Office of the Registrar Projects

The University of Arizona does not currently have a traditional academic catalog for the students, staff and faculty. The current catalog contains links to various internal sites to present the information to campus constituents. The Office of the Registrar is developing a new academic catalog that will provide all academic curriculum, courses and descriptions; academic policies; academic calendars, ADVIPS, and all other standard catalog features. The catalog will solve inefficient curriculum management workflows and be in full compliance with federal reporting. Staff and faculty training, resource guides, business processes and workflows will be developed for the project.

• Priority Grade: A
• Project Approval Date: 2/25/2021
• Project Owner: Abbie Sorg

The University can be a difficult place to navigate​. To complete transactional requests, a student often must utilize multiple systems to identify which document to download and the correct person or office to email a completed form​. The Office of the Registrar is providing a solution that streamlines the experience for students and makes it possible to efficiently implement and support existing and changing academic policies and procedures​.

The SURPASS eForms project takes existing 'fill in the blank' formats on free-standing, digitized paper forms and customizes the process with on-line forms that streamline the experience for students and make it possible to efficiently implement and support existing and changing academic policies and procedures. Read more about the Surpass eForm project. 

• Priority Grade:  A
• Project Approval Date:  11/04/2021
• Project Owner: Alex Underwood

The University process for scheduling and maintaining the Schedule of Classes relies on manual data entry by Department Schedulers during Open Scheduling and by using a Section Form during Closed Scheduling. The process has limited logic built in, has no communication with UAccess, and data entry is cumbersome for both the department scheduler and RCS staff. The goal of this project is to streamline the process of creating a Schedule of Classes for the Winter/Spring and Summer/Fall enrollment cycles. The completed process will pull information directly from UAccess, have system push information, and include built in logic with ability to control logic within the form. 

• Priority Grade: A
• Project Approval Date: 6/3/2021
• Project Owner: Jaclyn Pryor

The Managing the Schedule of Classes training is being created for faculty and staff who manage the Schedule of Classes for their department. Department schedulers add, cancel and adjust classes in preparation for the publishing of the bi-annual Schedule of Classes by the Office of the Registrar. 
Offered in EDGE Learning, this new training program is offered in EDGE Learning and will be available to staff on-demand in advance of receiving UAccess provisioning and will ensure that all department schedulers receive the same, comprehensive training required to complete their work.  

• Priority Grade:  B
• Project Approval Date:  5/11/2021
• Project Owner: Jaclyn Pryor 

While all employees need to be well-versed in FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) compliance, some employees who have access to and use large sets of student data need additional training on the procedures and responsibilities that come with having elevated access. This new, elevated access training will help us prevent unintentional privacy breaches and ensure the appropriate use of student educational records. Importantly, failure to comply with FERPA requires federal reporting and may result in a loss of federal funding for the University.

This elevated access FERPA training is one part of a larger project to modernize the FERPA training for many different University employee groups: faculty and instructors, researchers, staff, student workers, etc.

• Priority Grade:  A
• Project Approval Date:  3/18/2021
• Project Owner: Amanda Gluski

The Office of the Registrar currently completes the process of conferring and awarding degrees manually. This has resulted in an approximate 4-8 week wait at the end of each semester for all degrees to be posted. This project will allow for automating the process for undergraduate, single-degree programs, which make up the bulk of degrees awarded.

By automating the process for these degrees, staff can target efforts towards the more complicated cases. Automation reduces manual errors and will allow for quicker and more concise communications to the student to identify what requirements have not been satisfied and options for degree and certificate awards. Most degrees will be awarded within one week after the end of the semester, and all degrees are expected to be awarded within three weeks.

• Priority Grade:  A
• Project Approval Date:  9/30/2020
• Project Owner: Amanda Gluski

The current process to determine Residency Classification for Tuition Purposes is to request student information upon enrollment using the SORC (Statement of Residency Classification), which is a custom web app developed by SASG. Due to ABOR and legislative changes, the questions asked in the SORC need to be revised, which gives an opportunity to wholistically review not only those questions, but the overall system of how we gather and process information for residency classification. This project will create a more streamlined and transparent student experience, increasing the efficiency of the residency classification process.  

Priority Grade: A
Project Approval Date: 06/13/2023
Project Owner: Maggie Ramirez

In preparation to apply for degree candidacy, students meet with their advisors to initiate the Degree Audit Worksheet (DAW) that identifies remaining coursework and the student’s plan to complete their final degree requirements. Currently a paper form, this project will integrate the students degree progression information to UAccess, providing greater access and clarity to the degree conferral process. 

Priority Grade: C 
Project Approval Date: 08/09/2023 
Project Owner: Amanda Gluski

When an instructor is no longer employed by the university, currently they can remain as an active instructor in UAccess. The instructor's department has previously been tasked to update the table to inactivate instructors as necessary (i.e., separation from institution, etc.). For various reasons such as committee appointments or retirement, some instructors or advisors have remained active on the table even after departing the university.  

Solutions are being implemented to create the most accurate instructor table information in UAccess by using Human Resources data to confirm when an instructor’s status should change from active to inactive and then processing that change.  

Priority Grade: C 
Approval Date: 06/14/2022
Project Owner: Jaclyn Pryor

The project explores ways to create a single, dynamic date rule to be used for all terms. This rule would replace the multiple dynamic dating rules that currently exist for each term. In creating a single, dynamic dating rule (and eliminating the current method of manually updating the date field), business operating processes will increase in both efficiency and accuracy.  

Priority Grade: D 
Approval Date: 05/02/2022
Project Owner: Michael Davenport

Many communications are sent to students, staff and faculty that are automatically generated in response to specific situations such when a student withdraws from a class or applies for graduation. This project provides for an inventory of existing communications followed by content and formatting revisions to ensure information from UAccess is efficiently used to send timely and accurate information to students, faculty, and staff.   

Priority Grade: C 
Approval Date: 11/01/2021
Project Owner: Michael Davenport 

Identifying ways to improve the integration of structures such as plans and programs, this project creates a collaboration with the University’s diploma vendor to simplify academic program name changes and updates as they relate to printing accurate diplomas.  

Priority Grade: D
Approved Date: 07/05/2023
Project Owner: Amanda Gluski

The Schedule of Classes and the Course Catalog will receive a new course attribute field that lists the Course-Based Research Experiences for the class. Adding this course attribute will enhance search criteria and increase the opportunity for reporting on a student’s research experiences.  

Priority Grade: D
Approved Date: 07/05/2023
Project Owner: Jaclyn Pryor

Adjustments to the Instructor Center will prompt the current term to show as the default view. As it is set up now in UAccess, the term 'rolls' midway through to present the upcoming term as the default view because that is the term needed for the processes related to scheduling courses, instructors, and rooms for the upcoming term. This roll to the next term during the current term can cause confusion to current instructors accessing their information through Instructor Center and adds an extra step of reselecting the current term. This adjustment to shift the default view to the current term will allow for clearer interactions for faculty when using Instructor Center. 

Priority Grade: D
Approved Date: 06/13/2023
Project Owner: Michael Davenport

In collaboration with the Graduate College, the Office of The Registrar will be add new fields to the Plan Table in UAccess Student to better internally track and externally display information about Master’s degree programs to the public. Additional fields will include indicators for research and professional master’s programs, accelerated master’s programs, terminal master’s programs, and graduate certificates that can be stacked toward a master’s degree. 

• Priority grade: B 
• Project Approval Date: 08/15/2023 
• Project Owner: Abbie Sorg 

The Office of the Registrar joins with the Honors College to explore processes and reporting mechanisms that will improve tracking that will streamline the tracking of honors courses and course sections, and improve the tracking of students, and their progress toward meeting honors graduation requirements. 

Priority grade: B 
Project Approval Date: 09/28/2023 
Project Owner: Michael Davenport 

The manual compilation of student enrollment data used to create the grade roster for each class is currently completed and distributed by the Office of the Registrar staff. This process is done periodically through the standard sessions and weekly for dynamically dated sessions to accurately capture updates due to withdrawals and new enrollments. Because the process is ‘hands-on,’ the distribution of the grade roster is dependent on outside factors such as university holidays and staff availability. The work for this project is to design processes that automatically build a class grading roster from the system data on a standardized schedule. Additionally, programmed communications will be sent to designated graders/instructors informing them that their current class roster is available, the date their grades are due, and links to other instructor resources.

Priority Grade: B
Project Approval Date: 10/03/2023
Project Owner: Maggie Ramirez

With changing University policy and personnel, there is a need to standardize our documentation in order to ensure equitable and consistent application of business practices and policies. Work will take place to review the accuracy of all existing internal business process guides and website information. Updates will be made to existing documentation and a long term maintenance plan will be created. 

Priority Grade: A
Project Approval Date: 09/05/2023
Project Owner: Michael Davenport

This comprehensive review of the General Petition process explores ways to improve the student experience and efficiency of the petition process. This project will examine current workflows and determine the viability of having one point of entry where the student can enter the petition process. Once preliminary information is gathered from the student, documents are evaluated for application requirements, and then routed to the appropriate college, department, and committee for review and action.

Priority Grade: B
Project Approval Date: 10/03/2023
Project Owner: Maggie Ramirez