Virjean Edwards appointed University Registrar

November 3, 2010

By Matt Saavedra

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

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!

UWeek showcases the hard work performed by the Room Assignment and Time Schedule Office

October 28, 2010

By Matt Saavedra

The October 28th, 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.

UW Time Schedule archive now available online

September 27, 2010

By admin
In August, 2009, the Office of the University Registrar (OUR) posted on this blog an archivist internship position. Back in May, 2010, the OUR announced that intern’s first project: the UW General Catalog archive. Today, we are happy to announce the publication of another archiving project: the quarterly Time Schedule archive.

What’s included?

The archive contains copies of the UW’s quarterly Time Schedules from the previous quarter, back through autumn quarter, 1968. From that date through summer quarter, 2002, the Time Schedules are available as searchable PDF documents scanned from the printed editions. After that date, the Time Schedule became an online-only publication and links to those quarters’ editions are presented as web archives.

Each scanned edition is in PDF format so it is viewable by any computer, and range in file size from 2-24 Mb (though the majority are about 15 Mb). Page numbers and file size are listed for scanned editions. Because they were scanned from original documents, they retain the charm of actual printed pages; some have hand-written notes or dog-eared pages. Luckily, optical-character recognition (OCR) software is good enough to recognize the words on the page so that each file is searchable. Just enter a word(s) in the search field your PDF software.

Some editions were unavailable for scanning and are note included in this archive. Missing editions are displayed in gray. If you have a copy of a a missing Time Schedule that you’d like to contribute to the archive, please let us know.

Why is it important?

Providing these quarter Time Schedules to the public in an easily-searchable format has many benefits to the University. Most of the benefits of publishing the archive of General Catalogs apply to Time Schedules as well. In addition, this archive:

  • Allows alumni to determine the location and instructor of courses they took, information that is not included on their official University transcript.
  • Provides a record of administration and registration procedures for that quarter.

A few words of thanks

The OUR would again like to thank those who made this project possible:

  • Intern Talea Anderson, UW MLIS graduate student – Talea worked closely with the OUR’s Time Schedule office and the UW Libraries to scan and digitize the Time Schedules; and
  • Anne Graham with the UW Libraries’ Digital Initiatives Program – Anne and her group provided the hardware to prepare and scan the Time Schedules for posting.

General Catalog 2010-12 now available

September 21, 2010

By admin

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.

You asked, we listened: grade change requests now online

August 31, 2010

By admin
Catalyst Web GradeBook, released about two years ago, brought online grade submission to UW faculty members and their grade delegates. However, faculty who needed to submit a grade change still had to rely on the paper Change of Grade request form or submit a signed memo on letterhead. Not any more!

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.