Meeting Minutes: Regents Advisory Committee on Records and Admissions (RACRA)
October 24, 2001
Clayton College & State University
Welcome and Introductions
John McElveen called the meeting to order at 10:00a.m and welcomed RACRA members.
New members and guests introduced were: Teresa Betkowski, Director of Enrollment
Services and Amy Neyhart, Assistant Director of Admissions (Gordon College);
Valencia Price, Director of Recruitment (Albany State); Tifani Landing, Assistant
Registrar (Georgia Southern); Jill Brady, Assistant Registrar (North Georgia
College & State University); and Gerry McCord (Fort Valley State). [ RACRA
Meeting Attendance Roster ]
The following visitors from the University System Office were present: Rich Loftus, Financial Aid and Account Receivables Specialist, Tonya Lam, Sr. Advisor for Student Enrollment and Information Services, Marie Steed, Director Project Support and Services for Enterprise Application Systems, Mike Moore, Director of Institutional Research at Georgia State University and Project Leader for the Data Warehousing Project, Dr. Cathy Hudson, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and, Mark Pevey, Sr. Research Associate.
Chairman McElveen welcomed Deborah Barbonne, Director of Financial Aid (North Georgia College & State University). Deborah serves as the RACSFA liaison to RACRA.
RACRA minutes from the July meeting at Callaway were distributed to the membership. Members were asked for any corrections. Mollie DeHart (Coastal Georgia College) asked that the spelling of two names be corrected (Mollie and Marsha). It was then moved by Mollie, seconded by Marsha Welch, and voted on by the members that the minutes be approved with these two corrections.
CollegeNet Presentation
Larry Peevy (Georgia College & State University) introduced, Patrick Carmody,
Vice President for Sales at CollegeNet. Patrick reviewed services that CollegeNet
will provide to the University System of Georgia at no charge. Free services
offered through CollegeNet are:
- Filtering mechanism that allows you to increase communication in a personalized way
- Email management tool that sets up filters to personalize communication. It sends to appropriate individual for response, and tracks numbers.
- Intelligent connections, gives view of communications with applicants. Allows you to customize interactions for visits, phone interactions; allows you to rank applicants based on the events an applicant attends.
- Mass emails; Print labels; Mail merge
- Search on data elements to identify group with whom to communicate
- Geo-demography; Output reports (bar graphs, analyze raw data, etc).
Any one interested in these services should contact College Net directly.
SIRS Update
Mark Pevey (USO) gave a SIRS update. Mark indicated that data would be playing
an increasingly more important role and would be scrutinized much more closely
in the future. He thanked everyone for cooperation during fall data collection.
Changes in SIRS reporting will be effective Summer 2002 when new data elements
will be collected. The new elements are included in the data element dictionary,
which can be found on the web. The data element dictionary is the complete
source for description of data elements and edits that will be performed
on those data elements.
Mark emphasized that accountability for information reporting is increasing and asked that RACRA members provide input on the reporting process. He asked members to let him know what reports are needed and how formatting can be improved. Members should email or call him with any questions about the process and also suggestions on how to improve the process.
Bonnie Stevens (SUWGa) presented a summary from the last SIRS committee meeting held in Augusta in September.
The following SIRS changes effective Summer 2002:
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A readmitted student has admit type "RE." Applies to undergraduate student who previously attended your institution and is now returning.
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Students who previously enrolled at your institution as transient students and then enroll as freshmen or transfer students should be given a new matriculation term and a new admit type. The same procedure is used when joint enrollment students enroll as regular students. Previously we have not changed the matriculation term; this change takes effect summer term.
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Country of origin issue for illegal aliens: When country of citizenship cannot be determined for an admitted student (illegal alien), institutions should use the country of origin.
Bonnie Stevens urged institutions to find answers to questions about coding by checking the data element dictionary for definitions on admit type and student type.
Cathie Hudson commented that the Chancellor would release system enrollment information at the November Board meeting and has directed
Directory Information
Tonya Lam requested that RACRA members check the USO website to ensure that
the list of Registrars and Directors of Admissions is up to date and accurate.
Corrections should be sent to tonya.lam@usg.edu.
GA Easy The Georgia EASY project has been extremely successful--with 64,000 applications submitted since 1999 and 90,555 hits to the website. Georgia Perimeter has received the most applications through Georgia EASY.
Phase two of the Georgia Easy project, uploading application information into Banner, is underway. Four institutions (Ga. Tech, Ga. College and State University, Kennesaw, and Floyd) are in production. Seven additional institutions have been added to phase two. Implementation is running behind schedule Originally scheduled to be complete by the end of December, the group will probably not finish phase-two implementation until February.
There are plans to translate the information on the Georgia EASY website into Spanish to assist the parents of Hispanic students in their efforts to access information available on the site.
CAPP
The implementation of CAPP (Curriculum Advising Program Planning) is underway.
Decisions will be made regarding the minimum services to be provided to students
by all system institutions. Under the grant model, the University System
Office (USO) will pay half of the cost per campus for implementing CAPP.
Fifteen institutions were invited to participate in Phase I. Georgia College & State
University is the four-year institution model and consultants have met with
ABAC, which will be the two-year institution model. It is very important
that all catalog information be correct in order for the process to work.
Dr. Papp will select the next 14 institutions to participate in Phase I,
and it is projected that CAPP will be scheduled for implementation at all
University System institutions using BANNER.
John McElveen indicated that the Student Advisory Committee (SAC) put forth a resolution indicating that they considered minimum services for students to be (1) on-line access to transcript information, (2) degree audit information (CAPP), and (3) on-line availability of grade reports. The Chief Student Affairs Officers would consider these recommendations from SAC during their meeting at Clayton State on October 25th.
Transfer Articulation
Guidelines for transfer articulation have been mailed. All institutions will
be expected to fully articulate transfer credit by Summer 2002. Liz Wolfgang
made an excellent presentation at Summit which is available on-line. Campuses
are expected to establish a single term in each attendance period with the
effective term the same as the term in the attendance period. The USO is
exploring the possibility of having a transfer articulation workshop.
It was noted that there are issues with functionality in transfer articulation and these defects have been reported to SCT.
Catalog Extract
The catalog extract program is in testing. Once the process has been certified and re-released, institutions would have one month from the release date to upload their catalogs. Course attributes will not be included in this version.
Chancellor Search Update
The new Chancellor's name would be announced in Thursday's paper (October 25th).
DATA Warehousing
Mike Moore (USO) was introduced and discussed the status of data warehousing.
Mike described a data warehouse as s grouping of technologies to collect
data and create a flow of information. Data warehousing allows us to move
to a highly dynamic environment where information can be drawn out almost
as soon as data are entered. This allows important information to be readily
available not only to decision makers on campus but also to the Board of
Regents, Federal Government, and other agencies which request data and information.
A number of multifunctional teams are being formed to help build the data warehouse system. Members will include users, students, data entry personnel, decision makers, etc. with Mike Moore as facilitator. No specific timetable has been announced as they are waiting for funding. Mike anticipates working with Registrar groups next spring. Although a true data warehouse product is about 3 years out, Mike expects a crude prototype to be in place by as early as next fall. Dee Minter pointed out that there should be error checks for data entry quality at the point of entry. This would eliminate the need for so many errors edits at the time of SIRS submission.
PSO Update
Tonya Lam distributed a handout from Georgia Department of Education regarding
changes in PSO reimbursements. This year's tuition reimbursements would be
at 90% and would move to 75 % next year. These costs will not be passed on
to the students. The University System Office would provide campuses with
information on how to handle this change in reimbursement at a later date.
Admissions Standards Update
The changes in admission standards, passed by the Board of Regents in October
are listed on the USG (www.usg.edu) and Georgia Easy websites. The major
changes involve (1) the elimination of requirements for specific academic
elective units and (2) methods of evaluating the qualifications for home
schooled students. A letter was being distributed to high school counselors
and institutions were encouraged to help get the word out by making copies
of the news release and distributing it to schools in their local area. Institutions
must verify that home-schooled students have completed a college preparatory
curriculum. Individual institutions will determine their own method for documentation
of the curriculum. Campuses are expected to have written documentation of
their individual policies. This alternate admission procedure would also
apply to students who graduate from non-accredited high schools. A lively
discussion ensued about portfolio assessment.
Cathie Hudson stated the policy manual has been revised to include a "non-traditional freshman" category and a "non-traditional transfer" category.
Military Call-ups and Refunds
Tonya Lam read the BOR policy on refunds for military personnel called to active
duty and responded to questions that had been raised previously through the
RACRA listserv:
After a lively discussion regarding the policy for recording military withdrawal, the members asked Bill Hamrick to draft a recommendation to be submitted to the Board's legal department for a policy change. The recommendation will be put out on the listserv.
GED INDEX FORMULA
Mollie DeHart (Brunswick) asked about getting a GED index formula for GED and
ACT scores. She also indicated that the GED would be changing to a 3 digit
score but that no new formulas for computing the index had been issued. Cathie
Hudson said that originally the GED program was a pilot program that was
supposed to be phased out by this year but probably would not be. Cathie
indicated that her office would get something out to the institutions affected
as soon as possible.
Home School CPC Portfolio Update
Discussion about the Home School admission policy was re-introduced by Mollie
DeHart who again expressed concern about having institutions develop their
own policies for evaluating CPC for home schooled students. She worried that
there would be problems associated with inconsistency of policy throughout
the system. Members were divided in opinion about having institutional autonomy
to develop this policy. John suggested that Mollie ask members via the listserv
to share their ideas about best practices on admission of home school students.
Mark Taylor (SUWGA) suggested that Kennesaw State had developed practices
over time that could serve as a good model to other institutions.
Cathie Hudson reminded all institutions to be careful to code home-schooled students appropriately. Randy Braswell (South Georgia College) indicated that many home-schooled students do not get coded appropriately because they come with a transcript from an unaccredited high school. Mark Taylor raised the question about how to admit home-schooled students under joint enrollment. Institutions have autonomy for developing their own policies for validation of CPC credit for home-schooled students, and those policies would also apply to joint enrollment.
Concerns and Issues from RACSFA
Deborah Barbonne, representative from RACSFA, discussed Hope articulation,
and asked RACRA members to be sure to work closely with their financial aid
offices on how to apply the rules when institutional discretion is exercised.
She stated that institutions would be expected to use the HOPE module. Hope
information is included in SIRS report. Deborah encouraged members to communicate
also when they begin to calculate HOPE through articulated courses. She stated
that you couldn't calculate both ways (both manually and through articulation).
Larry Peevy asked about home schooled and the ability to benefit rule for financial aid. He expressed concern that ACT is a qualifying test, and SAT is not; yet most students submit SAT scores. He stated that students submitting SAT test scores would have to be tested on Compass or be told to take the ACT to demonstrate their ability to benefit. Deborah Barbonne indicated that most home-schooled students have a GED so that it is a non-issue. Lynn Bacon (Floyd College) said that most other states simply recognize home school students as having the ability to benefit.
Joanne Crump (Atlanta Metropolitan College) pointed out a potential discrepancy problem between traditional and non-traditional students who graduated from non-accredited high schools. Traditional students who graduate from non-accredited schools can be admitted provided that they submit SAT scores that meet the average for an institution's previous freshmen class. Non-traditional students who graduated from unaccredited high schools do not have SAT scores and could be treated differently. This might create problems at the time of transfer from a two year to four-year institution. John McElveen pointed out that students with more than 30 semester hours of transfer credit would not have a problem; however, those with fewer than 30 hours must meet the receiving institution's requirements for admission regardless of their admission to the previous institution.
OLD BUSINESS - The members did not bring forth items from previous meeting to discuss.
NEW BUSINESS
Chairman McElveen asked institutions about their policies regarding web registration.
Only a few institutions allow self-registration on the web for learning support
students. Lisa Davidson (Middle Georgia College) asked how institutions could
track who performed the web registration-- student or faculty member. Several
institutions indicated that you could determine who actually performed the
registration through log-ins and technical tracking.
Wayne Smith (Georgia Southern) asked whether web submission of grades in a secure login environment would pass an audit. All agreed that web submission would be sufficient and hard copy was not necessary.
Dee Minter stated that HOPE funding is available for joint enrollment students attending DTAE schools. She asked whether USG schools are negotiating to be able to make HOPE funding available to students who are joint enrolled. Tonya Lam indicated that there was discussion at the USO on this topic but she had not heard a decision. Mark Taylor pointed out that students joint enrolled at DTAE institutions could take the courses in the mini-core (English and Math) and have all costs paid but would have to pay fees in USG institutions.
Members voted on a format for the joint meeting with the RACSFA group. After discussing the pros and cons, the group indicated that they wanted to keep the two-day format. The group also indicated that they preferred to meet either on the coast or in the mountains. John McElveen and Deborah Barbonne will explore both possibilities and report back. The meeting will be held on March 14th or 15th.
Mollie DeHart reminded the members about the mid-year workshops to be held at the Macon Crown on February 12. Gary Moore moved that the meeting be adjourned. It was seconded and John adjourned the meeting at 3 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Diane Burns, Secretary