Not to get lost amidst the number of high-profile employment shuffles over spring break, Bradley named Andy Kindler as its new Registrar March 17.
As the university’s former Associate Registrar since 2004, Kindler was appointed Interim Registrar on Jan. 1 after the position was vacated due to Kathie Beaty’s retirement. Kindler assumes the top position surrounded by recent deadlines for midterm grades and upcoming registration periods, both of which rely on technology managed by the Registrar’s Office.
“Bradley has made great strides with being one of the first institutions to offer online registration, online transcript ordering and electronic transcript delivery,” Kindler said. “However, time is not standing still, and we need to continue thinking about technology improvements and implementations that will benefit our current and future students. Changing our current degree audit system comes to mind here, by possibly replacing it with a more user-friendly version with added degree progress features such as charts, progress displays and web-based modeling of major [and] degree scenarios.”
The Registrar may have limited direct contact with students, but they are the person behind the university’s academic process. This includes keeping records of academic reports, processing graduation applications and approvals, overseeing course scheduling and maintaining online sites such as Webster and Sakai.
Kindler, who was an internal candidate for the position, said in a forum earlier this semester that he has aspired to be Bradley’s Registrar for quite some time. Now that he has been selected for that role, he has several plans to improve students’ educational experiences.
“[We need] to continue moving forward with paperless academic forms for students and faculty,” Kindler said. “I would also like to see a Veteran Affairs location on campus with continuous support from the Registrar’s Office in conjunction with other campus units so we can serve our veterans in a more professional and collaborative manner.”
Recently, the university restructured its General Education Program and developed the Bradley Core Curriculum. Significant changes include more writing-intensive courses to assist with professional development, additional funding for student work and projects and Multidisciplinary Integration courses that will encourage collaboration on projects among students of different academic programs.
With these changes, Kindler will have to manage two sets of codes for general education programming, balancing the old code for current students and the updated code for incoming students.
“We have already started a task force with bi-weekly meetings to ensure that the transition will take place as smoothly as possible without impacting our current and future student population,” Kindler said. “It may be too early to determine, but logically and logistically, we may have to run both programs simultaneously… All in all, we are determined to make this transition as smooth as possible.”
