Adriana Daniel
Equinox Staff
As the spring semester quickly approaches, it has come to the attention of administration that many students have not registered for classes.
In an effort to change this, the Keene State Cabinet (which is comprised of the president, vice presidents of the college, director of Human Resource, director Instualital Research and executive director of Advancement,) came together to call students who failed to register for the upcoming semester Thursday night.
President Melinda Treadwell, one of the callers at the phone-a-thon, said, “The call-in is to basically say, ‘Hey, we’re here, we cared about getting you registered. Can you help us know why you haven’t yet?’ and then to follow up. So we’ll learn as to why and what in our communication aren’t working very well. Also if there are students who are like ‘Oh my god, I didn’t know I could or should, or what I needed to do,’ we can help them get there.”
Vice President of Marketing and Enrollment Jeff Holeman was a part of the team who recommended to the Cabinet to put on a phone-a-thon.
“Registration ended a few weeks ago, so there is a formal process, and at the end of that process we looked at how many students of those who are eligible to move on registered and about 15 percent had not,” Holman said.
With such a large bout of the student body not registered, the Cabinet began emailing students and reaching out to advisors as an attempt to complete the registration. Believing there were communication gaps, Holeman said that the Cabinet is working on how to better let students know when the formal registration time is.
Along with informing students that they had not signed up for classes, there will be a formal analysis to find out what is holding students back from registering. Only students who are eligible to continue on to next semester are able to pick classes, those not eligible are students who are on financial holds or have been placed on academic probation, Holeman explained.
In the beginning, there was 15 percent of the student body who did not register, but now the number has shrunk down to six percent.
“Through a lot of outreach personally, through the RA’s who went to their students, advisor and faculty who reached out to their students directly, now this is an opportunity to reach out to students who have not responded to date,” Holeman said.
Holeman broke down the six percent of the eligible students who have not registered for classes as 88 first years, 41 sophomores, 44 juniors, 34 seniors, and 11 graduate students.
KSC Junior Aidan Donovan said his reasoning for not registering is, “There’s no point in rushing to get it done, it always works out for me.”
The administration is reaching out to the student body to learn what improvement the administration should make. President Treadwell said, “This is no different than what we see every semester, the numbers are roughly the same as what we have seen in the past. We’re reaching out to find out, ‘Is it the way we are communicating during the cycle? Are we not getting to them early enough? Is there confusion about how to [get] registered?’”
President Treadwell also said that there is a chance with late registration and how classes will be opening up: “Our provost has been looking at the course schedule and I have asked her to look at gateway classes and other opportunity classes that may open because we have had students who haven’t registered yet, so if we do see the demand is there, we’re going to have to look at opening those.”
Adriana Daniel can be contacted at adaniel@kscequinox.com
