AACRAO NetNews

Volume VII, Number 1

January 15, 1999

American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

Editor:  Paul Aucoin <pgaucoin@samford.edu>

Subscription Manger:  Erika Watts <wattse@aacrao.nche.edu>

Past Issues

IN THIS ISSUE:

News About Your Colleagues

Louise Phillips has left the Registrar's Office at Southwest Texas State University to become the Associate Director of The MITC, a multi-institution teaching center. She will spend half time coordinating STSU's involvement in the center and the other half working with The MITC Office and partner institutions, serving North Austin and Williamson County. This is a concept that Texas is using to provide higher education to areas presently not served, without opening up new colleges. Several institutions offer programs in a central location(s) that is more convenient to the customer. Louise will remain involved in the Texas ACRAO, Southern ACRAO, and AACRAO because of responsibilities in distance education and student services.  Her phone and address remain the same. Lloydean Wilson is the Acting Registrar at STSU.

Jerry D. Smith, Dean of Admissions and Records at Jacksonville State University (Alabama) and current President of Southern ACRAO (SACRAO) has accepted an appointment with The University of Texas at Arlington as Associate Vice President for Student Enrollment Services. Jerry's first official day at UTA will be March 1, 1999.   He served Jacksonville State University for 25 years as an Admissions Counselor, Registrar, Director of Admissions and Records and Dean of Admissions and Records. Jerry is a former President of Alabama ACRAO, and has held several positions within SACRAO including Local Arrangements Chair for the 1992 meeting, Member at Large, Vice President for Admissions and Enrollment Management, and Newsletter Editor.

Jim Bundy, Registrar Emeritus at North Carolina State University,  became a grandfather to Jackson David Barlow, on Wednesday, December 23.   For a look at a picture of the proud grandpa and Jackson, click on photo.

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Proposal for Hope/Lifetime Tax Credits now Online

The much-awaited proposed regulations on Hope and Lifetime tax credits created by the Taxpayer Reform Act of 1997 (TRA) are now available on the AACRAO website. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) by Treasury/Internal Revenue Service provides for a 90 day comment period, and indicates that the IRS intends to hold a public hearing, with the possibility of video-conference participation from around the country, in the near future.  The entire NPRM can be viewed at http://www.aacrao.com/policy/govrel/tra_reporting.htm

The proposed regulations are generally similar to the guidance already provided by the IRS in its various pronouncements on Hope/Lifetime. The most significant feature of this NPRM is that it explicitly allows taxpayers to rely on the proposed regulations until the publication of the final regulations in the Federal Register. The proposed rules thus have the force of law (to the advantage of taxpayers) even if the IRS issues more restrictive final rules for those taxpayers who calculate their eligibility for benefits based on the guidance contained in the NPRM.

Also, the proposed regulations attempt to provide additional guidance on a number of ambiguous topics. The NPRM offers a definition of "academic period" as "a quarter, semester, trimester, or other period of study (such as a summer session) as reasonably determined by the eligible educational institution."  The IRS invites comments on the adequacy of this definition.

For further information contact Barmak Nassirian, AACRAO Associate Executive Director.

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New FERPA Guide Available

Guidelines for Postsecondary Institutions for Implementation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 as Amended, 1998, by Richard A. Rainsberger is available from AACRAO as Item #1279, and is only $30 for members.

The guide represents the latest information on FERPA reviewed by the Family Policy Compliance Office of the U.S. Department of Education. It includes updated sections on student disciplinary records, 1996 Final Regulations, the Solomon Amendment Interim Rule and more. It also poses hypothetical cases to test your understanding of FERPA on such questions as notification of parents to alcohol violations, student request to explain a grade in her record, and notifying students of grades received.

To order, contact the AACRAO Distribution Center, PO Box 231, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701; (301) 490-7651; fax (301) 206-9789; email: aacrao@pmds.com.

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Next in the Data Dispenser

Among all the interesting items in the next issue of the Data Dispenser, to be electronically published by the AACRAO office are:

1. December Board Meeting Update

2. AACRAO's collaboration with the UAW-Ford National Programs Center, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), and four other higher education associations to develop prototypes for assessing prior learning experiences.

3. AACRAO, along with AACRAO's Open Learning/Nontraditional Education Committee recently finalized its study of nontraditional education programs at US higher education institutions.

4. AACRAO signs on to a letter regarding the redesign of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and reporting requirements for IPEDS.

5. New Staff at AACRAO

6. Scholarships available to the Harvard Higher Education Institutes

7. Greg Woods, a member of VP Gore's "reinventing government" task force, has been appointed to head a restructured student financial aid office.

8. SEM VIII Conference update

9. How to take a tour of the "Queen City" when in Charlotte.

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Caught in the Surf, Websites You Can Use

Lora Spaulding, Associate Registrar at the University of Notre Dame sends this URL that is useful in checking on institutions not listed in the AACRAO Transfer Credit Practices guide. She says that the Bears' Guide to Earning College Degrees Nontraditionally has been a good information source for finding the good and the bad nontraditional schools.  Their URL is http://www.degree.net/core.html

For a directory of  graduate schools in the United States go to http://www.schoolguides.com/ where you  may click on a map of the United States to review schools by state, or click on icons to search by academic discipline.

Glenn Munson, Registrar at Rhodes College, sends us a URL pointing to a publication from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) might be of some use to those of us concerned with security of electronic records. The entire publication, Safeguarding Your Technology, is on-line at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs98/safetech/index.html.   It explains the necessity for developing a comprehensive and customized electronic security policy and offers guidance to educational administrators in devising and implementing one. The report is organized in ten chapters, addressing topics such as risk assessment; development and implementation of security policy; physical, software, information, and user access security; and staff training. As with previous NCES publications, each chapter offers an overview, FAQs, real-world anecdotes, recommendations, and a summary checklist of "things to do."

The American Educational Guidance Center has created a list of more than 200 e-mail addresses for college and university admissions offices.  It, and loads of other informations, is available via http://www.college-scholarships.com/.  If you are not on it, you may want to contact them and get on the list.

Will Corprew, Registrar at Broome Community College in Binghamton, New York, jokingly invites you to a look at http://www.americancollege.com, where (purportedly) it will take you only sixty days to finish a degree.  And you can get a Ph.D. for only $179.

http://www.campuscomputing.net/ has the results of the 1998 Campus Computing Project survey.  The project "focuses on the use of information technology in higher education. The project's national studies draw on qualitative and quantitative data to help inform faculty, campus administrators, and others interested in the use of information technology in American colleges and universities," according to information on the website.  Project director Kenneth C. Green says, "Campuses are doing more with technology, and they are doing it better than in the past. But the real challenge at most institutions is to improve resources and services given both rising expectations and exploding demand."

And don't forget, all the information about the AACRAO Annual Meeting in Charlotte is on-line at http://www.aacrao.com/am98/index.html. You will find information about the meeting schedule, things to do in Charlotte, and a link to the program database for a full listing of session and workshop information.   Click on the program code number for details about a session.  A guide to dining in Charlotte is at http://www.charlotte.com/justgo/dining/. And http://www.charlotte.com/et/calendar/museums.htm will get you a list of the 15 museums in the area, some with free or very reasonable admission.

Note:  If you know of a website that you think may be useful to your colleagues, please send the URL to me so that it may be considered for inclusion in a future issue of NetNews.  Tell a little about why you like it, and be credited with the catch.  Send it to pgaucoin@samford.edu

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It May Pay to Wait on Computer Purchases

If you were planning on buying a new desktop computer for yurself or one of your staff, you may want to wait a month or two.  According to the January 8 Wall Street Journal, Intel has decided to continue using the popular name Pentium for its next-generation microprocessor when it becomes available in February or March. The Pentium III, currently code-named Katmai, initially will run at speeds of 450 and 500 MHz.  It is designed for fast multimedia processing, largely attributed to 70 new instructions specifically aimed at speeding up graphics, communications, audio and video.

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Gigahertz Power on the Horizon

And if you want to wait a year or so longer than two months, you will be able to escalate your search for ever more computing power to take advantage of technologies such as speech software and voice e-mail.  According to a recent article in Financial Times, "You will want a gigahertz machine for multimedia, three-dimensional graphics, continuous speech input, visualization, video conferencing and so on," says the VP and general manager of business platforms at Intel. "We will also introduce 'constant computing' to utilize the unused idle power."

The article goes on to quote a researcher at IBM, who predicts, "By the millennium, 50 million people will be using speech software to control their computers. You will be able to ask your browser to find you things on penguins in Antarctica or dictate your e-mails, which will be multimedia, so instead of dictating the text you could record your voice and it would automatically arrive at either the recipient's PC or telephone. People will realize that voice is more valuable than the same words recorded as text."

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Calendar of Events

NLII New Orleans '99 Meeting
National Learning Infrastructure Initiative
January 31-February 2, 1999, New Orleans, Louisiana
http://www.educause.edu/nlii/meetings/orleans99/.index.html

The EDUCAUSE Institute Management Program
February 7-11, 1999, Palm Springs, California
http://www.educause.edu/inst/inst.html

Southern Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (SACRAO), 52nd Annual Meeting
Hyatt Regency, Savannah, Georgia - February 13-17, 1999
Registration forms, program, maps, etc. at http://www.registrar.gatech.edu/sacrao.html

AACRAO's 85th Annual Meeting, April 18-21, 1999 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The planned program and other information is available on the AACRAO Website, http://www.aacrao.com/am98/index.html

Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council Member Meeting and May Conference
The Ellipse Conference Center at Ballston, Arlington, Virginia
Member Meeting, May 13, 1 pm to 5 pm
May Conference, May 14, 8:30 am to 4 pm
http://www.StandardsCouncil.org

CUMREC '99 - "Breaking Through: 2000 and Beyond"
May 9-12, 1999, San Antonio, Texas
http://www.cumrec.com/cumrec99/cumrec99.html

AACRAO Annual Meetings:

April 18-22, 1999, Charlotte, NC   http://www.charlotte.com and http://www.aacrao.com/am98/index.html
April 9-13, 2000, New Orleans, LA  http://www.neworleans.com
April 21-25, 2001, Seattle, WA   http://www.seattle.com/visiting/index.html
April 13-18, 2002, Minneapolis, MN
April 6-10, 2003, Washington, DC

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Position Announcements

You may now view position announcements at the AACRAO website. Point your browser to:

http://www.aacrao.com/professional/jobs.html

Contact Satomi Matsumae at the AACRAO Office if you wish to place a paid announcement on the site, (202) 293-9161 or by e-mail to:  satomi@aacrao.nche.edu  

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End of NetNews, the AACRAO Electronic Newsletter

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