Emmet Anderson, Special to The Denisonian
Before 2011, Denison’s registration process was done completely by hand.
Students would bring cards to the Registrar’s office, and they would manually assign students to their desired classes, with the card on top getting top priority.
Since the school switched to online registration, the small but mighty team in the Registrar’s Office has been working to streamline their processes.
Jana Baslikova, Denison’s new registrar, started in February. The native of the Czech Republic formerly worked at Franklin University in Switzerland, Wittenberg University, Ohio University, and Yale University.
“I’ve always loved working with students,” Baslikova said. “So academic advising was always interesting to me. I don’t have a Ph.D.– I’m not a teacher. So I wanted to kind of find a way to get there.”
Normally, starting this position a month before course registration starts would be a daunting task, but Baslikova says she’s seen worse.
“Registration here is actually great. It’s calm and quiet,” she said. “Versus live registration, I’m used to getting 500 emails a day to try and figure out what students are doing, what’s not working, what’s working. So this is actually nice to see. and it’s sort of a calm process for me.”
It helps that the registrar’s office has lots of experience and has the course registration process down to a T.
“It’s not super stressful for me because of how we have our system with the plans,” said Lisa Lewis, Scheduling and Registration Systems Specialist. “You don’t have to be up at any certain time.”
Lewis’ role takes center stage during course registration, but this time of year can increase the workload for the whole office. Kimberly West, the Transfer Credit and Records Coordinator, usually gets an influx of students who realize their credits didn’t transfer properly.
“Everybody needs it now,” said West. “Even if they’ve had time, they’re noticing now that it’s going to affect them in a larger way than it had previously.”
Aaron Kaiser, the Transcript Coordinator, deals with changing majors, minors, and advisors. Some courses are only open to majors or minors, so Kaiser says he sees an uptick in change of status requests.
For some students, the registrar’s office is synonymous with course registration, but that’s just one of their many jobs. They also deal with transferring credits, academic affairs and policies, scheduling, and record collection throughout the year.
For Baslikova and her colleagues, they don’t want the registrar’s office to be a source of stress.
“We’re here to help the students and to lower their stress. Not to add stress to their lives,” said West. “Sometimes I feel like the students hear ‘registrar’s office’ and they get nervous.”
Sophia Gartner, a junior from Cali, Colombia, needed the registrar’s help to drop a course past the add/drop deadline. She assumed they wouldn’t be able to help, but to her surprise, they were able to find a way.
“I never thought the Denison registrar would be that nice. You have no idea how much they helped me,” said Gartner.
In her new role, Baslikova hopes to continue to digitize the registrar’s processes that haven’t yet adapted to the digital age. Currently, some forms are online, and some need to be on paper, which can create additional stress for students.
“It’s a low-hanging fruit in some ways. But it’s also, I think, important to everybody here. And to the students too, I would hope,” she said.