By Malenah Hunter, Associate Director of Membership and Awards, AACRAO
What does “cool the melt” mean in the context of a registrar’s role? And how can the registrar’s office begin to address implementation of strategies when not even AI can truly define what it is they do?
In the session titled “Cool the Melt: How the Registrar's Office Can Engage Admitted Students,” Andrew Marx, Registrar and Director of Academic Advising, Tufts University, suggested we think of a substance heated to a liquid state and then cooled to a lower temperature to become less fluid and more solid. Cooling the melt means refining administrative processes so newly admitted learners can form a solid foundation of resources as early as possible. Once they have all the necessary tools and knowledge, they can begin their higher education journey from a place of stability.
Role Creep in the Registrar’s Office
In an ideal world, registrars take over after the admissions team has recruited learners to the institution. Admissions sells, and registration sets the foundations for success once they’re in the door.
Registrars can welcome and help new learners access the systems in place on campus, clarify academic policy, support course and academic major decisions, and maintain records all before the first day of classes. But registrars are responsible for much more of the students' acclimation to the school from the moment they are admitted and make a payment, and there is a lot of confusion about where the boundaries lie.
Registrars often take on tasks from other departments simply because they are expected to do so with the same high level of consistency, organization, and attention to detail when completing other procedural tasks. Because of this misunderstanding of the core functions of the registrar’s office as they pertain to overall enrollment management objectives, registrars end up being a catch-all for everything that happens on a college campus.
That is a huge amount of pressure that is sometimes put on a few people in a small office with very few means to handle that kind of workload on top of their regular duties. As the saying goes, “taking on extra work means you’ll never give it back.”
Registrars are often left frustrated and wondering why they are responsible for being the experts when they don’t have to be.
Challenges of the Front Desk
New learners entering a higher education institution for the first time have a different set of needs than current learners. However, the registrar’s office must be able to understand and handle those distinct needs daily. This can be hard when offices have limited operating hours. They can’t always be open, so how do they get learners what they need on their own?
When trying to fill information gaps, assumptions are made, and implicit biases are in play when a student comes to the registration office seeking help. The hand-off for newly admitted learners is no longer the first day of school, so registration efforts must be timely and relevant, with consistent messaging as early as possible but not so in advance that they get lost in the shuffle.
For current learners, policies and regulations are almost always written with the expectation that they will be broken. This leads to learners being seen as at fault regardless of their situation and the possible workarounds. Interruptions and differences in workflow between departments can significantly slow progress and ultimately decrease learner satisfaction.
Opportunities to Consider
These challenges help uncover what should be considered when thinking of solutions and areas for improvement. The registrar's office aims to support enrollment management objectives and bridge engagement and retention strategies.
All information should be standardized and shared to avoid bouncing learners all over campus to find answers. There should be no reason to guess at questions or pass the buck. Policies should be reevaluated to eliminate the need to punish learners before helping them. Instead of expecting all learners to act and learn a certain way, registrars should try following their own instructions as if they were learners to see if they make sense and get the intended results.
Reducing repeat traffic to the office and hand-holding will allow registrars to allocate more time and attention to learners with more complex problems. Engaging and conditioning learners to respond from the beginning can minimize the need to chase down learners.
Is this Really Our Problem?
If you’ve ever thought your job would be easier if that other department knew what they were doing, then you understand the plight of the registrar. Every registrar has their own reasons for doing what they do, whether because they’re loyal to the institution or simply want to help learners. Whatever that purpose is should be the focus of the work, instead of what others could or should be doing better.
It is easy to get too caught up in everything wrong at your institution and let it negatively affect doing what needs to be done. No department is perfect, and deeper issues will never be solved with pettiness or backlash.
“How come you don’t know?” should pivot to “How can we help?” The registrar's entire job is to get learners to leave and to make sure they get what they paid for. Learners should be set up with every advantage to complete their academic careers and succeed beyond graduation, and this should be through the collaboration of multiple departments and not the sole responsibility of one.
What Should We Do?
Become a visible presence on campus without making work harder for your office.
Find any and all opportunities to connect with learners in a meaningful way, but maintain reasonable boundaries to reduce oversharing.
Make your office work with your work. Your space should be set up to facilitate the kind of operations you want to do.
Invest in de-escalation training for staff for when heated situations could get confrontational.
Practice self-care for staff to combat emotional and physical fatigue.
Establish a basic level of getting to know learners to build those relationships.
Focus on giving learners resources they can carry throughout their college experience.
These implementation suggestions are not one-size-fits-all. It’s important to understand that what works on one campus may not work for yours. Ask yourself if these changes would make sense in your office and apply one or a few to your situation. You should gravitate towards the solutions that best fit your institutional needs and then find ways to tweak them further so that they fit.