The Evolving Office of the Registrar.

A healthy and productive registrar's office will continue to evolve as institutional needs, conditions, and expectations change. Several recognized leaders in the field were presented with the question, direction should that evolution take? Those leaders' observations and comments have common themes. In 1995, David Lanier, then university registrar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote: As a, result of technology, the registration and records functions are becoming more automated and the registrar is becoming a, data, manager. Data, management is a wonderful responsibility for the registrar to have in the Information Age. However, there is danger lurking in the lure of technology. Technology can turn the registrar into an invisible entity on campus. As faculty and students gain more direct access to data, there is less need to come see the registrar. Is the registrar a necessary position? Will the registrar disappear? (Lanier 1995) In 1995 and in his ten-year retrospective paper, Lanier assures registrars that the profession is secure as long as registrars evolve to meet the ever-changing needs of their college or university and of the higher education community. He suggests three important functions for the registrar: * [B]e a leader in the development of campus systems that tie the academic and administrative functions together' (Lanier 1995). He notes that academic policy is enforced and data integrity is maintained through controls in these systems. * [V]alidate the data that are flowing into and out of the system' (Lanier 1995). * [B]e a resource to all the system users of student (Ldiravc 199$). The registrar is in a pivotal to assist campus users in understanding and using the information that is available. A healthy registrars office will continue to evolve as it considers student, faculty, and institutional needs; staff talents and expectations; technological opportunities; economic realities; space issues; work environments; and where the strategic plan is taking the institution in support of the mission. At the University of Notre Dame, we wondered if we were evolving so as to best fit and support the institution. We believed our staff were professional, doing good work, and moving forward, but we wondered if we were positioning ourselves well for the foreseeable future. Given that our office is less visible to students and faculty now that most of our services are accessible online, we wondered how best to position the office so that it continues to be recognized as a significant participant in the work of the university. How should we present ourselves to the campus so as to promote significant partnering? Are we organized internally in a way to provide the best support and service to the Notre Dame community? What skills should we be developing in our staff? What tools should we be providing them? How do we manage communications when everyone in the electronic environment is a communicator? Are we missing something? We decided to seek input from selected colleagues around the country who are registrars or enrollment managers and who have a reputation for innovative thought as well as long-standing and well-known competency in the administration of their offices and staffs. Twelve individuals accepted our invitation to participate. We chose to ask each participant a few hypothetical questions given the premise of no space or budget constraints. We e-mailed the following questions, arranged and conducted telephone interviews, and recorded our colleagues' responses. Suppose that you were able to completely start over.. .with a blank slate and all the funds and space you needed ...with no obstacles.... * What would the staff/services/responsibilities that you would develop look like? * When staffing this imaginary office or the new areas y ou foresee, what requirements would y ou place upon their hiring? …