Enrollment Management Electronic Newsletter

You Always Wanted to Know About . . .

. . . Confirmation of Attendance

Around the second week of classes, many faculty will receive an email from the Office of the Registrar, asking them to confirm the attendance of selected students on their class rosters. Why do only some students need to have their attendance confirmed?

The answer has to do with the state and federal rules regarding disbursement of financial aid funds. To minimize the possibility that we will disburse financial aid funds to students who have pre-registered but then decide not to attend, we ask students to confirm their intent to begin each semester for which they have pre-registered.

This is normally accomplished during the billing process, where pre-registered students (even those who do not have a tuition balance because of financial aid) must return a confirmation "stub" to the University. With that confirmation in hand, financial aid can disburse funds to the student for tuition payment.

(Note that students who pay their own tuition out-of-pocket directly confirm their intent to attend by paying for their tuition in the first place, so there is no need for a follow-up confirmation.)

However, some financial aid recipients fail to pre-register early (so never receive a bill and stub to begin with), lose the confirmation stub, or simply forget to send it in. Those students must be confirmed by some other means--
--during the first week of class, regular emails from the Registrar urge these students to confirm directly with the Business Office;
--AND FINALLY, during the second week of class, we request faculty confirmation of those few remaining who haven't yet responded.

Where the student fails to confirm, and the faculty member(s) indicate that the student has not attended, these students are dropped entirely from the semester.

If you have other topics "You Always Wanted to Know About . . . ", send in your requests, and we'll do our best to provide information and answer your questions in a future edition.

http://www.shepherd.edu/register/