With the restructuring of the general education criteria making its way to the Hilltop, one of the final pieces of the puzzle presents itself in the form of a staff member: the Registrar.
Following a 16-year tenure, Kathie Beaty retired as Registrar in December. Her exit calls for a quick turnaround, as the roles and responsibilities of a Registrar are central to the function of the university with regard to record keeping, graduation applications and approvals, student and faculty course scheduling, academic reporting, transcripts and the Academic Review Board policy and petitions.
General Education Program Review Steering Committee Co-Chair Kelly McConnaughay said the Registrar is a vital part of the general education program, especially with a refined and reworked system having just passed University Senate Feb. 19 and set to be implemented fall 2016 (See A1 for details).
“The new registrar is going to have to oversee an awful lot of changes to business as usual,” McConnaughay said. “For a period of time, we’re going to maintain two Gen Ed programs because there will be people who will be wanting to stick with [the current program because they came to Bradley in 2014 or 2015]. At the same time, we have to start with [new students] coming in at some point, so our new start date is 2016.”
Beyond maintaining two sets of codes for general education programming, head of the Registrar Search Committee Sandy Bury said in a candidate open forum Feb. 16 that working alongside Instructional Technology and Media Services (IRT) is an important part of the job as well.
“Those two sets of codes are going to call for patience and collaboration,” Bury, the executive director of computing, said.
The search committee has narrowed the applicant pool to two candidates: one external and one internal.
As Registrar and Records Manager at East-West University in downtown Chicago, Misha Starks put an emphasis on her philosophy of the customer’s need being a priority.
She said it is important when working alongside others that it is “not what you say, but how you say it.”
Prior to her position as Registrar, Starks worked in sales for 15 years and said it strongly influenced her perception of how to deal with people and problems.
Starks currently oversees the entire Registrar’s Office at East-West, much of which includes work that was self-taught. The student body, which is less than 800 students, accounts for one-sixth of the workload of student schedules and academic reporting that Starks would see at Bradley.
Starks said she has one goal that she hopes will allow her to be successful in a new environment such as Bradley.
“I think there needs to be an establishing of common ground,” she said. “I will work to build relationships…My management style is transformational leadership. I want to find what motivates [people].”
Additionally, Starks said although she is unfamiliar with both Webster and the Bradley Degree Audit Requirement System (DARS), the online academic records that outline requirements to graduate, she said she is ready and willing to learn.
“I have not [had a chance to look at Webster], but I am ready to learn, and I think a lot of what I do now will carry over,” she said. “But if something is working, and it doesn’t need [to be] fixed, we shouldn’t fix it.”
Internal candidate and current Associate Registrar Andy Kindler said this position is one he has been wanting for some time. In 2003, when Kindler interviewed for the associate registrar position, he said he was asked what his next step would be in his professional life.
“I said, at some point, I would like to become the Registrar; not only the Registrar, but the Bradley University Registrar,” he said. “I said it because I really believed in it. I really believe I would be a Registrar that would be facilitating the needs of everybody who works on campus besides outside entities such as the federal and state government.”
Kindler has been in a Registrar’s office since receiving his master’s degree in 1997, having been the Registrar and financial aid director at the Institute for the International Education of Students in Chicago from 1998-2002 and the Office Manager for Trivalent Communications in Peoria from 2002-2003, prior to his arrival at Bradley in 2004.
Kindler said the two items he wants to begin with, if chosen, are DARS reports and acquiring campus community data.
“I think the degree audit, nowadays, is outdated,” he said.
Kindler proposed the introduction of the Achieve system that is “more modern, more efficient…and more affordable.”
Bury said the candidate campus interviews are completed and feedback from campus constituent groups will be reviewed prior to making a recommendation.
“This is a key position, as the Registrar has primary responsibility for academic records and works closely with many groups on campus,” she said. “Our hope would be to find someone who is committed to a long-term tenure at Bradley, has considerable experience in a Registrar’s Office and had a customer focus.”
For more information, visit bradley.edu/sites/registrarsearch.
