Registrar’s Office student friendly
Most students at USU associate the Registrar’s Office with long wait times, frustration and lines out the door. That is what the new registrar, John Mortensen, hopes to fix.
“The biggest thing we want to convey is that we are a student-friendly office, not a place students dread standing in line at,” Mortensen said.
He has started his new role by making a few big changes to make the Registrar’s Office an easier experience for USU students.
The first change Mortensen made was “tackling the lines” by enlisting the help of the A-Team. He said he paired A-Team members with an employee from the Registrar’s Office to create alternate locations for students to go to add or drop classes. The other stations were set up in the library and the Taggart Student Center computer lab.
“So many students were standing in lines across the hall just to add or drop a class,” Mortensen said. “So we created those other locations to go to and gave advisers access to [add students] as well.”
Mortensen said he also made it easier to pay for online fees by e-check, so students would not have to wait in line to pay a small fee.
Erika Kingery, a junior majoring in social work, said she liked the new changes.
“It was nice. I just went down to the lab, added one class and dropped another one. I took like two minutes,” Kingery said. “Then I went online and paid the new class fee by e-check.”
Changes aren’t just being made at the beginning of the semester, Mortenson said.
“Another problem we’ve faced is we got so many phone calls that the voicemail would fill up,” Mortensen said. “So we went to the A-Team again and they responded to the stuff they could.”
Mortensen said many people call the Registrar’s Office simply because it is a visible office and students do not know where to go to address their problem. Employees at the Registrar’s Office are receiving better training, he said, so they will know where to direct students who come to them with problems.
An LCD TV screen with directions about where to go for specific needs will soon be mounted outside the office, Mortensen said, so students “at the back of the line realize they don’t have to stand in line and could go online.”
Employees are also starting to transcribe transcripts from the old computer system to Banner so people that are graduating will not have to wait as long for their transcripts.
“We’re making a lot of progress. The staff has been nothing but supportive -they’ve come up with most of the new ideas,” Mortensen said. “We’re just working on the elimination of red tape.”
Not everything is changing, though, Mortensen said. He said he had hoped to let students pay fees with Visa, but it will probably not happen.
Mortensen said his advice to students going to the Registrar’s Office is, “First, don’t wait until the deadline to do something. If you know something is coming up, go in the week before, so you don’t panic. Second, if it can be done online, do it online. And third, meet with your adviser.”
“We are just looking at the policies in place,” he said. “We want to go back and look to see if they are student friendly, and if they aren’t, then we’ll change it.”
-dilewis@cc.usu.edu