The shift away from in-person registrations in Alumni Hall to a more modern and efficient on-line version has been in the workings for over a year, but beginning today, the registration process finally takes the step into the 21st century.
Students are now able to register on the College's Internet site during a three-day period beginning today. The on-line service is only available on computers connected on campus and will use the Kerberos security program to verify students' identities.
"Registration in Alumni Hall was enormously inefficient," Registrar Tom Bickel told The Dartmouth. "We wanted to eliminate that."
The actual registration period has also been extended to three days to help ease the backlog created by students needing to pay bills and perform other administrative tasks before being cleared to register.
"It was hard for all those offices who had to deal with those holds all in one day," Bickel said. "We're trying to eliminate lines and make it somewhat more efficient by giving you three days to do it."
Going away along with the lines will be the colored term stickers which were adhered to student identification cards at previous registrations.
"They were never really used for anything as far as we could tell," Bickel said.
The student activities fair traditionally held with the Alumni Hall registration will be moved to a separate event in the lower level of the Collis Center today from 1-4 p.m.
The registration transition is part of the much larger "Banner Project" which is changing College record keeping and making more information available online.
The five-year, several million dollar project is currently in its fourth year and is already being used behind-the-scenes in many College departments such as the Office of Admissions, but its effects are now becoming more visible to students.
A new Student Information System was recently launched allowing students to view grade, schedule and address information through the Internet.
With "the goal to automate as much as we can," Bickel said students can expect to see financial aid and billing information added to the service in the future. He also said students may be able to add and drop classes online as the information service expands, and class selection will move from DarTerminal to this Internet site.
Bickel said delays in the Banner conversion process postponed the on-line registration, which was originally planned to begin last Summer term.
He said the feature is being tested during the summer when there are fewer students on campus as a test-run for busier terms.
"We wanted to try it out in the most modest sense," Bickel said. "There are all sorts of issues, like what if 100 people try to log on all at once ... although Kiewit has done heavy-duty testing."
Students can access the Information System and register on-line at www.dartmouth.edu/bannerstudent.
