Mary Harrison, staff writer

Today is the first day of class registration for students with zero to 30.9 credit hours, making them a freshman by hours, according to the schedule posted to VikingWeb. This means most of Berry’s largest freshman class will be signing up for college courses for the first time. The Registrar, Information Technology and Academic Transitions offices modified the registration process this year to ensure registration runs smoothly despite having more registrants than in the past.

The college held meetings last week to give tips to freshman advisors, according to Associate Professor of Teacher Education Eliana Hirano, who is currently advisor to a BCC 100 class of 14 freshmen. 

“[Advising freshman] is a totally different ballpark than advising juniors and seniors,” Hirano said. “They don’t know how registration works because when they came here in [the] fall, the college had registered them into those classes. And, the fact that they know they are the last to register, and that the classes that they were hoping to get into might not be available, creates anxiety for them.”

Hirano advises 31 students altogether, the most she has ever advised during her nine years as an advisor. A larger student population means that advisors are busier than in previous years. The college is trying to reduce the strain on advisors by equipping freshmen to handle course scheduling as independently as possible. 

“We have more [BCC] class periods that are dedicated to students planning their classes moving forward [than in previous years],” Hirano said, “so I am somewhat confident that when I meet one on one with my freshman advisees, that they will be more prepared with the classes that they need to take.”

In another new move this year, the Registrar’s Office did not schedule any new registrants for the Wednesday of registration week, according to college registrar Bryce Durbin. This break day will allow students and departments to reassess available courses.

“That’s there to give departments a chance to look at where they stand after most seniors, juniors and some sophomores have registered before the big group happens on Thursday,” Durbin said. “To take a look and say, ‘how do our seats look now? Do we need to make any adjustments or changes?’”

According to Durbin, it is possible to reassign classrooms and faculty instructors based on the enrollment of upper-level courses and create new course sections if enough room is not available. The college is already offering more course sections than normal and hired new faculty, so Durbin is not afraid of running out of space in foundations courses.

First-year students can use the break day to check the course sections they planned to take to ensure they are still available. Durbin also recommends that students use the Open Foundations report, which is available under the Course Registration tab on VikingWeb to see which courses are open.

If student do not get their preferred schedule on registration day they shouldn’t stress, Durbin said. The initial add/drop cutoff date is not until Nov. 12, and the add/drop period is open during the first four days of the spring semester as usual.

“You have two weeks to sort it out,” Durbin said. “So if you don’t get exactly what you want within the first five minutes, you have, plenty of time to figure it out, [and] there’s definitely an opportunity in the spring.”

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) typically consults with Durbin about the size of registration groups and their timing so that they can add server resources before registration begins, according to OIT Director of Enterprise Systems Drew Allison.

With a larger freshman class, OIT also requested that Berry’s software vendor review their server specifications and general set-up, Allison said. OIT planned to get their recommendations up and running before registration, along with hardware changes already implemented by the Network Operations department.

Students should not panic if they have problems with VikingWeb while registering for classes, according to Chief Information Officer Penny Evans-Plants.

“First, don’t assume it has crashed,” Evans-Plants said. “It may just be taking more time to process. Email vwsupport@berry.edu with the details of what happened and any screen captures you were able to get, [then] look for an email from OIT with what to do.”

To avoid slowing down the internet or creating headaches during registration week, students should be proactive: reporting wireless issues in their room to computing@berry.edu, using a lab computer to register if their device is older or has connectivity issues, making sure any printer with wireless connectivity is turned off, and not connecting multiple devices to VikingWeb during their time slot.

Advisor Hirano also offered registration week tips for BCC classes.

“I always like the freshmen to be in the same physical space as my mentor when registration opens to them,” Hirano said. “I think being with others is very helpful, and that we arrive 10 minutes earlier and recheck that the classes you want to take in [the] spring still have open seats, because if they’re all together and a class that they wanted fills up, maybe somebody else has a suggestion and they can all help each other. I think it just makes the process a lot less stressful that way.”