NEW STAFF
Anna Lee - Undergraduate Admission STAFF LEAVING
Elizabeth Neel - Registrar's Office
Birthdays
Nancy Skochdopole - March 8
Anniversaries
Deveron Ellison - 9 years
Gordon Brannon - 5years
Paley Wu - 4 years
Fernando Del Rio - 4 years
Joann Martinez - 3 years
Chante Chatman - 3 years
Destination SMU
Destination SMU is the message
to admitted students. Replacing Mustang Days, Destination SMU invites
admitted students to campus for one more look. The first event held on
March 3 and 4th welcomed over 200 prospective students to SMU for a two day
program. These students could visit classes, tour the campus and the
residence halls, attend a faculty panel and presentations from the academic
areas. The March 3rd event also offered overnight hosting so that SMU
students could share their experiences with prospective students staying in the
residence halls.
Two more Destination SMU programs are
scheduled for March 31-April 1 and April 7-8. In addition, admitted
students competing for the President's Scholarship and the Hunt Leadership
Scholarship will be on campus March 25 participating in the interview process.
March 26 is Springfest, a recruiting program targeting sophomore and junior high
school students as they begin the process of selecting a college or university.
Between now and May 1, SMU will host
many prospective students and their families. Let's show our SMU pride by
wearing our colors and expressing our SMU spirit through extending a helping
hand to anyone on campus.
SMU is wonderful DESTINATION.
Federico Munoz was accepted
into Dedman School of Law and will begin classes Fall 2011. Jeremy
Parrish was accepted into the MBA program in Cox, he started class this Spring. Congratulations
and good luck.
Staff pursue Advanced
Degrees
VIPs -
Very Important Ponies
Some of our VIPs this month are:
Undergraduate Admission - Hey Steph! I'm sure you guys have heard this a lot already, but I was at the Phoenix Cox reception on Tuesday night and I can't tell you how impressed and moved these parents were with the personalization of the acceptance letter. I know it was a pain at times to get that together, but it really had an impact.
Graduation Fair staff - Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to help Academic Ceremonies with the Graduation Fair this week! By all accounts it was a great success! We had roughly 650-675 students visit us in Blanton over the two days. Our vendors were very impressed with the venue and our hospitality. Many thanks to Fair Coordinator Cate Hamilton. She did a fine job executing the plan for the event and kept everything running smoothly. It was fun to watch the candidates. It was like they were seeing tangible proof that they were going to graduate.
Use of
ImageNow Features Continues to Expand
With development of a new Reports
Drawer and rolling out the Fax Agent and Workflow to new areas, it has been a
busy and exciting time for imaging during the past several months.
On February 17, the Registrar’s
Office (RO) implemented “Fax Agent” – a helpful feature that allows inbound
faxes to be input directly into a Workflow queue in the imaging system. From
there, documents can be indexed and linked to a student (then forwarded to other
Workflow queues for further processing), or they can be printed and manually
processed. RO’s fax number for this feature is (214) 768-2507. The Financial
Aid Office has been using Fax Agent since October, 2010 with three fax lines
available: (214) 768-3997, 4119 and 3878.
In 2010 the undergrad schools began
using Workflow to send Grade Changes, Incomplete Agreements and various other
documents to RO Records. The use of Workflow was later expanded to include
documents sent to RO Enrollment (Bio Demo changes, Add Drops, etc.). By the end
of last quarter, three grad schools (Lyle, Dedman and Meadows) were also using
Workflow to send documents to RO. By the end of this calendar year, Cox, Law
and Simmons grad schools should also be utilizing the benefits of Workflow.
AdminImages.SMU is sporting a new
drawer called “DES Reports” containing many different types of administrative
documents going back as early as 1916. The drawer includes Graduation reports,
Cancellation Reports, Add Drop Analyses, Headcounts, and Retention Reports, just
to mention a few. Plans are to make many of these reports available through
links on the DES Reporting (archive) page. As of last month, the task of
linking Headcount reports (dating back to 1995) was completed.
Please email the imaging team
(Laura Ries and Andy Frye) at
DESImages@smu.edu, if you have questions or need
assistance. Also, more information is available at the following link:
http://smu.edu/intranet/des/imaging/ .
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
Texas BUC$ Regional – UNT, Denton Texas
Each Spring Texas BUC$ offers Regional
Conferences (2 day workshops) for Texas Universities and Community Colleges
Bursar/Business Office. Four staff from the Bursar’s Office had the opportunity
to attend in Denton; Federico Munoz, Jeremy Parrish, Paola Sotomayor and Cheryl
Swift. This conference offers a great opportunity for us to network with other
schools that have similar responsibilities as the SMU Bursar’s Office. It
allows us to compare the way they do things and give an idea on where SMU
stands. Although many schools responsibilities are the same as SMU’s, we are
all in agreement that in regards to all other schools, we come above and beyond
in regards to technology, environment, and staff.
Topics of discussion at the conference included
upcoming changes for VA students, new ways to contact students (texting and
Facebook), Third Party information on the school website, and orientation. The
first day of the conference we also enjoyed a great dinner at “El Matador” in
Denton.
Mark your calendar
March 17, 2011
Enthusiasm is the
greatest asset in the world. It beats money and power and influence.
Henry
Chester