Drop/add — at least as current Elon University students know it — will soon be a thing of the past.
Beginning with the 2015 summer/fall registration period, the university’s registration process will switch to a 24/7 model in which students’ schedules can be swapped anytime.
It’s a move that has been in the works to minimize the impact of administrative red tape on student scheduling, according to Elon’s Registrar Rodney Parks.
“It’s definitely one we’ve been working on for a while,” Parks said. “Registration here at Elon was put in place at a time when Elon was a very different place, and it followed a very historic way of processing registration.”
That “historic way” gave upperclassmen a scheduling advantage by allotting them the earlier drop/add slots. Now, students will still have set registration times based on credit hours earned, but by not closing afterward, underclassmen ought to stand more of a chance at snagging coveted courses.
After the drop/add period begins later this spring, it will remain open until August 31 — except for a chunk of the summer from May 31 to August 11 to register incoming freshmen.
The registration change will not affect matriculating students, who will still be assigned courses by the university.
Elon would like to get to the point where freshmen can register themselves, Parks said, but it’s challenging for a school comprised of 78 percent of out-of-state students.
Pointing to his native University of Georgia, Parks said larger state schools are able to funnel incoming freshmen onto campus for registration over the summer. By squeezing advising appointments and an orientation of sorts into one day, it is possible for new students to have some say over their schedule, he said.
But that’s not a reality for Elon.
“We’re at this point in the process where they’re still being registered for a lot of first-year specific classes,” Parks said. “For some of these classes, we’re reserving seats specifically for first-years that we want them to be able to pick up.”
Over the course of this school year, the university has conducted networking tests to ensure its servers could handle the increase in students who could access drop/add at any time with the new policy.
It lengthened the process, but it was necessary to make sure the servers could handle the additional load without crashing and adding to students’ frustration, Parks said.
“You’ve certainly seen a ton of initiatives, so this is one of those that was in the line,” he said. “One of the things that students may not be aware of is that we have to make sure the technology is in place to handle the load of students.”