Behind the Scenes with the Office of the Registrar

Labeled the hub of academic operations at most universities, registrars’ offices oversee student registration, degree audits, transfer credits, and are responsible for conferring degrees at the end of a student’s journey. At Empire State University, the Office of the Registrar is interwoven with the student lifecycle—they are guides from beginning to end, ensuring that the unique paths of students are on track and adhering to the necessary requirements.

University Registrar Pamela Enser, Assistant Registrar Joey Van Ullen, and Assistant Registrar for Concurrence Amanda Parker take us for a behind-the-scenes look at the office’s backend processes. Enser has been with the university since 2017, Van Ullen joined two years ago, and Parker has been part of the team for three and a half years.

What does your work entail?

Van Ullen: On the records and registration side we assist students daily with registration inquiries. Our side of the office also handles grading and academic standing.

In my role, I work with the colleges preparing the term guide every term, as well as doing maintenance on our course catalog. We also do general student record maintenance.

Parker: I work on the other side of the office, which consists of transfer review, graduation review, Degree Works audits, and concurrence review. We handle the other end of things, making sure that we get all the students’ transfer credits evaluated and added to their records, that their Degree Works audits are showing accurate information … and the technical review of individualized degree plans. Also, of course, awarding degrees.

Enser: We also certify veteran students’ benefits, so if they receive any financial assistance, we do that. We issue transcripts and provide any kind of enrollment or degree verification for students, as well as printing and sending diplomas. We also help to oversee a bunch of different software—for example, CourseLeaf, the curriculum software.

We pretty much touch upon students during their entire lifecycle—we are one of the only offices that do that. We work with students sometimes before they enroll … we have a touchpoint at each part of the process.

Van Ullen: A lot of times, I’ve heard a registrar’s office is the hub of a university. A lot of other offices come to us, and we have to go to a lot of other offices for things. We don’t deal with financial aid, but a lot of students’ financial aid is based on their enrollment.

Enser: We also report any kind of student enrollment to the National Student Clearinghouse, which then reports to the National Student Loan Database. We work very closely with the Office of Decision Support when it comes to any kind of SUNY reporting.

What is the biggest challenge that your office has to navigate?

Enser: The sheer amount of transfer work that we deal with is significant due to the type of student that we usually have. Usually, they come in with an average of five transcripts from different schools over different time periods, which is a lot of transfer work for a typical institution.

Van Ullen: I’m going to speak specifically about the term guide, which is looking at the course schedule each term and what we need. One of the unique things about Empire State University is that most other institutions—particularly institutions that serve a more traditional student population—tend to have a lot of their registration front-loaded. Here, it’s kind of the opposite.  Our registration is more of a consistent flow because of the fact that students are getting admitted at various points throughout the year. A lot of times, our biggest registration rush is the month leading up to the term.

We are an access institution and it’s important that we are able to keep track of these trends and make note of when it’s a good time to be opening new sections. It usually means that we have a lot of shuffling to do … to make sure that we’ve got seats for the students who need it, that students are able to have a full-time course load so they can get financial aid if that’s what they’re looking for, and make sure that they have courses that are going to be applicable to them.

Parker: Because Empire State University is such a unique institution, our problems and challenges are a bit unique. The transfer piece is huge, because most schools don’t experience that volume of transfer coming in. We are also dealing not just with transfer credits from other colleges and universities, but also prior learning evaluations, professional learning evaluations, individualized credit for prior learning, and trying to get those all onto the records accurately and verify them can be a real challenge.

Enser: I can speak directly to an initiative that we started and worked on last year where we were able to identify students who were eligible to receive a general studies degree without any additional credits. We were able to award over 400 general studies associate degrees between the fall and the spring term. We’ll be doing that every term, but that was one of our tactics originally initiated by the strategic plan.

There’s a lot of things that we do that lead towards supporting the strategic plan and the mission of the institution. I am on the University Retention Council and there’s a lot of work that we do with Degree Works. Finding different ways to help students access information to enable their ability to successfully complete things in a timely manner.

We’re always looking at different technology to help support those roles. For example, we use a product called Laserfiche, which we use for optical character recognition software to more effectively bring data into the system when it comes to transcripts … we’re also going to be implementing a new scheduling tool that will help not only with the work of scheduling, but providing analytics to look at what and how we are offering to best serve our students.

Van Ullen: An important thing we do is always striving for accurate data. Data is the most important piece of looking at institutional effectiveness, because if your data is not accurate, then you don’t really know how things are going.

Parker: Concurrence review is how we check that the degree program meets the university, SUNY, and state requirements for that type of degree. From a concurrence standpoint, we’re supporting our students—especially those who have unique backgrounds and have a lot of credits coming in—to plan their individualized degree.

We see some interesting degree concentration titles because people have specific goals in mind, or because they have broad goals and they’re trying to get into a new field.

That’s how we support students … because we do a technical review of those degrees, we make sure that they are meeting the requirements that are set forth by the university, by SUNY, and by the State Department of Education to make sure that the integrity and value of a SUNY Empire degree is maintained.

What do you wish people knew about the work that you do?

Parker: We are making sure that the technical requirements of the degrees are being met. We enforce policies, and sometimes that makes us seem a bit like the bad guys. I wish people understood that it’s for the benefit of everyone—we want to make sure that those degrees have value. We want to make sure that things are equitable, so that all students are getting the same opportunities.

Van Ullen: I think sometimes people lose track of the fact that we have the same goals that mentors have, that student success coordinators have, that faculty have. We want students to succeed, and ultimately, we’re on this mission together. We heavily adhere to policy, but policy exists most of the time for a reason.

Enser: Seeing us as a partner is a goal that we have. We look to working with faculty and other offices as a way to keep relationships beneficial for students and find the best paths to ensure our students are successful and can meet the goals they have set. There’s a lot from SUNY that we are actively involved in. I am the transfer liaison on behalf of our institution for the SUNY Academic Momentum Campaign. If people have questions about that, they can always reach out.

What’s the best part of your job?

Van Ullen: The best part of my job is being able to solve an issue for a student.

The best part of the day is when you get on the phone with an exasperated student who can’t figure it out, and you spend 10 minutes with them, calm them down, walk them through it, and get them registered. They’re always so thankful that you were able to do that, so even though in my particular role I don’t get a ton of that on an everyday basis, when I do get an opportunity, it’s always great.

I think everyone who gets into higher education does it because they want to help students reach their goals, so even in the smallest ways on a day-to-day basis, it makes the job fulfilling.

Parker: Our office is amazing, and working with the people in it is one of the best parts of my day. Pam Enser has built an amazing team. We’ve got great people, and we’ve bonded in a meaningful way—it’s just lovely to work with people who all are working towards the same goals and who really care about the mission.

Enser: We’re a pretty big office—we’re at 30 people right now. The best part of my job is solving problems. Being in a registrar’s office, you’re constantly trying to find unique ways to figure out something new. It can be anything, and I enjoy that.