The Quinnipiac University Registrar’s Office implemented changes to the course registration process in the hopes of lightening the strain on its system.
In a Feb. 21 email to the university community, Amy Terry, university registrar, announced the changes, calling the October registration period “a disappointing experience” due to multiple crashes.
Many students would agree with her.
“I think it’s important that they did something about the crashing,” said Melanie Topchik, a sophomore 3+1 advertising and integrated communications major. “It wasn’t fair, and a lot of people were having issues.”
Tom Ellett, chief experience officer, attributed the crashes not just to the overwhelming number of students in every academic class, but also to students using more than one device to register — or even having their parents sign in to try to get a good spot in line.
Each class of students was assigned a seniority-based registration start date, with seniors beginning registration at 7 a.m. the first day of class registration and first-years beginning registration at 7 a.m. on the fourth day. In the past, registration periods were broken up by class year — which meant the entire class was registering at the same time.
For perspective, Quinnipiac’s class of 2027 has more than 1,800 students.
Beginning with the summer and fall 2024 registration period, students will be assigned registration times and dates based on their completed credits. The registration process was previously based on how many credits a student was expected to have at the end of their current semester. Student-athletes also get a one-day priority, which Ellett said was a decision of the faculty senate.
Each class’s upcoming registration period is separated into three different times on three days from April 2-5. Students are assigned registration dates based on their number of completed credits by Feb. 16 — around 600 students per group.
Ellett said that Matt Romeo, chief information officer, surveyed other schools with the same registration system to determine alternative options.
“We were over here letting everybody in,” Ellett said. “(Other schools) do it by alphabet or course numbers. What we are doing (now) is just limiting (the number of students).”
Romeo and the registrar initially suggested the university’s new course registration system. The Quinnipiac Faculty Senate and Student Government Association then vetted their recommendations.
“I met with SGA and their committee, they had few options,” Ellett said. “They could do this one or (another) one, and everyone chose this one. We didn’t put on the table the alphabetical (option), it just made sense to do something that was consistent with credits, rather than the luck of your last name starting with F.”
But SGA President Jacob Cedor seemed to remember the decision-making process differently.
“While SGA’s Steering Committee was consulted for feedback on the registration changes, we were not involved in making the final decisions on which model would be implemented,” Cedor wrote in a Feb. 27 statement to The Chronicle. “There was no endorsement of any model by SGA and we shared questions and concerns related to it.”
Another change — albeit smaller — is in the registration date’s start times. The earliest registration time changed from 7 a.m. for everyone to 6:30 a.m. for students and 6 a.m. for student-athletes.
“It’s only 30 minutes and it’s once a semester,” Ellett said. “It’s a matter of trying to get through all the people in the portal and not compete with class. Students should be in class and not have the things (the) university does compete with it.”
Some students voiced concerns about the registration times.
“A lot of students get upset because they accidentally sleep through or they aren’t awake enough to realize what they are doing,” Topchik said. “A lot of clubs and organizations do things at night to avoid classes and I think it might be a good idea to do something similar with course registration.”
Ellett said that SGA did not raise the registration times as an issue. But again, Cedor seemed to remember this differently.
“We did share one of our concerns being the overlap between 8 a.m. classes and some registration blocks,” Cedor wrote.
He added that SGA asked for faculty, staff and coaches to be made aware of registration periods and give students opportunities to register in class if needed.
Students with the fewest credits relative to the rest of their class are assigned later registration times — either 7:30 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. — on their class’s registration date. Students received an email with their specific time and date on Feb. 27.
Going forward, Ellett said, the university may slightly change the way the groups of students are divided based on credits to account for the incoming number of students so as to not to let more than around 600 students into the system at once.
“We have to do some surveys, and ask, ‘Did it work?’” Ellett said. “Did the system crash or not? Did students use two or three instruments to tap in again? Like with anything, we always have to evaluate it.”
