriate documentation to do so--sometimes critically delaying the Graduation Review. Providing an alert via the Junior Year Review that "you still need to declare your minor!" will help students address the issue and eliminate the barriers during the senior year.

This pilot project will be part of the upcoming assessment cycle for the Office of the Registrar. We deeply appreciate the partnership of our colleagues in these departments!

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