ARUCC Executive Update

Submitted by Joanne Duklas, Vice President, ARUCC and Registrar York University

Your ARUCC Executive has been busy in the past many months tabulating the various findings from a membership survey, focus groups and a strategic retreat. The goal was to set the vision for ARUCC for the next 4-6 years in a manner that captured extensive input from the collective membership. From February 2008 through to April 2009, the executive participated in a series of efforts both in-person and online to garner your opinions on where the organization should head in the years to come.

The online survey was completed by 68 institutional representatives which represents a solid 50% of the institutional membership. The majority of the responses were from Ontario with Quebec second and British Columbia and Alberta following soon after. 75% of the respondents hold the title of "Registrar" and more than 52% were from institutions with a student body larger than 10,000 (head count).

Click here to view the online survey results (English) Click here to view the online survey results (French)

While full results are available online, a snapshot revealed strong interest in the following:

The importance of having a strong knowledge base in strategic enrolment management (SEM)

• A desire for advance SEM training
• A need for higher quality Canadian SEM training

The well known trends impacting the postsecondary sector emerged in the ARUCC survey: government compliance, changing demographics, unique community based expectations, and competiveness being the primary challenges. Not surprisingly, most respondents indicated they were feeling the resource crunch. Mobility issues were seen as an area impacting the sector.

The implications for the sector confirm findings from other studies and include a greater emphasis on the need for institutions to develop refined strategies in the areas of recruitment and retention, to focus on unique and innovative programming and curriculum, and to engage in more sophisticated attempts to align pricing and resource frameworks tightly with core institutional missions.

The membership indicated a desire for advanced professional development that is directly informed by a deeper understanding of strategic market planning, or, for many, strategic enrolment management. There was a call for a certification process for Canadian enrolment managers and for more opportunities to come together as professionals in roundtable settings to share expertise. There was an expressed desire to better understand how to gather and interpret the "right" data as a way to inform better decision making. There was also interest expressed for leadership training. The latter was interesting in that the membership responses indicated a need to learn higher level transferable skills to better manage in a fast paced, changing environment.

The membership sent a clear call to the ARUCC executive to help them access (not necessarily provide) training in the following areas:

• Data standards and data definitions as each related to enrolment management
• Advanced level SEM training
• Advanced leadership training

To a somewhat lesser but still important extent, the membership requested ARUCC consider registrarial best practice research around topics of interest to the membership with specific foci on joint/collaborative curriculum frameworks, credential assessment, and document retention. Student mobility across institutions was a theme that emerged as an area of interest requiring further work and study. In general, the membership identified a number of gaps in the Canadian registrarial landscape that require consideration and possible closure. And there are considerably varying views among the membership on how to resolve these aspirations.

In light of the above findings, the ARUCC executive continues to move forward on the following items:

1. Focusing on the creation of a committee structure that would help the executive respond to priorities identified by the ARUCC membership. If you have comments or ideas regarding this, contact David Hinton, Past President, hinton@unb.ca
2. Moving forward with a committee of ARUCC members, supported by the ARUCC Executive, which will focus on registrarial best practice topics. It is hoped that at least one best practice report/standards would be developed each year similar in nature to the ARUCC transcript guide. If you are interested in participating in this working group, contact Mike Sekulic, ARUCC President, sekulic@ucalgary.ca
3. Developing an online research knowledge institute that provides ARUCC members with current research pertinent to registrarial services. If you have articles that you would like posted, contact Joanne Duklas, ARUCC Vice President, jduklas@yorku.ca
4. Developing the online research knowledge institute constitutes phase one of a larger research agenda to support the dissemination of Canadian best practices. This may evolve into a publishing house to provide the membership with access to current and relevant research pertinent to the student service sector in Canada. Membership with a desire to be involved in developing the research agenda for ARUCC should contact Jody Gordon, ARUCC Western representative, jody.gordon@kwantlen.ca
5. Identifying and partnering with quality organizations involved in the delivery of advanced SEM training (e.g. through co-sponsorship or full sponsorship of SEM training opportunities, identifying high quality external training opportunities that are "endorsed" by ARUCC)

Since the retreat the ARUCC Executive has continued to make progress on defining these priorities further. We will continue reporting in more detail to the membership up to and including at ARUCC 2010 in Vancouver.

SPEEDE Committee: Call for Volunteer Representative on AACRAO SPEEDE Committee

Barry Billing, after a number of years of volunteer service, is stepping down as the ARUCC representative on the AACRAO SPEEDE Committee. The ARUCC Executive would like to extend thanks to Barry for his service in this capacity. The ARUCC Executive is seeking nominations for a new representative for this committee by February 2010. Interested members should contact Mike Sekulic, ARUCC President (sekulic@ucalgary.ca) by January 31, 2010.

For those unfamiliar with the work of the AACRAO SPEEDE Committee or ARUCC’s past efforts in this regard, reference the following sites for information. EDI, XML and PDF standard data sharing protocols are approaches explored by AACRAO SPEEDE representatives. The challenges of data sharing remain along with growing pressures to joint partner, share data and generally smooth the mobility of students through the various education systems and institutions.

AACRAO SPEEDE
Past ARUCC EDI Work: Spring 2007 Contact Newsletter
Past ARUCC EDI Work: Spring 2008 Contact Newsletter

ARUCC Listserv Usage: wondering why you are having trouble sending emails to the ARUCC listserv?

If you are a member of ARUCC, send e-mails to arucc-L@arucc.ca. If the e-mail is not successfully delivered, it may be because your e-mail has changed since the listserv was updated or you are not a registered member.

To become a member, speak with the Registrar at your home institution.

If you are a member and need to verify your e-mail on the listserv, go to the ARUCC web site to the following address: www.arucc.ca/discuss.htm

You will see instructions on how to manage your list account, how to update your password and how to retrieve your listserv account password. You may also need to update your membership listing in the institutional listing. If so, contact your institution’s Registrar as they manage the membership listing for your institution. http://www.arucc.ca/cgi-bin/memberdirectory.cgi

Atlantic Report

Submitted by Rosemary Jotcham, Eastern representative and Registrar, Acadia University

Statistics for the 2009/10 academic year – There is an increase of 1.5% across the region at the undergraduate level, 3.6% at the graduate level. Complete information with the breakdown by institution and analysis is available at www.atlanticuniversities.ca.

Atlantic Provinces Educational Data Exchange Project (APEDEP) - The implementation of electronic data exchange will

• enhance service to students;
• minimize the negative environmental impact of excessive printing on security paper;
• reduce data entry time; and,
• ensure the consistency and accuracy of the shared information.

The purpose of the project is to establish a network to facilitate the electronic transmission of

• high school transcripts to post-secondary institutions;
• post-secondary transcripts to post-secondary institutions;
• enrollment verification from post-secondary institutions to provincial departments of education (for financial aid purposes); and,
• teacher certification from post-secondary to provincial Departments of Education.

The project includes the creation of standard XML datasets for the exchange of secondary and post-secondary academic transcripts, post-secondary enrollment confirmation and post-secondary teacher certification. The project also includes the establishment of a central server to route the electronic files and will require the implementation of software by each partner institution to permit the interface between their respective student information systems and the data exchange network. The network is designed to accommodate all post-secondary institutions and all Departments of Education in the Atlantic Provinces. The Project will create a repository to facilitate sharing of knowledge and best practices to assist partner institutions in meeting the project objectives.

Currently CONSUP and the VPAs in Atlantic Canada are supporting the initiative, as are all four provincial Departments of Education.

AARAO planning professional development day for Registrars in March 2010 – details will be announced at a later date.

Aggressive recruiting strategies are being undertaken by Atlantic universities to offset declining demographics in the 18 - 24 age group.

Creative approaches to identifying new markets – New England seen as a lucrative market but not an easy one to break into. In spite of geographic proximity, these students need to be handled differently from the local market.

Efforts by consortia to market collectively in international markets – This is meeting with variable success – better in some markets and for some institutions than others.

There is a need to convince governments to loosen the purse strings to help institutions meet the challenges of declining demographics and hits to endowments from the turmoil in the stock markets worldwide. Some relief is being given to students directly, but not to institutions in the form of increased funding that can be used for operating expenses. We are experiencing a perfect storm in the Atlantic region with financial resources challenged at the same time as the demographic shift occurs.

Atlantic Baptist University has been renamed Crandall University in honour of one of its founders and in an effort to appeal more widely to perspective students.

ARUCC Western Update

By Jody Gordon, Associate Vice President, Student Affairs and Registrar Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Two more institutions in our region had status changes from Colleges to Universities: Mount Royal University and Grant MacEwan University. Recall 3 university colleges, one institute and one college received status changes last year in BC. Meanwhile many universities and colleges in the west were reporting enrolment increases during the Fall term ranging from 5% to 11% at most; some have even seen increases to particular programs in trades and health as high as 20-30%.

Representatives from BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan continue to make progress on transfer system protocols. The Alberta / BC agreement can be viewed at www.bccat.bc.ca/pubs/BC-ABprotocol.pdf.

Work is well underway for the ARUCC 2010 Conference in Vancouver in June 27-30. Our chair, Maggie Hartley of UBC and her two program chairs, Mark Johnston and Rella Ng (also of UBC) already sent out the call for session proposals back in November. Registration will open by the end of January. This year the theme is "Partnering for Student Success: We’re in this together." This year’s program will include a variety of keynote speakers, presentations, panel discussions and roundtable discussions. We look forward to seeing you in Vancouver!

ARUCC Executive Advisory: DocAlert-L Guidelines for Subscription and Use

Members are advised that the purpose of "DocAlert-L" is to function as a closed, national electronic forum available only to regular member institutions of the Association. Its sole purpose is for the issuing of document alerts by regular member institutions in good standing when a member institution has received documents of questionable authenticity.

Use of this listserv is voluntary. If you issue document alert notices, or follow up on a document alert that another member has issued, you should be aware of your obligations to applicants under your provincial protection of privacy and freedom of information legislation. Many institutions, for example, now include a statement on their application for admission that warns applicants that any misrepresentation on the application form may result in information being shared with other post-secondary institutions. Members are encouraged to seek the advice of their institutional legal counsel about appropriate wording to be included on their applications for admission, to ensure that the applicant has provided written authorization to share information with third parties. Under no circumstances should member institutions reference ARUCC in such wording. The document alert has no official status; it is simply a service to alert you to those cases where you may wish to pay particular attention to the application and its supporting documents.

At no time is it appropriate to state that an individual’s documentation is fraudulent on the ARUCC listserv, nor is it advisable to provide further information in the body of the document alert. Information circulated on the Document Alert service is for the use of admissions personnel in member institutions only, and must not be shared with third parties.

Further information is available on the Web site. www.arucc.ca/docalertguide.htm

Medical Registry for Canada

By Mike Sekulic President, ARUCC

The Medical Council of Canada (MCC) manages the Physician Credentials Registry of Canada (PCRC), which holds the verified credentials of qualified International Medical Graduates (IMGs) seeking to enter the Canadian physician workforce.

In concert with the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities (FMRAC) and the thirteen provincial and territorial medical regulatory authorities (MRA’s), the MCC wants to expand registry services to include the Canadian medical school population. When expanded to include graduates from Canadian medical schools, the Physician Credentials Registry of Canada (PCRC) would be a convenient single source of documents for physician registration and licensure anywhere in the country. The viability of this goal depends on electronic "...processes to capture and store Canadian medical graduate documents such as their transcript and diploma...".

Ian Bowmer, Executive Director, Medical Council of Canada (MCC) and Director, Repository and Registration Services, Pierre Lemay, met with the ARUCC Executive on November 17, 2009, to discuss this initiative. There was a lively discussion during the two-hour session which touched on a number of topics. There are various levels and types of post-secondary electronic document exchange in Canada. Physician registration and licensure processes vary markedly from one part of the country to the other. There was a better understanding of the unique contexts both ARUCC and the Medical Council of Canada work within and the importance of sharing this type of information as essential to a successful collaboration.

Pending federal funding approval, the Medical Council of Canada (MCC) will be starting its work in earnest in January 2010. The MCC has asked ARUCC to participate in standards and practices related to the electronic transfer of official records, and in coordinating and connecting with Registrar’s Offices in Canada’s medical schools. For more information on this initiative, please see the MCC Briefing Note to ARUCC in English or French.

Professional Development Opportunities / Helpful Links

AACRAO conference, "Leading the Profession into the Next Century", New Orleans, Louisiana running from April 21 to 24, 2010 www.aacrao.org/neworleans/aboutthemeeting.htm

Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, Subscribe to the AIMS newsletter for public policy updates, www.aims.ca

Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS) Annual Conference, Edmonton, Alberta, June 20-23, 2010 www.cacuss2010.ca/

Centre for Higher Education Research and Development http://umanitoba.ca/centres/cherd/programs/index.html

Pan-Canadian Consortium on Admissions and Transfer/Consortium pancanadien sur les admissions et les transferts and links to other organizations focused on mobility www.pccat.ca/pccat-links/

Citzenship and Immigration Canada Operational Bulletins: For updates on changes or clarifications on immigration policies click here.

Canadian Bureau of International Education Media Release: Emerging Leaders in the Americas Scholarship Program: English | French