The Registrar and Retention: A Tribute to the Dotted Line

Although the Office of the University of South Carolina Registrar has always provided student services with a smile, I had long been a proponent of the registrar's rightful place in the academic affairs organization chart, with accountability to that side of the house. So in 2006, when a reorganization at the University of South Carolina repositioned the registrar under the enrollment management unit within a new hybrid Division of Student Affairs and Academic Support, I was pleased that the line to student affairs was dotted. I jokingly refer to myself as a little lady registrar; with 34 years of experience at two institutions, I am indeed pretty old school, with a belief that the registrar should adhere to academic policy, protect the integrity of the institution's academic regulations, and generally not interfere with fluffy student development efforts or hard-line academic policy. When we joined other offices under the enrollment management umbrella, things changed almost immediately. Our office allied organizationally with the Student Success Center as well as with our famous University 101 Program and National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. Consulted more frequently by the vice president and fellow enrollment management professionals, I became part of a professional team. No longer in isolation, waiting for the faculty to change a rule for me to implement, I was fully engaged in studying ways to improve practices and policies with student success in mind. I had lived in an environment of my own making, in which the registrar enforced facultyinitiated rules, recorded the cold, harsh academic truth, and upheld time-honored academic processes, without direct involvement in my institution's efforts to improve progression and graduation rates, acknowledge student honors and accolades, and embrace other opportunities to shine. But I have now learned that the registrar's office can - and should - make student success central to its mission, helping influence institutional conditions that foster student learning and persistence and the improved retention rates likely to follow. Has a personal and professional transformation taken place ? What has been proven to work at an institutional level? Research related to student retention has evolved from being focused on student attributes and behaviors and the effectiveness of specific programs on persistence to the role of organizational culture. Near the turn of the millennium, the literature revealed what many of us have sensed intuitively for years: that the degree of bureaucratic runaround at an institution could affect student persistence (Braxton and McClendon 2001-02) and ...institutions that put students first succeed, even excel, just as their students will (Levitz, Noel and Richter 1999, p. 31). Former AACRAO keynote speaker and student persistence guru Vincent Tinto has developed a list of conditions required for student success (2007): Institutions must have high expectations for and must be committed to student success; must provide academic, social, and personal support; must provide good information through advising and feedback; must value student involvement; and must foster learning. Researcher George Kuh (2007), among others, identified organizational practices that exemplify those conditions: Where accuracy, clarity, equity, expediency, and accessibility are provided, students respond in a positive manner - one that leads to their persistence. Who better than the registrar to assist with creating conditions for student and institutional success ? Appreciation for accuracy and equity is a prerequisite for being a registrar. Registrars are highly principled problem solvers and are resources for how and why institutional practices exist. We know that registrars can effect change through their knowledge of systems and technology, involvement in policy development, collaboration in institutional projects, and concern for records security (Lanier 2006). …