Office of the University Registrar

Olaf Buntrock, Web Manager, Office of the Registrar

“Webmaster,” says Olaf Buntrock, the Office of the Registrar’s latest staff addition, “is a bit of a ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ -era label.” He adds, with a grin, “Who could master the whole Web, after all?”

Olaf brings with him experience from both the corporate and government arenas as a web producer with companies such as Microsoft, Disney and the Department of Licensing, as well as a academic background, as a former high school teacher of Visual Communications and Digital Production. Born in New Jersey and transplanted at an early age, Olaf grew up in the mountains surrounding Boulder, Colorado, home of the University of Colorado. When not playing with pixels in Photoshop or weaving dreams in HTML, he is an avid skier, gardener, chef, yoga enthusiast and father to the bright and precocious 17 year-old senior at Mt. Rainier High School in Des Moines, Washington.

“Being immersed in the web publishing business since Netscape 1.0 and 28K modems to today’s slew of devices that capture and display web content wirelessly, I’ve come to appreciate the fluid nature of information technology and education. Accessibility, usability and discoverability are large parts of my  focus on the web, and it’s very exciting to be able to bring more of the best of what the web has to offer to the staff and students at the University of Washington, in an atmosphere of intellectual curiousity and nimble technology. I look forward to learning as much as I can while providing the best web experience possible for all our students and staff. The web, by its very nature, belongs to everyone, and everyone should be able to use it effectively, efficiently and with no small bit of enjoyment as well .”

A recent segment on KOMO news has created some confusion regarding the release of directory information via the UW’s iPhone app.

As always, the UW is in compliance with federal regulations regarding what student information it does and does not release. Students are allowed to designate whether they want to allow a specific set of their information to be made public or not. The iPhone app uses a small subset of that information and releases it only for those students who have designated that they are willing to let the UW release that information.

More information on the Federal Education Right to Privacy Act (FERPA) is available at uw.edu/students/reg/ferpa.html, which also contains links to MyUW, where students can change their FERPA release flag.

The Office of the Registrar is excited to announce that Virjean Hanson Edwards has been appointed University Registrar, effective November 1^st.

Virjean’s leadership at the Registrar’s Office spans 12 years, including positions as Assistant, Associate, and Interim Registrar.

Philip Ballinger, Assistant Vice President for Enrollment noted that Virjean is “known across campus as a capable leader” and “an ardent guardian of and expert on the student record.” Please join us in congratulating her on her new appointment!

The October 28^th, 2010 Issue of UWeek published an article after interviewing Matt Winslow, Acting Associate Registrar of the Room Assignment and Time Schedule Office.  The article illustrates the challenges faced by the Time Schedule Office each quarter to assign rooms and meet the needs of many, while maximizing the best use of limited-space.

Every quarter, Winslow’s office juggles factors of time, day, location and more to match classes and rooms with the least amount of faculty inconvenience and wasted time and space. They are assisted by the Classroom Support Services Office, which sees to classroom technical needs and longer-range planning.

Learn more about the Room Assignment and Time Schedule Office and the process for assigning classrooms in the full UWeek article.

The Office of the University Registrar is proud to announce that the latest edition of the University’s General Catalog is now available. The document, weighing in at over 600 pages, can be downloaded from the General Catalog archive page of the Student Guide.

Although its printing and distribution was ended after 2002 (the online Student Guide now serves as the authoritative source for policies and academic information), the General Catalog is still produced in PDF format so it can be easily downloaded, searched and printed. It serves as an historical record of the University’s policies, course and degree offerings, and faculty. Additionally, this bi-annual document is used by state approving agencies to ensure the University continues to meet educational requirements.

Faculty and staff on all three campuses how now have a convenient way to submit grade-change requests online—whether for one student, a handful, or a whole class. The Change of Grade (CoG) request form, developed by the Office of the University Registrar (OUR), was designed to complement the functionality offered within Web GradeBook. Links to the CoG form can be found within Web GradeBook’s documentation, as well as on the OUR website.

The online form offers a number of benefits compared to the paper-based process:

• Available anytime, anywhere - Grade-change requests may be made 24 hours a day; no need to wait on campus mail delivery or walk to Schmitz Hall. And since your UW NetID login provides all the needed verification of your identity, you can submit requests from any computer with internet access.
• Centralized submissions – The form allows requests to be submitted by staff on behalf of faculty, which simplifies the grading process in some departments. Submissions are tracked by UW NetID so their authenticity can be verified.
• Less typing – The form can automatically enter much of your contact information from the UW’s database to cut down on data entry.
• More secure – Information is encrypted on the server to ensure only authorized OUR users have access to the information.

As with the paper-based grade-change request cards, online submissions are reviewed and processed manually by staff in the Graduation and Academic Records Office: Submissions are not automatically input in the Student Database. The normal two business-day processing time still applies.

The OUR encourages you to start submitting your grade changes online. Questions about the new form may be directed to the Graduation and Academic Records office.

Effective August 23, some offices within the Office of the University Registrar will have new business hours. Despite these changes there will always be someone available to answer your questions.

• Registration and Transcripts (Schmitz Hall 225) – 8am-5pm (unchanged from current schedule)
• GARS, DARS, Residency, and ELPR (Schmitz Hall 264) – 10am-5pm
• Administration (Schmitz Hall 209) – 9am-12pm and 1-4pm

This schedule will remain in effect at least through Autumn quarter 2010. Questions about these changes can be directed to the Registrar’s main e-mail address, registra@u.washington.edu

Recently, the Office of The University Registrar (OUR) posted on this blog a new position: that of a Learning Manager. After a difficult selection process, the OUR is happy to announce that Matt Saavedra will be joining our team in this capacity in August.

The OUR welcomes Matt Saavedra as its new Learning Manager

Matt brings a diverse background in instructional design, e-learning development, training delivery, and project management. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of New Mexico, and an M.B.A. from Washington State University; both degrees are in Business Administration. These credentials will serve him well as he takes on this new role, which will require consideration of the varied approaches to adult learning in a university setting.

Though Matt is new to the University of Washington, he has worked in higher education previously at the University of Idaho. More recently, though, Matt brings corporate experience from well-known Seattle companies including Adobe, Microsoft, and Washington Mutual.

What tasks will Matt tackle as the Learning Manager? From the position description:

The Learning Manager will help build and maintain the learning infrastructure within University learning systems and OUR web sites.  This will enable the OUR to deliver an ongoing and diverse curriculum of classes as well as provide a range of additional learning services that support users as they develop the core skills required to use complex systems more effectively and securely.

In practice, this means he’ll create, manage, and deliver training on many important UW systems. Some of the most important of these are the Student Database (as well as its likely successor, Kuali) and the Enterprise Data Warehouse. Additionally, Matt will be responsible for education and compliance around important campus regulations like FERPA.

We look forward to Matt joining the team next month and to the excellent experience and guidance he’ll bring to the role of Learning Manager.

University Registrar Todd Mildon recently accepted a position in the UW’s Office of Planning and Budgeting as the Assistant Vice Provost  for Institutional Research and Data Management. Philip Ballinger, Assistant Vice President for Enrollment in the Division of Student Life, appointed Virjean Edwards Interim University Registrar. The following message was sent to the Registrar’s staff.

Colleagues,

I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Virjean Edwards as Interim University Registrar at the University of Washington. I ask you to join me in offering Virjean hearty congratulations upon this well deserved appointment.

Virjean has worked at the University of Washington since 1982.  Her 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’s appointment begins on July 19th.

- Philip Ballinger