Lily Verren, Campus Carrier staff writer
This semester, Berry College has deployed a new course enrollment system for students to register for their classes. The system now includes a planning section, which allows students to see their schedule plans and register directly from that system.
The system was implemented in order to provide a smoother experience for students looking to register for their classes, according to Registrar Bryce Durbin. “[The system’s] intended to allow students to spend more time planning and to visualize what their schedule will look like on a calendar,” he said.
Durbin said, “We want to make the process as seamless for students as we possibly can. What we want is for the technology to never be the obstacle for students to register for classes.”
A longer planning period allows students to investigate the diverse variety of courses being offered each semester.
“If you see ‘SPT 164’ (Biology of Useful Plants) on a list, we want to be sure that you had a sense of what it was about,” David Slade, interim provost at Berry, said. Every year, the college publishes the undergraduate catalog, but prefixes such as SPT or BCC, for example, don’t give much information about the focus of a course. Therefore, students may need to explore courses more closely to find ones they’re interested in for the next semester.
One of the new classes offered in the Spring 2023 semester is Bi-/Multilingualism in Latinx Literature (ENG 201B/D). The course, taught by Assistant Professor of Ethnic American Literatures Alexandra Lossada, investigates the unique experience of bilingual Spanish speakers in American culture.
“We’re going to be thinking specifically about how Spanish-English bilingual speakers and writers navigate the world quite differently in part because Spanish is a language that gets quite heavily criminalized in the United States historically and socially,” Lossada said.
Efforts towards promoting diversity are becoming increasingly more coveted now because of Berry’s recent demographic shifts. “My understanding is that [Berry] is shifting quite a bit in demographics. The incoming freshman classes are more diverse every year.” By placing themselves into the shoes of bilingual speakers through literature, students can improve their cultural literacy and become more mindful members of their community.
Another class being offered in the Spring is Team Leadership and Development (BCC 200A), by Bob Reimer, director of the Berry Center for Integrity and Leadership (BCIL), with assistance from Calli O’Neal, office logistics coordinator for the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
“We approach integrity and leadership as being this whole-person, lifelong pursuit of the head, heart and hands,” Reimer said.
“The course is specifically targeting how to operate and work in team environments. I think it has something for everybody; for the student that’s academically minded, they’re going to walk away with a better understanding of what a team is, beyond ‘it’s just a collection of people’.
Because of the course’s close ties to the Collegiate Leadership Competition each April, which can help further the class’s ideas with hands-on learning, Reimer and O’Neal hope to offer the course each Spring semester.
Outside of the new registration system’s implementation, class supply and demand has been a push-and-pull battle for Academic Services at Berry, a battle that can’t necessarily be solved through registration technology.
“There’s limits to how many [sections] we can have,” Durbin said. “There are two ways to help mitigate demand: add more sections, or you can increase the number of seats that are in the sections. We only have so many faculty, and we only have so many seats. And we don’t want to increase the number of seats too much and affect the environment of learning that we have here.”
The Offices of the Registrar and Provost greatly appreciate any and all feedback from students and advisors regarding the new system’s functionality, though many students and faculty have been able to use the tools effectively.
Slade said, “We’ve been very pleased with the tool’s functionality overall, but we want to hear from students, because you never know. When the software doesn’t work properly, that can really cost the student a seat in the class.”
Pre-registration drop/add for courses in Spring 2023 is open until Nov. 11, 2022.
Alongside Berry’s new course registration system, several academic departments are now offering new courses for the Spring semester of 2023 and beyond. Berry publishes a catalog every year for students to more easily search through courses, but course prefixes aren’t always indicative of the focus of the class.
“If you see ‘SPT 164’ (Biology of Useful Plants) on a list, we want to be sure that you had a sense of what it was about,” David Slade, the interim provost, said in regard to his course interest email.The new system creates a simpler process for registration that allows for more planning time, so students can explore courses more closely to find ones they’re interested in for the next semester.