Jen Richards
Equinox Staff
Keene State College recently made some changes in its registration process and course selections for the spring semester that caused students and faculty some issues. The administration said a couple factors helped with the decision that a change needed to happen.
One change that took place with registering for classes in the spring semester was the extended time in which students had to register. The original deadline date for students to register was Oct. 30. As the registration process continued, and the ending date arrived, administration decided it would be best to extend the date to allow all students an equal opportunity to register. The Registrar’s Office and administration at KSC decided to extend the registration date for students to Nov. 2.
Provost Emile Netzhammer stated that there were two main reasons workers in the Registrar’s Office decided on the extension. “The first was that we were noticing that the number of students registering during the regular period was down from previous years and that led us to be a little bit concerned about that,” Netzhammer said.
Registrar Tom Richard said 450 students had not registered by the deadline. He said this number was down significantly from previous years and he wanted to look into extending the date to give all students a chance to choose their classes.
“I was concerned that the percentage of students who were eligible to register or who had registered by the deadline was lower than we expected it to be,” Richard said.
Another issue administrators took into consideration was the amount of students without power from the snowstorm. Netzhammer said the power outages affected the last couple of days of registration. Since registration is an online process, students without power had no way of scheduling classes.
Richard addressed a third reason that helped with the decision to extend registration. He said the primary reason registration was set to end on Oct. 30 was to allow the Student Accounts Office to begin the billing process the following day.
“I learned that Monday that it would be in fact possible to start the billing process on Thursday, Nov. 2,” Richards said.
Netzhammer said when he looked at these three factors he knew it would be the right thing to extend the registration.
“If it had been more complex then we would take more time to think about it, but nobody was expressing any serious reservations to this and everybody was understanding on how this could help students,” Netzhammer said.
With the three factors that held students back from registering, another setback caused more issues in the registration process.
Netzhammer said it is important for faculty and the deans at KSC to make sure they meet the school’s budget. When the deans looked at the number of students in certain classes toward the end of registration, some had hardly any students signed up.
“We know we have to be on budget. We know we have to meet student needs,” Netzhammer said.
The deans looked at the classes that were not filled and decided that the only way to meet the school’s budget was to cancel the classes with few students registered. Some students and faculty were upset with the canceled classes while others did not see it as a big deal.
Senior Jacob Plourde registered for Multimedia Journalism, a 400-level journalism class. He found out a week after he registered that the class was canceled.
“I wasn’t horribly mad because it was only an elective. I didn’t need it or anything. Its just that now I have to find something else to take,” Plourde said.
Netzhammer said the decision to cancel the classes had to be made before registration ended in order to give students a chance to register for another class. Plourde said even when he did find out, most classes were already filled.
“The bad part about it was when they told us it was canceled all of the other classes are already full. That was the difficult part about it,” Plourde said.
Mathematics Professor Ockle Johnson said he still does not know if some of his classes will be canceled. He said that as of right now he doesn’t know for what he can plan.
“It affected me in the sense that I don’t know what my courses are for next semester. It depends on which courses are canceled, whether or not a certain course is canceled, and then we’ll shuffle the teaching assignments based on which courses we end up teaching,“ Johnson said.
Even though Richard had no part in canceling classes, he said that when the deans looked at the classes to cancel they looked first at upper-level electives that were under-enrolled. In canceling these electives it is usually possible for students to find a replacement class to register for.
Richard said that the decisions he made in the Registrar’s Office were meant to support the needs of students and faculty at KSC.
Registration closed on Nov. 2, but will open up again to students in mid-December.
Jen Richards can be contacted at jrichards2@ksc.mailcruiser.com.