Need your official transcripts to apply for grad school or get a discount on your auto insurance? Good luck, better start that process a month in advance — until now. Finally, a very important school service has shifted to the digital world.
Sonoma State University’s Office of the Provost and Academic Affairs has currently been working on various projects and planning efforts to help increase student success. Launching e-transcripts are one of the first initiatives the provost, along with student leadership in Associated Students, took on this fall 2019.
Visitors walk outside of the Sonoma State Library.
“The e-transcript initiative was one of the first projects we launched because we heard from students, staff, and alumni that the old, paper-based process was cumbersome and time-consuming,” said Lisa Vollendorf, executive vice-president of academic affairs and Sonoma State’s provost Chief Academic Officer. “The old process also used a lot of staff time that could be better spent productively helping students on the campus.”
Obtaining official transcripts is often times a process riddled with time consuming undertakings. The process typically goes something like this: if a current or former student needed to obtain official documents, you would have to go in person to the Admissions and Records office where you would fill out and sign a form. Students were responsible for postage fees, as well as a fee for the transcript if you needed more than one copy or have already gotten the first two complementary ones.
The process now is much simpler. Instead of physically having to go into the Record’s office, students now have 24/7 access to the site and can start the ordering process at any time. Online ordering through a secure transaction medium allots for student’s ability to send multiple transcripts to multiple recipients all in one order. Students express that the most convenient aspect of this new online process is the timing. Never before has Sonoma State had the ability to offer these official school documents in a matter of minutes.
Some college’s methods vary, in that you don’t have to go in person to the record’s office. Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC), for example, utilizes the National Student Clearinghouse transcript service. Though entirely online, it’s not as fast as 10 minutes, which is exactly how long it took for SSU Associate Student leaders, Christina Gamboa and John Dunstan. Students no longer have to worry for “lost time” for requests that are made via mail.
In light of saving student’s time, valuable staff and faculty time has also being taken into account. Under Judy Sakaki’s leadership, a high emphasis has been placed on student success and easy accessibility to resources. Launching the e-transcript process has been part of a great start especially that more time will be spent on students instead of paperwork and processing for official transcripts.
In SRJC’s case, transcripts are sent via postage only and take approximately two weeks. Combined efforts from Sonoma State’s IT, Records, Associated Students and Academic Affairs Staff have streamlined a new electronic transcript system that can be done 100 percent online and only takes a couple of minutes. You are still given the option to have transcripts mailed to you. However, for many applications, online transfers are used more frequently.
“We’ve been listening to students, faculty, and staff to learn what we can do to help serve our entire community more effectively,” said Vollendorf.
Ordering your official college transcripts are integral to the college application process. It is often an aspect that slow students down during the rush of meeting an application deadline. Yet the importance of this signed and sealed document is central for universities to determine if you qualify for their programs.
This is only one of many other projects that the Office of Academic Affairs are working on this year. We should expect to see more digitalization of school procedures and development of enhanced interaction tools geared toward students. Vollendorf and staff have recently launched “LoboConnect”, which is intended to aid in advising and communication.
“Other digitalization projects underway include updating what we call our ARR, the academic records system,” said Vollendorf. “We want advisors and chairs to be able to use a digital form to do course substitutions instead of having to use paper forms.”
The main goals of the Office of Academic Affairs are to help every student’s journey toward getting their degree more seamless while also increasing staff productivity, not to mention using less paper.
“SSU has been working to improve our business processes with particular attention to supporting student success,” said Vollendorf, and this is just one of the many achievements Sonoma State has been working towards increasing support for student, faculty and staff alike.
