In the not-so-distant past, changing a major involved four sheets of paper, multiple signatures and a physical trip to the Office of the Registrar. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, this process shifted to email chains and scanned documents, but now, it will all move to one place.
That’s thanks to a new Academic Program Change tool that will officially launch on Feb. 8, allowing major changes to happen on any device with RAMweb access.
“This has been years in the making,” said Marianna Walsh, the student information system support manager for the Office of the Registrar. “For a long time, this has been solely a paper process, and it’s one of the lingering paper processes left. We wanted to bring it to a modern era.”
The process starts with a student expressing interest in a change, and working with the department’s advisor/academic success coordinator. The advisor will then use the Academic Program Change tool in ARIESweb to initiate the change. The pending change will automatically show up in RAMweb, allowing students to go through the process of changing or adding majors, as well as declaring minors, concentrations and certificate programs.
Given that there are 362 fields of study across CSU – and that the Office of the Registrar processed 12,827 major changes last year alone – this seemingly little change will make a big difference for students, academic advisers and employees at the Office of the Registrar.
“The hope is that this is really an improvement for all of them,” Walsh said.
Demos for the new system are underway for advisors, and documentation and support will be available. The photo gallery below walks through what the new system will look like for students:
These images show where advisers enter proposed program changes, the tool where advisers can review a student’s current program or proposed change, the new menu option for students in RAMweb where they can manage their records, an example of what students see when there is a pending program change, and the area of RamWeb that allows students to drop programs. (Photos courtesy CSU Office of the Registrar)
Since the Academic Program Change tool was built in-house, Walsh said she’s excited for it to continue to evolve and make life even easier in the years to come.
“The thing I’m super excited about is this is creating a new foundation for us, because we’re taking the current paper process and making it a digital, fully-electronic workflow,” Walsh said. “It creates a new opportunity for us to add enhancements as we get going, and it creates a new opportunity and new chapter for us to make everybody’s process a little easier.”
Additional information about the Academic Program Change tool can be found on the Office of the Registrar website. Anyone with questions about the new system should contact the Office of the Registrar at registrarsoffice@colostate.edu.
