Registration change proves fruitful for students success

The school’s updated registration policy that prohibits students from registering after the first day has not affected many students’ schedules since its inception at the beginning of the semes­ter, and Brad Moore, Director of Marketing and Communications said that the strategy has been going as smooth as expected, also that there is a definite plan to continue the new rule into future semesters.

Moore said he believes the spring 2015 semester will start with much fewer difficulties because CNM’s offices will be open January 5, but classes will not start until January 20, which gives students two weeks to register for classes.

Moore said the new registration policy was a result of studies con­ducted by CNM, which showed that students who started a class later would tend to struggle a great deal in their coursework because they had fallen behind from the very start.

“CNM has known this for a while, that grades did drop off for students who started late,” he said.

Late starting students would have lower success rates and were more likely to drop out, and those who stuck with the course would still end the term with lower grades than those who were present from the first day of class, he said.

CNM felt that the pre­vious way of registering was basically a disservice that the school was letting students start late, and that these students were already falling behind in their coursework from the very beginning of the class, Moore said.

“That’s the main reason behind it,” Moore said.

The large issue delaying the implementation of this new policy had to do with the short window between the date CNM offices were opened over the break and regular class start times, he said.

CNM plans to continue the policy barring late registra­tion and administration will monitor any effects it may have, he said.

Moore said that CNM will continue to communicate to students regarding the registration policy before the next term begins so that they will remember to sign up for their classes before the start­ing date, and so that registra­tion can go along smoother in upcoming semesters.

CNM did offer a signifi­cant number of late starting classes in anticipation of stu­dent need during this transi­tion phase, but these classes are shorter and are also more condensed, so the curriculum is equivalent to regular classes, he said.

Moore said that there will be several late starting classes offered during the summer semester that are 8 weeks in duration, rather than the standard 12 week course, and that the fall schedule will also start to offer more 8 week courses as well.

“We know a lot of stu­dents need those classes due to work issues and family obligations and so forth. We try to accommodate all dif­ferent types of students, so we’ll definitely continue to offer late starting courses,” Moore said.

Alexandra Fowler, Chemistry major, said she has been a CNM student for quite a while and she would advise any new stu­dent to meet with an aca­demic advisor as early as possible to find out what classes should be taken and when to do so for each semester, or to find out if more classes are avail­able to take during certain semesters.

Fowler said she felt that CNM spread the word about the new registration policy adequately enough.

“Teachers really drilled it in last semester and it was all over the website, so I think we did know ahead of time,” she said.

Dereck Swain, Engineering major, said he gets to pick his classes early, so he registers for the courses he needs way before the next term begins.

Swain said he had no major problems registering for the spring term and the new policy locking classes from registration after their beginning date did not affect him at all.

Swain said he was not aware that late starting regis­tration was possible in previ­ous semesters, and he advises newer students to go to the CNM catalog and write down the Course Reference Numbers (CRN) of the classes that are needed, as well as to register instead of doing a class search online, and to get it all done early.

“Don’t procrastinate. Try to get it done as early as you can,” he said.

Moore said that CNM will evaluate student per­formance at the end of the spring term to determine if final grades improve or not under the new registra­tion guidelines.