Office of the University Registrar

Until now, students whose hard work throughout the quarter earned them a spot on the Dean’s List have been notified by mail. Their academic achievements will continue to be recognized with a letter, but the delivery method has changed. Beginning summer quarter 09, Dean’s List letters are delivered by e-mail, not by postal mail. Students receive a letter containing a link to a secure website (more on that below) where the letters can be viewed or saved in PDF format, so they can easily be printed if desired.

Why the change?

There are a few reasons for transitioning from physical to electronic letters. Financial responsibility is certainly one of them. The cost of paper, envelopes, printing and postage for the thousands of letters mailed each quarter adds up. Even in summer, the quarter with the least enrollment, there are typically about 1,200 to 1,500 Dean’s List students; that number can reach 8,000 or even 10,000 in autumn quarters. With each letter costing about 50 cents in postage and materials alone, going electronic saves a lot of money. Although sharing good news with our students and their families is a good reason to spend funds, in these tight fiscal times it’s prudent to save money wherever possible.

Also, today’s students are increasingly accustomed to electronic versions of documents: online bill payments and banking; e-mailed receipts for both online and in-store purchases; even some medical records have moved to the web. In this environment it makes sense to deliver notification of academic scholarship online, too. It’s worth noting that students who made the dean’s list—and whose information-release status permit it—are posted on the University’s website as well.

What about information security?

We’ve taken great care to ensure that this new process meets FERPA guidelines for protecting student data. The notification message, which is e-mailed to the student’s official UW-provided e-mail address, contains only a generic introduction, the student’s name, and a customized link. When following that link, the student must prove their identity by authenticating with their UW NetID before their letter is displayed.

Todd Mildon, University Registar and newly-appointed Information Officer for Student Life, recently announced that Virjean Edwards has accepted the new position of Deputy University Registrar. The following message was sent to the Registrar’s staff.

Good afternoon, Colleagues,

I am writing to announce that Virjean Edwards has accepted a new role in our office.  Beginning immediately, Virjean will serve as the Deputy University Registrar.  In this position Virjean will oversee all operations in the Office of the Registrar.  The Associate Registrars and Associate Director will therefore report to her.

Virjean’s organizational skills, clear leadership among her colleagues throughout the University, and extensive experience at the University make her ideally suited for this new challenge.  She has my full confidence and support.

Virjean will report to me, and I will continue to serve as University Registrar.  In this way I can provide strategic direction and support to the office, while at the same time devoting substantial time and energy to my new responsibilities as the Information Officer for Student Life.

Virjean and I will work together to make each of our new roles successful.  I am confident that we can build the foundations of my new office in the coming year, while at the same time continuing our tradition of excellence in the Office of the Registrar.

Please join me in congratulating Virjean.  I know you will give her your full support.  With that support, we will all be able to look back at the end of the year ahead and take great pride.  We have only begun to show how much we can contribute to the University and its mission of service, learning, and discovery.

With respect and gratitude for each of you,

- Todd

Today—Friday, Oct. 23—is officially proclaimed “Purple and Gold” day by Governor Christine Gregoire. Just another reason to celebrate our esteemed University. Go Dawgs!

Governor Chris Gregoire issues “Purple and Gold Day” proclamation
for Friday, Oct. 23, 2009
SEATTLE—In recognition of the University of Washington’s Homecoming celebration, UW alumna and Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire has proclaimed Friday, Oct. 23, 2009 to be “Purple and Gold Day” in the state of Washington.
That’s the day before the UW’s Homecoming football game against Oregon, which kicks off at 12:30 p.m. at Husky Stadium.
“The University of Washington has a rich history of academic excellence, groundbreaking research, winning athletics, and life-changing innovation,” the proclamation reads. “I urge all citizens to don purple and gold in honor of this world-class institution.”
Governor Gregoire, a 1969 and ‘71 UW graduate, has now issued “Purple and Gold Day” proclamations each of the last three years.
For more information on Homecoming at the University of Washington, visit UWalum.com or call the UW Alumni Association at 206‐543‐0540 or 1‐800‐AUW‐ALUM.

This post is an update to a previous entry, available here: Carry the UW in your hand.

The University’s iPhone application, m.UW, has been downloaded and used many hundreds of students. But what about those on campus without Apple’s high-tech phone or its cousin, the iPod Touch?

A version of m.UW is now available for another popular smartphone platform, RIM’s Blackberry (information on the release is available in an article in UWeek). More importantly, the content in m.UW can be accessed by any mobile device simply by viewing this web address: m.uw.edu from a mobile web browser.

Late September brings with it a new academic year, but unfortunately it also ushers in flu season. This year, of course, H1N1 flu adds an additional threat to the health of our community.  The University has taken a proactive measure to help students fight this annual nuisance. UW volunteers prepared 10,000 flu kits to be distributed to students in the dorms, the Greek system and elsewhere on campus. Each bag contains thermometers, hand sanitizer, electrolyte tablets, pain reliever, and an information packet.

Producing such a large number of kits over two days required a concerted effort. Overseen by Campus Health Services, scores of students, staff and faculty took two-hour shifts in the HUB Monday and Tuesday to assemble the kits. Among them were a number of volunteers from the Office of the University Registrar. Thank you to these dedicated staff who took time from their busy schedules to help keep the campus healthy!

A short video of the assembly can be found on KIRO News’ website. Further details on the University’s flu-preparedness program can be found on Campus Health Services’ website.

Tomorrow marks the first day of 2009-2010 classes for most of our students. As the academic year gets underway, the Office of the University Registrar would like to welcome you. Our staff look forward to providing you with the support and guidance you need to make your year of learning rich and productive.

Be sure also to read the President’s welcome message for autumn 2009.

Today, the University announced the launch of the Constitution Day 2009 web site. The text of the message that was sent to all students is included below:

Dear student,

We look forward to your participation in the University of Washington community during  autumn 2009.  UW offers a wide variety of learning opportunities.  We hope you will pursue many of them.

As a recipient of Federal financial support, the University is required by Public Law 108-447 to make available an educational program on the U.S. Constitution as part of Constitution Day on September 17.  Since the University is not in session on the 17th, we are making available to you a website on the Constitution from September 11 to November 5, 2009.  The site is available now at http://depts.washington.edu/constday/

The site provides an overview of the history of the Constitution and a brief discussion of current constitutional debates, as well as links to other pages that provide additional information and resources.  There is also a bibliography of popular references and a list of courses at the University of Washington that address the Constitution.  In addition, the UW site contains links to a number of webcasts on the Constitution.We encourage you to kick-off your autumn quarter studies early and visit the University’s Constitution Day website at http://depts.washington.edu/constday/

Thank you,

UW Constitution Day

===

This message was sent to all students with email accounts at the University of Washington via the REGISTRAR-L email distribution list.  The Office of the Registrar uses this list to disperse important information to all students.

If you wish to contact the Constitution Day Team via email, the correct address to use is: constday@u.washington.edu

Last month saw two major Kuali milestones. First, the Kuali software project celebrated its fifth birthday August 30. Second, the first official version of Kuali Rice (KR) was introduced; the “community-source” software graduated from beta status with its 1.0 release.

According to its website (revamped for this new release), KR “provides an enterprise-class middleware suite of integrated products that allows for applications to be built in an agile fashion.” To describe it with a cooking metaphor, it’s the egg in cookie dough that helps bind everything together. KR includes modules for managing user identities and for transmitting messages among other components of the Kuali software suite, such as the financial package KFS and Kuali Student.

The UW is playing a significant role in the development of Kuali Student and Kuali Rice systems, with a member of the Office of the University Registrar serving on the team developing Kuali Student. We’ve detailed Kuali’s progress on this blog in order to keep the UW community abreast of a set of software tools that may power our own information systems some day.

This post is an update to a previous entry, available here: Carry the UW in your hand.

m.UW, the iPhone app created for the University community and named by student Shane Bunker, officially launched yesterday. It is available for free download at the iTunes store.

You can learn more about m.UW at the University’s mobile website, including a preview of its features if you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Today the Office of the University Registrar (OUR) introduces an improved way to search the UW’s online course catalog. This improved search functionality, available from the Course Catalog website, leverages the recently-released version 4 of the UW’s Student Web Services (SWS).  We encourage the entire UW community to try it and offer their feedback so the OUR can improve upon it.

What’s the search like now

Currently, the course catalog search uses a Google custom search box to find and display pages that contain the entered keywords. While this is certainly effective, it’s not optimal when you’re looking for something specific. Suppose you’re looking for the description for Psychology 207, the Psychology of Peace. With the current Google-based search the top result takes you to the Psychology page, but you still must locate Psych 207 on that page.

How is the improved search better?

The improved search gets results directly from the SWS rather than a set of regular HTML pages. (The SWS will also power the forthcoming m.UW iPhone application). This brings a number of benefits, including:

• Course-specific results – easily see all the details of the matching courses, from description to credits.
• Optional search by term – find the perfect class for next spring by narrowing your search to a specific quarter, if desired.
• Instant updates – updates made to the course data are immediately available.

What does “beta” mean?

The label “beta” indicates the improved search is not ready to replace the existing course catalog search. Some features are not yet available, such as Instructor Course Descriptions. Nor does the improved search page yet meet full accessibility guidelines. As additional functionality is added to the SWS, the course catalog search will improve. And the OUR would like to know what you think, too! We strongly encourage your feedback so we know what additional features to work on first.

Finally, the OUR would like to acknowledge the incredible efforts put forth by the Office of Information Management, UW Technology, and members of this office to bring course information to the SWS. The improved search and other innovations to improve the UW experience wouldn’t be possible without their work.

UPDATE: After 10 days of use and more than 2200 unique visitors, version 1.1 has been posted. Thanks to insightful feedback from over 90 people, this update includes a few important bug fixes and clarifies some of the language on the page. Much of the feedback included feature requests (primarily, the ability to search course descriptions, not just titles). More improvements are on the way!