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Home » Student Affairs » Records & Admissions » Committee on Records & Admissions » Minutes

Meeting Minutes: Regents Advisory Committee on Records and Admissions (RACRA)

July 17, 2001
Callaway Gardens Inn, Pine Mountain, GA

RACRA's new Chairperson, John McElveen (Middle Georgia College) called the meeting to order at 12:35 p.m.

Welcome and Introductions
John began the meeting by recognizing outgoing chairperson, Molly DeHart (Coastal Georgia Community College). The membership responded with a hearty round of applause in appreciation of Mollie's contributions.

John announced RACRA's other new officers for 2001-2002: Donald Avery, (East Georgia College) Vice Chair; and Diane Burns (Clayton College & State University), Secretary.

He recognized and welcomed several special guests, Deborah Barbone (North Georgia College), current chair of RACSFA and liaison to RACRA. John announced that the joint meeting of RACSFA and RACRA held for the first time last spring would be held again this year. He also recognized James Squires and Judy Muse as special guests from SCT Corporation.

Introduction of First-time Attendees
Debbie Williamson (Georgia Institute of Technology) introduced Ann Laros, department manager for transfer credit, responsible for degree certification and CAPP. Jerry Wright (Valdosta State University) introduced Patrick McElwain, Assistant Registrar. Jody Johnson (Dalton State College) introduced Natalie Patterson, new transfer evaluator who will be responsible for CAPP. Carol Nobles (Medical College of Georgia) introduced two first time attendees from the Medical College. They were Melissa Johnson and Denise Coleman; both are Assistant Directors of Student Recruitment.

Approval of Minutes from Previous Meeting
John McElveen presented the minutes from the March 22, 2001 meeting for approval. No corrections were noted and the minutes were approved and accepted as presented.

Updates from the System Office

John called on Tonya Lam (USO) to update RACRA members on several USG projects.

1. Status of transfer articulation and CAPP. Tonya reported that the committee reviewing CAPP and transfer articulation would hold a final meeting on Thursday, July 19, 2001, to finalize recommendations. Guidelines will be sent by the end of the month. Once adopted, the guidelines would be posted on the system website.

   Tonya stated that all institutions would be expected to articulate all coursework for new transfer students entering summer, 2002. This is necessary because both standardization and CAPP are based on transfer articulation. She asked members to build catalogs for University System institutions first. A catalog download process is available with documentation and instructions. The download process requires the receiving institution load the entire catalog, the first time. The download process will not overwrite what has already been articulated. If a catalog has already been loaded subsequent downloads will only display changes and new courses.

   Members asked that the System Office established a deadline date for uploading the catalogs. Bonnie Stevens (State University of West Georgia) asked about the status of EDI transcripts and said that it would help significantly if institutions were able to download courses directly for articulation. James Squires (SCT) responded that this had been looked at previously at Georgia Perimeter, but that Georgia mods were an obstacle and that there had to be a system-wide approach to the problem. Tonya said that the BUGs (Banner Users group) had looked into EDI and had it on the priority list, but that nothing further had been done. Tonya will ask the GaBEST Management Group to look into the status of EDI and report back to RACRA with information.

   Lynn Bacon (Floyd College) asked whether articulating DTAE courses would be required. Tonya said that the committee was not making that a recommendation at this time; however, individual institutions are encouraged to set up catalogs from DTAE institutions in the if their institution currently has an agreement to accept certain courses. Transfer credit issues between USG institutions and DTAE institutions are still being evaluated and the presidents of two-year system schools encourage creativity in working this out.

   Tonya ended the discussion on CAPP and transfer articulation by requesting 15 volunteers to be in the first group of schools to implement CAPP. Those interested should email Tonya. (TonyaLam@mail.regents.peachnet.edu).

2. Banner Functional & Technical Leader's meeting. Tonya reminded everyone that there are now two Banner leaders on each campus, a functional and technical leader. Both are expected to attend the "post-implementation" meeting in Macon on July 25th. The purpose of the meeting is to evaluate where we are with Banner and to look at where we should go next. The System Office will be looking for 10 institutions to volunteer to have a complete review of what they are doing with Banner. During the fall, a team will visit these schools and assess how Banner is being used and how the individual institutions have developed things on their own. James Squires indicated that the team would spend about 3 weeks on site.

3. Residency. Tonya said that the committee formed to study residency issues is preparing recommendations that are more open and noted that this might create issues with financial aid and Hope. Barry Fullerton presented a session on residency at the GACRAO conference and discussed the committee's work. The committee's recommendations must go before the Board for a vote. This will likely be done at the September Board meeting.

   A lively discussion about residency, transfer students, and HOPE scholarship issues followed.

   John McElveen noted that he and the financial aid director at Middle Georgia were addressing the issue because several transfer students had entered as residents from other system institutions, but it was later discovered that they had entered as a non-resident to another institution previously. Institutions are responsible for determining if a student EVER entered any postsecondary institution in the state of Georgia as a non-resident. This includes proprietary, technical, private institutions. Otherwise, the institution can be liable and has to repay the funds awarded. Denise Coleman (Medical College of Georgia) indicated that this was a difficult problem for MCG since all undergraduate programs admit only transfer students and that it is very difficult to track the original residency of a transfer student. John said that all campuses need to develop policies and procedures to avoid having to pay back Hope funds.

   Several institutions stated how they were handling this potential problem. Mark Taylor (State University of West Georgia) said that at West Ga. they put a statement in the acceptance letter to students who were classified as non-residents that they would never be eligible for HOPE if they enrolled as a non-resident. Pat Neri (Perimeter College) stated that they informed the student in the letter sent to acknowledge the application and in the pending letter. Deborah Barbone (North Georgia College and State University) cautioned everyone to discuss this on campus with the appropriate offices and to develop a local way of determining and handling this issue to avoid problems with random audits that will occur. At the very least, every institution should be certain that they are informing students of the HOPE residency rules up front so that the students could be expected to pay money back if they are later found out to be ineligible. Since students can now apply for HOPE electronically, there is no way to have them certify on the application that they have never entered an institution as a non-resident. Tonya agreed that it is best to put responsibility on the student by informing them of the rules. She also said that the Georgia Student Finance is aware that we currently have no way to track and are working with us as we seek to resolve this issue.

4. Georgia Easy update. Tonya reported that we are now in the Phase Three part of implementing Georgia Easy. Phase One saw the USG and CollegeNet partner to create a website for GA. Easy and make the submission of an electronic application available to all system institutions. Phase Two, just completed, successfully implemented and tested with four pilot institutions, an interface to download application information directly into Banner. Phase Three will bring the interface and testing to seven more volunteer institutions. The remaining USG schools will receive the interface and testing phase in groups. Tonya requested that schools that want to volunteer to be in the next group could send her an email indicating their desire to do so.

5. USO International Education Office and the Evaluation of Foreign Credentials. Tonya announced that Sue Sugarman is the USO staff member responsible for admissions issues arising with international students. Tonya asked if there were a need for international credential evaluations at the system level. Members responded that if they were unable to evaluate credentials, they required the student to pay for a professional evaluation; therefore, they saw no need at this time for a system level evaluation process.

Update on the work of the Committee to Implement Policy on the Use of Social Security Numbers.

The use of social security number as identification number has been a hot topic nationally and in Canada as well as locally. Tonya stated that we will continue to collect the social security number and applicants will need to supply it if they want to be considered for financial aid or employment. Tonya provided a summary of an SCT conference call involving institutions across the country. Four points were given.

1. Discussed releasing a new search form in February that allows you to assign security on who can see the SSN. However, the group requested that there also be a flag option added that allows you to flag the SSN as an alternative ID. This means the social security number would be stored in the search table but only persons allowed to look at the table could identify it as a social security number. When the SSN is entered it would be assigned a name type code which is the trigger that would prevent it from appearing if the person searching does not have permission to view social security numbers.
2. Provide a tracking feature on the SSN field in SPAPERS, similar to the ID/name change feature on SPAIDEN. We know that most SSN changes on SPAPERS are a result of data entry error and this repeating table would track those changes. The correct social security number would appear in the search table mentioned above.
3. Parameters would be added to allow campuses to decide which reports/documents would display the SSN. It was also suggested that this flag option be expanded to include the ID and DOB.
4. The Data Support Center for the SUNY System has already created a process that assisted their campuses in changing from using the SSN to a unique ID number. The process takes the current SSN in the ID field and makes it a previous ID and then creates the new generated ID. The SSN, not a previous ID would have a flag of S, like we have with the C for name change and I for ID change so that you would know which previous number was the SSN and not confuse it with any ID changes.

Tonya said a follow-up phone call is scheduled in about two weeks. Charlie Nutt (Coastal Georgia) and John McElveen are serving on a system subcommittee to examine best practices on this issue. John asked whether anyone had begun to address the issue on the campus by developing policies, firewalls, etc. Deborah Williamson (GA Tech) indicated that they were working on making a mass change. Marsh Welch (Floyd College) indicated that Floyd had begun a round table discussion to educate employees and that it was part of a larger effort to be sure that faculty and others were informed on the proper use of sensitive information.

The question was asked whether admission/registration would be under a generated ID or under SSN. John responded that there were no plans to do away with the SSN and that Board policy says we must collect it. The idea is to develop best practices within the system to minimize the risk of problems associated with use of the SSN. John concluded by saying that he will send an email requesting institutions to indicate what they are doing to address the issue on their campuses.

Old Business. None

New Business:
John asked Deborah Barbone if she had any other concerns to bring us from RACSFA. She stated that the HOPE residency issue and the SSN issue were the big ones and had already been covered.

Tonya asked when the next meeting would be. John said it would be held late October or early November. Tonya requested that we set all of our future meeting dates for the year to allow for planning and avoid conflicts. John will send out suggested dates by email and allow members to respond.

There being no further business, John adjourned the meeting at approximately 1:40 p.m.

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