Office of the Registrar news

Registration opening soon

• Crookston: 3/2/17 for summer and fall
• Duluth: 3/6/17 for summer; 4/3/17 for fall
• Morris: 3/22/17 for summer; 4/10/17 for fall
• Rochester and Twin Cities: 4/11/17 for summer; 4/13/17 for fall

Policy review underway

The System Registrar Council (SRC) group is actively involved in the current review of the Grading and Transcripts Policy. The policy applies to CR, MO, TC, and RO campuses. The group's input to this large and significant policy is being worked through and recommended changes will then be forwarded to several approving committees.

Decomission of ULearn and Destiny One non-credit registration system adoption

Decommission of ULearn
The University has made a concerted effort under President Kaler to eliminate waste and make the most out of existing technology. During a November Operational Excellence meeting, a decision was made to leverage existing systems for the University’s learning management needs. The systems available include Destiny One for training registration and tracking; Moodle for course delivery; and Qualtrics for surveys and evaluations and the data warehouse for learning transcripts. The Destiny One team is actively engaged as a member of the transition team, completing fit gaps and helping to identify cohorts of ULearn users to begin to usher in planned phases over the next 18 months.

Destiny One non-credit registration system adoption
The Destiny One non-credit registration system implementation was the culmination of years of interest and effort to find an effective tool to manage registration for courses, conferences, and other learning experiences that do not bear formal academic credit. Below are some points of interest since its launch:

• Total units: 23 program offices, 135 costing units 
• Total courses and sections: 732 courses, 1570 sections
• Total conferences: 554
• Total system users: 289
• Revenue to date: $14,355,446
• Total registrations: 72,988
• 67% of registrations are learners in MN
• Average 2.3% credit card processing fees

Sue’s update (January 2017)

I am hoping all of you enjoyed our University days off and now it’s already spring term. A few items I have heard recently: Brian Burnett is working on beginning a national search for the CIO position that Bernie Gulachek is currently serving as interim. He has indicated that a national search will also occur for the University Services position for which Mike Berthelsen is serving interim.

For those of you have haven’t heard, Carolie Carlson passed away December 27. She was responsible for training in HR and Finance, and led the training for the ESUP project. Carolie was a great colleague to work with on many initiatives at the University. The System-wide Strategic Planning committee met January 10. If we hear additional information, we’ll pass it on to you. Thank you for continuing to help our students succeed.

Eleanor’s update (Jaunary 2017)

The start of a new year and a new term is keeping us all busy. On the whole, things are going well with a few bumps in the road. Friday the13th did pay us a visit with an “oops” to the 13-credit exemption communications, but staff worked quickly to smooth out the issues.

As you can tell from this newsletter there is a lot happening for us on a systemwide level; I hope you will find the news interesting and helpful.

Twin Cities (January 2017 updates)

New department directory
Now there is a new Department Directory available online that makes it easier to connect. Improvements include more complete contact information for units and staff such as unit postal addresses, staff email addresses, and links to faculty bios.

Gopher Day of Coderetreat - January 12, 2017
Our first Gopher Day of Coderetreat successfully brought developers together for a day of dedicated, deliberate practice. Altogether, 40 programmers (from first-year students to 20-year professionals) spent the day pairing, discussing, and learning. Feedback from the event has been universally positive and Ian Whitney is assembling a group of people interested in organizing next year’s event.

Gopher Day of Data - January 13, 2017
The first Gopher Day of Data event brought approximately 80 students, staff, and faculty together to work on 11 data and analytics projects. Verbal feedback from participants was positive; more feedback is being collected to determine whether to repeat this event annually.

Office of the Registrar updates
The registrar's staff have been busy with term transition activities wrapping up fall term and looking ahead to spring. Here are some numbers for you:

• Fall term activities
• Over 275k fall grades for have been posted, however follow-up continues for incomplete and non-reported (NR) grades.
• Of the 18k NR grades posted, more than 14k have already been resolved to another grade.
• Fall graduation numbers to date are 3,253 posted degrees for all careers.
• Spring term activities
• Approximately 240k enrollments for spring for over 55,000 student
• Approximately 2,860 spring 2017 graduation requests are being processed

Comings and goings

Retirement
Congratulations to Dianne Danov. After many years of service Dianne, Associate Director for Compliance, Athletic Aid and Scholarships, will be retiring in early-February. An open house reception is scheduled for January 31. Contact Tina Falkner for details.

FLSA changes temporarily blocked

In late November, a federal judge in Texas blocked the Obama administration’s effort to extend overtime pay to millions more workers, after 21 states and dozens of business groups asserted that the rule was unlawful and would cause them irreparable harm. The new rule was to take effect on December 1, 2016. The new rule, which updates the Fair Labor Standards Act, would make more full-time, salaried employees eligible for overtime pay. Now, with the new rule on hold, colleges must decide whether to continue with their plans to comply or to postpone them. The University will continue to monitor this issue.

Internal audit : student system post-upgrade

The University of Minnesota Office of Internal Audit is finalizing their audit on post-ESUP student system. ASR will be working on responding to the findings once both ASR and Internal Audit agree on the report. Sue presented initial findings to the Finance and Planning Committee on January 17.