NEW STAFF
Laura Kingham - UG
Admission
STAFF LEAVING
Birthdays
Damon Wilkins - Feb. 1
Mary Beard - Feb. 1
Paley Wu - Feb. 6
Julio Lopez - Feb. 7
Daniel Herrera - Feb. 16
Eartha Walls - Feb. 16
Charles Harper - Feb. 18
Joe Papari - Feb. 19
Kelly Wyper - Feb. 22
Jameela Hudson - Feb. 24
Gretchen Voight - Feb. 25
Anniversaries
Irma Herrera - 37 years
Pat Woods - 33 years
Patricia May - 17 years
Adrienne Hawa - 13 years
Jessica Dixon - 4 years
Mitzie Goff - 3 years
Shahnaz Khaja - 2 years
Enrollment Services Highlights
Financial Aid hosts workshop
- SMU Financial Aid is sponsoring a drive-in workshop as continuing professional
development regarding the new federal regulations on direct lending.
Marcia Miller, Associate Director of Compliance for SMU Financial Aid reports
that about 75 people have registered for the May workshop.
Admission numbers - Stephanie
Dupaul, Interim Dean of Admission reports that Undergraduate Admission
has received over 12,000 applications for admission for fall 2011. Nine
thousand of these are complete. The UG Admission staff is working hard to
contact applicants to complete as many of these applications as possible.
Veterans -
SMU is proud to have 53
veteran undergraduate students, 84 graduate students, and 10 professional
students on campus this spring.
The federal government has made changes to
the 9/11 GI Bill that may affect our veteran students.
Post 9/11 GI Bill Changes
The Post 9/11 Veterans Education Assistance Improvements Act of
2010 was recently signed into law by President Obama. There are several
changes, however, the most significant change is that the law creates a national
maximum for veterans enrolled in a private or foreign institution. Private and
foreign institution costs (tuition and fees) will be capped at $17,500 annually,
beginning August 1, 2011. This may impact the number of veterans we currently
have attending. University officials will be meeting soon to discuss these new
legislative changes.
Enrollment for Spring - The
Registrar's office reports spring enrollment at 10,595 for the total university.
This is 1% higher than spring enrollment in 2010. Undergraduate enrollment
is reported at 5,899 0.1% higher than last spring and graduate/professional
enrollment at 4,621 - 1% higher than last spring. Complete enrollment
report may be found at
http://smu.edu/registrar/reporting/
.
Transfer Equivalencies, available on the Transfer website, continues to grow. In mid-January the
SMU Transfer and Transition Services had increased the number of equivalency
rules in ACCESS.SMU from 24 to 50 schools and doubled the number of
courses that SMU provides the equivalents for transfer students. John
Hall, University Registrar, states, "Having this large number of schools and
equivalencies on our website and in ACCESS. SMU is great news. It will not only
benefit prospective students but staff can evaluate transcripts automatically,"
Thank you, Monica Gomez, Jessica Dixon, Nancy Skochdopole, and Susan Evans.
VIPs -
Very Important Ponies
Some of our VIPs this month are:
Lorinda Lamb, Damon Wilkins, and Ryan Hayden - What an incredible job you have done with the Bursar's area in the attic of Perkins Administration Building. Sorting documents, labeling, making sure the proper documents were destroyed in a safe manner, and organizing our area took many days in that dusty area and I appreciate it. You greatly reduced the amount of space we have in PAB which is important. Thank you.
Stephen Forrest, Kim Kondel, and Nancy Rowe - Thank you so much for your work on the summer enrollment project. It could not have been done without your assistance. Even though the report only scratches the surface, it is remarkable how much we did in a short time. I appreciate your time and your willingness to put this project ahead of other things in order to meet the deadlines. Kathy Rowe Thank you all for all your hard work on this. Harold Stanley
Paley Wu - has gone above and beyond being patient and helpful with endless updates and revisions to the FA websites. He never makes me feel like a bother, and always gets things finished well before I would expect or have asked. Give that guy a high 5!
Nancy Skochdopole and Abbi Pfister - I wanted to send you a quick note to congratulate you on a successful presentation (at the AACRAO Transfer Conference). Very nice job pulling together some areas that you have experienced some challenges, and I loved some of the ideas you shared to help maximize a positive experience regarding the transfer students enrolling at SMU. The t-shirt exchange idea was very interesting. Director of Transfer Admission, Arizona State University
Eartha Walls - I had
the pleasure of working with Ms. Eartha Walls in the Bursar's Office multiple
times during the past several years and regardless of what type of issue I was
calling her regarding she was always very attentive, supportive, and
accommodating. It is rare to find someone who is always upbeat and
professional, particularly in the world of billing, regardless of the nature of
the call. I just wanted to take a moment and pass on my appreciation for
all that she has done to assist Jarden Corporations [with MBA students].
Again, it has been a pleasure working with her and I have truly appreciated the
extra steps she has taken to ensure we are receiving the very best care and
customer services. She is an absolute top notch employee and you should be proud
to have her representing SMU to outside individuals. HR Generalist,
Jarden Corporation
Enrollment Services
at Our Best
Being interconnected to resolve problems is the value of Enrollment Services.
Here is the story of how a "village" in DES helped a parent.
At 10:13am on February 9th, Enrollment Resources (ER) - the call center for
Enrollment Services - was contacted by a parent wishing to cancel a loan and
thus the subsequent refund of money disbursed to SMU. ER responded with
the procedure for canceling the loan, the e-mail of the Financial Aid Advisor to
send the written request to cancel, and the follow up that would be done.
The parent immediately sent a cancelation e-mail to Financial Aid, the Advisor
canceled the loan, notified the parent and informed her that he had contacted
the Loan specialist to return the funds to the Lender. He stated that the
student's regular Advisor was out that day but would be happy to follow up with
this when she returned the next day. He would brief her on the situation.
The parent responded
that her daughter had just been notified that the check was sent. The
Advisor assured the parent that the Bursar's office was notified and gave
contact information in that office. The ER staff member copied on the
e-mail contacted the refund team in the Bursar's Office and informed the parent that she would be
contacted that afternoon. By 3:31pm the parent was notified that the check
was void and the loan cancelation complete. Great job Walker Self, Tiffany
Hawkins, and Irma Herrera - part of our village.
Important Dates
SMU
– Spring Break – March 12-20
FA
– 60% date for Financial Aid – March 30
RO
– last day to drop a course – April
6
RO
– first day of continuing enrollment for
Summer and Fall 2011 – April 4
SMU
– Good Friday Holiday – Apr 22
SMU
– Last day to withdraw – Apr 25
RO
– last day of instruction – May 3
RO –
Final Examinations – May 4-10
SMU –
Residence Halls officially close
RO –
Baccalaureate – May 13
RO –
Commencement – May 14
USA
– Memorial Day Holiday – May 30
Quotation of the Month
SMU Trivia
Question
Answer
9.0
Upgrade Features
Faculty Center
Many of the Faculty Center
features found in 8.9 have been redelivered in 9.0.
Two new exciting features
are photographs attached to instructors’ class rosters and view access to the
Student Center for their advisees and non-advisees. The photo feature enables
instructors to look up an individual student’s photograph or photographs for all
students on their class roster. This delivered feature will not replace the
“Import Photo Roster”, a collaborative development between University Registrar
and OIT staff whereby the photo roster report is sent to instructors’ SMU email
address. It was first developed in versions 8.0, reapplied in 8.9, and will
continue in 9.0. A future enhancement to the photo roster is to make it
updateable (currently it is a PDF) so it can be used as a seating chart. View
Release of Records and Directory Restriction features are also being reapplied
in 9.0 as is “Import Class Roster” which sends the class roster to the
instructor’s SMU email address.
The Student Center feature
enables instructors to view easily and quickly student data from within the
Faculty Center just as the students would when logged into their Student
Center. The student data is divided into these five major areas:
classes/enrollments; personal/biographical; general (e.g., service indicators,
student groups), academics (e.g., career program history, course grade history,
term and cumulative scholastic statistics); and transfer (external and placement
test credits). Viewing photographs for assigned advisees is delivered in 9.0.
Another collaborative
effort that is being reapplied in 9.0 is “posting partial grades” and it gets
even better because instructors will be able to do multiple partial postings
instead of just one-time partial posting, the current practice in 8.9. Grade
Book, a classroom management product, has not changed in 9.0. Instructors can
continue to define and grade assignments, papers, quizzes/tests, and final
exams, calculate their students’ scores, and upload their mid-term and final
grades into Access.SMU.
Mark your calendar
March 9, 2011
Learning is not worth a
penny when courage and joy are lost along the way.
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi