2024 Year in Review

As we approach the close of 2024, it's the perfect time to pause and reflect on the milestones and accomplishments that have defined this year for the Office of the Registrar.

From exciting new ventures and challenges to the connections and growth we've experienced together, this year has been filled with achievements that we can all be proud of.

In this Year in Review, we’ll highlight some of the key accomplishments by our teams. While this list is extensive, it is not comprehensive and we look forward to our continuing our mission of helping our campus community thrive using accurate, secure academic record management and supporting the institution's primary functions.

Thank you for your contributions to our success in 2024!

Highlights of Team Accomplishments

Academic Calendar

• Integrated Academic Calendar replication with other functional areas such as Admissions, Financial Aid, Orientation, and University Housing and Dining to improve efficiency in the review of calendar dates.
  
• Expanded Academic Calendar management to include staff from various areas of the office and initiated bi-weekly meetings for process improvement, as changes now affect external Drupal websites and digital displays.
• Moved Tippie Professional Program dates from hard coded to non-standard early registration within the Academic Calendar. A new non-standard early registration date will allow our team to make real-time adjustments as their programs grow or change without having to request changes from our partners in ITS.
  

Academic Data Management 

• Partnered with ITS-AIS to institute new FERPA-compliant security roles to restrict unnecessary access to student demographic data.
• Continued to foster collegiate data partnerships regarding appropriate use and practices for student data, and the campus as a whole in participating in campus data conversations and projects for governance, data stewardship, and literacy.
• Continued collaboration with Enrollment Management (EM) Data Analytics team and started an effort to provide our campus with clearer guidance and governance on the student academic, financial aid, admissions, and other EM data under our respective purview.

Academic Structure

• Assisted campus partners with more than 100 program of study (POS) proposals, including creations, closures, and revisions to existing POS.
• Completed a project to outline and clarify academic structure proposal information for campus. The web pages are currently under review by the provost’s office.
• Expanded the Academic Structure meetings to include an advisor from the Reg-MAUI-Support team. This collaboration helps to provide a holistic view of program of study proposals, including student impact and MAUI access scoping, and is a great opportunity for both sides to learn how our work influences each other and to brainstorm strategies for upcoming proposals.

Alumni Data Management

• Coded and tracked alumni participation in student employment, student government, and student organizations.
• Collaborated with the University of Iowa Center for Advancement (UICA) and the Academic Data Management Team to integrate data between I-Star and MAUI. UICA made the transition to I-Star in October.
• Collaborated with UI colleges and departments to update their alumni data.

Athletic Academic

• Evaluated the initial eligibility of more than 300 incoming first-time full-time students, transfer, and international student-athletes; ensured the continued academic eligibility of almost 700 student-athletes, certifying them at least twice per year for practice and competition in Division I intercollegiate athletics.
• Created workflow forms to streamline processes for Transfer Student-Athlete Certification, transfer course evaluations, syllabi evaluations for transfer courses, and reviews of non-traditional courses (independent study, study abroad, etc.). These forms have significantly improved the efficiency and accuracy of our certification and evaluation processes.

Classroom Scheduling/Course Offerings 

• Collaborated as a team to compile a comprehensive glossary of common definitions used in the Office of the Registrar. This resource significantly enhances our team’s onboarding practices. Consequently, it has been extended to our campus partners to aid in their interactions with our office.
• Partnered with Facilities Information Services and Security Engineering Services to develop a new workflow form. This form enables stakeholders to review, comment, and approve building hours through a streamlined, cohesive platform, ensuring that students, staff, and faculty have access to the most accurate information posted online for University Classroom buildings.
• Developed an online non-standard class time exception request form to modernize the previously manual process within Classroom Scheduling. This update enhances our compliance methods with course offerings and improves the tracking of granted approvals by the Office of the Provost.
• Installed new student furniture in approximately 65 university classrooms; thumb turn locks and electronic locks designed to enhance classroom accessibility and security were installed in numerous locations across campus; and new accessible instructor stations were installed in 60 classrooms as part of $2 million in classroom improvements funded by P3 allocations in FY24. Planning continues for the final $2 million allocation for 2025.
  

Commencement  

• Developed a comprehensive Emergency Action Plan for commencement ceremonies at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, managing last-minute changes for the spring ceremonies by creating a ceremony disruption response plan.
• Collaborated with our campus partners in ITS to make enhancements to the commencement RSVP before it opened this fall including more flexibility for student ceremony name options including an option with no middle name; additional information about how the student's ceremony name will be used; additional information about name pronunciation; combining the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) and University College (UC) ceremonies into a single ceremony title now that UC will use the CLAS ceremony as its official degree conferring ceremony.
• Enhanced communication efforts through more targeted messaging to students throughout the RSVP process, creation of a commencement team phone number, and the launch of our new commencement website.

Communications/Websites 

• Collaborated with the OSC Web Development team and teams in the registrar's off to build out all pages that required custom development on the registrar's website with goal of launching the site in 2025.
• Established the registrar's communicators group including team members who work in Dispatch, manage or edit websites, or maintain other regular forms of communication to share best practices, discuss current projects and challenges, and identify ways we can collaborate.
• Worked with the Student Success Communications Collaborative to send select student messaging using a new high-impact template to encourage students to complete various calls to action required for academic progress.

Course Library 

• Processed more than 2,500 course approval forms to add, drop, or revise courses, including a major project with a tight timeline to support CLAS’s new School of Earth, Environment, and Sustainability. More than 150 courses were assigned the new course subject (SEES), renumbered, and/or dropped from the Course Library with 25% of those requiring catalog updates and prerequisite changes. The course subjects EES, ENVS, GEOG, and SUST will no longer be used effective fall 2025.
• Completed a project to improve the inactive course process. Inactive course forms now provide better information to users, including the display of cross-references and general education information, and Universal Workflow display was updated so campus and registrar users can better sort between forms with no status, keep, or drop. Departments, colleges, and the Course Library team reviewed 1,232 inactive course forms with 21% of courses dropped indefinitely.
• Collaborated with the Reg MAUI Support team to finalize a workflow form and MAUI Help site page for course categories. Campus users can now submit requests for courses to be tagged with a few different experiential education categories. Requests will route to the appropriate category reviewer for approval and to the Course Library or Offerings Planner team for implementation. Course categories provide students a better way to find these course types in MyUI, and allow the courses to automatically export to their engagement record.

Degree Audit 

• Completed world language pathways updates. This project, which required extensive encoding, testing, and collaboration with ITS, not only reflects updated world language requirements, but also enhances the usability of the degree audit for students and advisors, and supports reporting that was not previously available. Similarly, worked with ITS to update the functionality of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and College of Education degree audits to support a policy update in GE requirements; this again required robust testing and allowed us to improve hours estimates on NCAA degree audits, particularly for evaluation of potential transfer athletes.
• Developed and published 23 new graduate degree audits used to monitor progress towards degree for more than 1,000 students as part of the ongoing graduate degree audit project, a partnership with the Graduate College Academic Affairs Office. Each new audit will greatly reduce the manual work done in the Graduate College to review degree requirements; in addition, fall 2024 was the first time ever that all graduate-level student-athletes had a degree audit to be used in eligibility evaluation. Many of these new audits have required advanced encoding strategies, and encoders have also used them as an opportunity to find efficiencies that can be applied to other audits, such as the new ability to allow audited courses with an S grade to satisfy audit requirements (when appropriate) and reduces need for manual exceptions.
• Processed degree audit programming changes for over 1,600 course approval forms; a single course approval form can involve dozens, and in some extreme cases thousands, of manual degree audit revisions. Processed more than 1,000 graduate and professional audit exceptions, representing a 26% year-over-year increase in similar requests; this work will grow exponentially as more graduate audits are produced. Reviewed more than 700 program of study and athletic certification audits for curriculum changes during the catalog cycle in spring 2024 and made encoding changes to over 350 existing audits.

Degree Services 

• Completed final degree evaluations and the team is on pace to confer 7,721 degrees, and award 1,827 minors, and 1,358 certificates, to spring 2024, summer 2024, and fall 2024 graduates.
• Worked with ITS to create an electronic residency application. The application went live on July 1, 2024, and has been used by nearly 200 applicants.
• Entered more than 3,500 exceptions on undergraduate student degree audits.

Diploma Services

• Produced and distributed 7,721 digital (CeDiplomas) and print diplomas and fill 650 orders from alumni for digital and print diplomas and certificates. Discontinued holding diplomas for indebtedness beginning in summer 2024.
• Continued to contact degree candidates with information on when degrees may be conferred and diplomas received, to reduce or eliminate concerns and questions while also addressing when final grades are due and added to records, and when duplicate diplomas, certificates, and transcripts can be ordered. 

FERPA

• Instituted a three-year FERPA compliance module. Future endeavors include continuing to refine population and clarify communication to ensure school officials receive necessary training.
• Partnered with General Counsel to inspect and refine the language used for student directory information to improve the campus's understanding of what may be released without student consent.
  
• Collaborated with the Human Subjects Office and General Counsel to define policies and develop guidance for access to student records for research purposes. Policy and guidance included obtaining study approval, recruiting students, and obtaining and documenting informed consent.

General Catalog 

• Edited, reviewed, and published more than 900 web pages and a 2000+ page historical PDF reflecting curricula for over 500 programs of study in all 12 colleges.
• Surveyed General Catalog editors to learn more about their challenges and how we can better support them during the editing cycle, soliciting feedback on our communications, timeline, and the support we provide. The team used this information to adjust our timeline, provide additional training sessions, and enhance our communications.
• Conducted a communications audit to review all catalog-related communications, while looking for ways to implement suggestions made by our campus partners.
• Enhanced catalog workflow transparency by providing a complete copy of the workflow path to each editor, allowing them to see how many people are in their workflow, who those people are, and help them to plan accordingly to meet the editing cycle deadlines.

Imaging and Closed Institutions

• Continued work with Iowa Wesleyan University (Mt. Pleasant) and Westmar University (Le Mars) including cataloging boxes of records and creating master records in MAUI for 9,600+ students, scanning and extracting PDF files, uploading files to MAUI, and digitizing academic catalogs.
• Completed the Covenant Medical Center (Waterloo) project with inclusion of approximately 1,500 student records uploaded to MAUI. This project also included creating Covenant Medical Center as an institution in MAUI and organizing, cataloging, and digitizing student records.
• Began working on the Marshalltown Community School of Nursing (Marshalltown) to prep records for creating masters in MAUI, creating PDFs, and uploading the records to MAUI.
• Digitized and uploaded approximately 50 residency application files.

IVETS Financial

• Conducted a comprehensive cleanup of the Veteran cohort data, ensuring more accurate reporting and priority registration assignments. This effort improved the accuracy of our records and ensured that veteran and military-connected students received the benefits and support to which they are entitled.
• Presented to approximately 20 vocational rehabilitation and education counselors in Iowa, outlining the process for Iowa’s Veteran Readiness and Employment program (Chapter 31). This program assists veterans facing employment challenges due to service-related disabilities. Provided guidance on certifications, payment procedures, and the necessary steps for both counselors and students, leading to a reduction in payment issues and improving communication between counselors and our team, thereby ensuring more efficient support.
• Completed the Department of Defense Voluntary Education Institutional Compliance Program, reaffirming the University of Iowa’s commitment to providing a quality education to our nation’s service members.
• Completed a Department of Veterans Affairs compliance survey, ensuring that the University of Iowa maintained compliance with all federal regulations pertaining to the GI Bill®.
  

MAUI Access Security

• Implemented Universal Workflow forms, internal audits, and a MAUI role to enhance data security and ensure FERPA compliance, improving control and monitoring of National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data access and management.
• Enhanced user account management by expanding note-adding capabilities beyond access request forms. This includes editing notes, linking to external sites and files, and supporting audit processes for accurate access management.
• Partnered with the UI FERPA team and ICON Support to explore ICON/MAUI access management processes, enhancing the alignment of student data management practices.

MAUI Help Site  

• Published new MAUI Help pages to support campus administrators and instructors in the areas of online grade changes and registration change processing, MAUI Offerings Planner, and MAUI Course Library.
• Created a glossary that provides definitions for nearly 200 processes and portions of processes related to Classroom Scheduling and Offerings Planner, many of which link to additional policy and step-by-step tutorials.

Postsecondary Enrollment Opportunity (PSEO)

• Managed registration, billing, and ordering of textbooks and materials for 236 PSEO enrollments in spring 2024 and fall 2024.
• Improved processes and partnership with Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD) by moving to a monitored Google document reducing the need to store individual registration consent forms and other documentation.

Registration

• Continued registration process improvements including moving section, hours, and grades registration change processes to MyUI, developing new registration holds messaging, and utilizing the UI mobile app banner.
• Received and responded to 5,826 emails; 4,748 phone calls; 1,482 registrar-related walk-ins; and 782 name changes in the UI Service Center. A total of 7,382 tickets were created with 2,677 of them being related to functions of the Office of the Registrar including registration, registration changes, holds/restrictions, day/time assignments, transcripts, education verifications, diplomas, grades, and more.
• Completed a total of 1,075 registration or record changes.

Reg-MAUI-Support

• Completed an evaluation of all team tasks and created two new positions to promote greater efficiency and to balance assigned duties. These new positions support both the service and system side of the registration process, along with grades, end-of-session processing, student programs of study, advisor assignments, graduate exams, and the MAUI Access Security team.
• Enhanced partnership with ITS Tier 3 Support team through shared Teams environment, collaborating on SPOT Surveys, student grader access, and grade exports.
• Evaluated 85 course-section cancellation forms, 70 seat reservation forms, and 33 new restriction requests using Universal workflow.

Reg-MAUI-Support (Student Academic Records and Systems)

• Managed the final grade processing for 15,999 course sections. During this period, instructors reported final grades for 15,965 of these courses, representing an impressive 99.8% completion rate, demonstrating our commitment to maintaining a rigorous and efficient academic process.
• Identified data-sharing gaps during training new Biomedical Sciences staff on the postdoctoral and K-awardee enrollment process. To address this, our team collaborated with the Institutional Data Reporting team and the Vice President of Research data team to enhance data sharing with relevant offices for better outreach and enrollment information.
• Created a checklist to identify and implement changes impacted by the name change of Graduate Management Programs to Tippie Professional Programs.

Sample Plans  

• Focused on outreach to programs without sample plans and 30 new sample plans were created for new programs of study or existing programs that did not have a sample plan on file.
• Made changes to support World Language Pathways, including review of all colleges’ plans against the catalog’s four-year plan language. Outreach was made to align programs’ sample plans with four-year plan language when needed.
• Improved documentation and integrated it into the Microsoft Teams environment for long-term sustainability and continuity of operations.

Strategic Initiatives

• Continued to provide robust professional development opportunities for institutional, state and regional, and national partners, and increased diversity of topic, partnership, and attendance.
• Worked with the Onboarding Working Group to produce an onboarding checklist for new employees. The next phase will be to compile offboarding resources.
• Advocated and supported teams across Office of the Registrar to examine staffing, structure, desired outcomes, and implementation. Facilitated change management supports through times of great change and challenge.

Transcripts and Verifications

• Processed approximately 50,000 orders for University of Iowa and closed institution transcripts, and 15,000 verifications of enrollment and student information requests from students, employers, investigators, foreign entities, and other third parties.
• Continued to identify fraudulent documents as investigated and verified authenticity of documents.
• Discontinued holding transcripts for indebtedness beginning in summer 2024 and implemented the CashNet process for collecting payments in advance for closed institution transcripts and any FedEx delivery service fees.

Tuition and Fees

• Populated and maintained the tuition and fees tables, ensuring accurate and timely creation of tuition charges for all students.
• Collaborated with Billing Office IT to implement a new automated system for updating course fees, reducing manual entry errors. We hope to have this in place and functional for 2025–26 FY tuition and fees.
• Processed a multitude of tuition and fee appeals from students and departments.
  

Office of the Registrar Updates

This year, we’ve had the privilege of celebrating both new beginnings and meaningful farewells. We've seen some of our team members move on to new opportunities and have honored the retirements of several who dedicated years of hard work, leaving behind a legacy that will continue to inspire us. Their contributions have shaped our success, and we wish them all the best in their next chapter. At the same time, we welcomed new faces to our team—each bringing fresh perspectives, skills, and energy. Together, we look forward to embracing the opportunities ahead with our new colleagues.

Retirements

Sally Arnold
Julie Fell
Marcia McNamara
Gail Meade
DeeAnne Vincent

New Team Members

Taylor Copp
Rachel Gamelin
Jamie Herrin
Brooke Merkel
Maureen O'Neill
Shawna Saad
Trent Tappan
Troy Wulf