The Registrar’s Office has done away with the printed class schedule booklets for the fall 2006 semester and instead wants students to rely on its Web site to help plan their schedules next semester.
The change is the most recent in technology advancement GW has made so that students and parents can complete all administrative services online, GW Executive Vice President and Treasurer Lou Katz said in an interview earlier this month.
“The only time we ever want you to go into an office is when you have to sit across from a specialist,” Katz said, adding that he hopes to make filling out paper forms at GW obsolete within the next five years. “It’s more efficient for students and the University will save money.”
University Registrar Elizabeth Amundson said in an e-mail this week that she hopes the new Registrar’s Office Web site, launched late last month, should help students in finding the information they need to know and make searching the class schedule easier.
Over the past few years, GW’s Office of Information Systems and Services has created software allowing community members to register for housing, fill out admissions applications, register and pay for Colonial Inauguration and purchase tickets to University events through Ticketmaster, ISS Technology Services Director Alexa Kim said this week.
“We’re always trying to do more and more with online transactions,” Kim said. “Internet access has become ubiquitous enough that it is not exclusionary to provide (upgraded online services).”
Kim said that one of the upgrades implemented this year was allowing students to pay their tuition online using a check by entering the check’s routing number into the Web site. The Colonial Financial Services Web site touts the service as allowing the “same online banking convenience of an online bill pay service associated with most major financial institutions.”
Kim added that the University hopes to soon have official transcripts available online for a fee in order to meet the needs of current students as well as alumni.
Kim said she would support putting any features online that would “ease a student’s life.”
She said “I think we’re really advanced (compared to other schools) in terms of technological infrastructure, but there is always a future,”
-Katie Rooney contributed to this report.
