A few weeks ago, over 6,000 seniors turned their tassels and officially became Carolina Alumni. Graduation evokes memories of long nights studying for final exams and grading papers, family celebrations, and of course, cueing the Pomp and Circumstance. However, the campus and central offices work months in advance to support many aspects of graduation.
“We work mostly behind the scenes to support the Registrar’s office and Advising,” said Candy Davies, manager of Campus Solutions Student Records and Financials. “We work to ensure everything runs correctly and that processes are efficient.”
Preparing for graduation begins when students register for their final semester and the application for graduation opens. In the Campus Solutions side of ConnectCarolina, advisors evaluate students for graduation using the Tar Heel Tracker. Graduation Coordinators review each request, making sure students have fulfilled degree requirements or are set to fulfill them by graduation. Campus Solutions recently implemented a fix to the Tar Heel Tracker to ensure that any classes that were taken twice are only utilized once to meet degree requirements.
Once a student applies to graduate, a program runs to properly format the student’s name to print on their diploma. Changes to functionality in ConnectCarolina that fills in the diploma name to mirror the legal name have simplified things (in the past, the Registrar’s office had to confirm this manually). Now, all the Registrar’s office has to do is quickly glance over the name to check for errors. The list of students who have applied for graduation is uploaded into a separate program that gathers all the information needed to print the diplomas, including the necessary signatures.
Even after a student has turned their tassel, the work isn’t finished quite yet. The Registrar’s office then needs to run a process to confer degrees. After that, some validation occurs to make sure data is accurate.
“I usually look after the term is complete to make sure everyone who completed all requirements is awarded a degree,” said ConnectCarolina functional analyst Jenny Jacobsen. After all degrees are conferred information is reported to the National Student Clearinghouse. The Campus Solutions team also helped configure the degree verification letters, which graduate students who are working on their dissertation use to let potential employers know they have finished their course work.