AACRAO NetNews

Volume VII, Number 2

February 20, 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

Dave

 

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Important Revisions to Proposed Constitution and Bylaws Changes

The proposed changes to AACRAO Constitution and Bylaws published in the February Data Dispenser were reviewed by participants in the February Leadership Meeting. The event, which brought a broad cross-section of AACRAO’s national leadership together, provided an opportunity to review the proposed changes, and receive comments from the participants. The documents you will read below incorporate suggested revisions and technical corrections to the proposed changes published in the February Data Dispenser.

Constitution and Bylaws Ballot Issues

1. Allow system offices for colleges and universities to be regular members of the Association, combine associate and affiliate membership into a single group, Affiliates, and re-letter succeeding paragraphs. Constitution: Article I, Section 1 and Bylaws: Article I, Sections 1& 2

2. Change the name of the Association to "The Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers," (ACRAO). Due primarily to the success of our annual meeting programs and other workshop and training sessions held throughout the year, we have been able to attract the interest of many school administrators who are employed outside of the United States. As we see this as a healthy step in forwarding the interest of admissions officers and registrars worldwide, and as we recommend continued efforts in this direction, we recommend that we discontinue the use of the term "American" in our name. This change would adjust the following sections of the Constitution and Bylaws. Constitution: Article I, Section 2, Section 4b, and Section 4e; Bylaws: Article I, Section 2, Section 2(a), Section 2(b), Section 2(c), Section 2(d), Section 2(e), Section 2(f), Section 2(g), Section 2(h), and Section 3; Article II, Section 2, Section 9, and Section 9(b); Article VI, Section 1, Section 1(c), and Section 1(e)

3. Revise the Mission Statement. In keeping with our heritage of being a forum for discussion and a recommending body of best practices and procedures rather than a standards setting body, it is recommended that a change be made to the mission statement of the organization. This change clearly delineates our role in the areas of admissions, records, registration, enrollment management, administrative computing technology, and student services. It also provides clarification that we serve as a forum in the discussion and development of best practices for individual institutions. Constitution, Article I, Section 3

4. Provide clarification that the Association may choose to do any or all of the activities listed in this section of examples but emphasize that this is not an all-inclusive list. Constitution, Article I, Section 4

5. Change the word "implementing" to "fostering" as the latter word more accurately describes the nature of the relationship of AACRAO/ACRAO with state/regional groups. Constitution, Article I, Section 4e

6. Re-word to clearly indicate that it is the member institutions that shall designate who the voting members are from their institution in concordance with Article I, Section 1 of the Bylaws. Constitution, Article II, Section 1

7. Eliminate the confusion with By Law responsibilities caused by listing only one of the many duties of the voting members and refer to the Bylaws where all the duties are covered. Constitution, Article II, Section 2

8. Add a new section by moving the second sentence of the previous section, which delineates the ACRAO Board of Directors responsibilities for the Association, eliminate the sentence from Bylaw, Article II, section 2 that conflicts regarding responsibility for association activities, and re-number subsequent sections. Constitution, Article II, Sections 2 and 3; and Bylaws, Article II, Section 2

9. Eliminate the unnecessary words "as may be." Constitution, Article II, Section 4

10. Remove awkward wording regarding additional voting membership to clarify that an individual payment must be made for each additional voting member desired. Bylaws, Article I, Section 1 (c)

11. Change "an" to "the" to reflect which membership fee is to be paid by high school affiliate members. Bylaws, Article I, Section 2 (h)[New (g)]

12. Specify 30 days as minimum notification of the membership regarding a change in the annual membership fee, that the Secretary-Treasurer/Vice President for Finance would be responsible for notification of financial and policy issues, that member approval is required for membership fee changes, and remove the reference to the "non-existent" Association newsletter. Bylaws, Article I, Section 4; Article II, Section 5 and Article IV, Section 2 (b)

13. Revise the titles of officers:

 

Bylaws, Article II, Section 1, 5, 7, 8, and Article VI, Section 1

14. Add a section specifying that Officers may only serve without voting membership status for 90 days and re-letter subsequent sections. Bylaws, Article II, Section 9(a) and change the current 9(a)-9(c) to 9(b)-9(d)

15. Change AACRAO reference to the "the Association". Bylaw, Article III, Section 2(c) and 2(e)

16. Revise placement of wording regarding annual meeting business and re-letter the subsequent sub-sections. Bylaws, Article IV, Section 2(a)

17. In the section regarding Board Meetings, add a section allowing two-thirds of the Board members to call and convene special meeting without being called by the President or President-Elect and re-letter the current paragraph as (a). Bylaws, Article IV, Section 3

18. Add task forces to appointive committees and allow them to be responsible to the Executive Director as well as another Officer. Bylaws, Article V, Sections 1 and 2

19. Allow up to four years of committee and task force service, and allow committees and task forces to report to the Executive Director. Bylaws, Article V, Section 2

20. Re-title Bylaw Article V by adding "and Task Forces" to Appointive Committees and add a section to cover the appointment of Interassociation Representatives with a term of three years and re-appointment only by two-thirds vote of the Board. Proposed Bylaw Article V, Section 3

21. Change Bylaws Article VI, Section 1 (e), concerning the Office’s responsibility for association financial activities to (a) and re-letter all subsequent sub-sections. Bylaws, Article VI, Section 1(e)

22. Clarify the Office’s responsibility for Association publications. Bylaws, Article VI, New Section 1(c)

23. Delete reference to responsibility for the placement service as it is no longer in operation. Bylaws, Article VI, Section 1(d)

24. Re-word from "Service" to "Serving" the Office’s coordination of projects, and re-letter as "e" to conform to the deletion above. Bylaws, Article VI, Section 1 (f)

25. Insert a new sub-section assigning the Office a supporting role in maintaining the association’s strategic plan. Bylaws, Article VI, Section 1 new (f)

For the text of the changes in context, see:

 

For further information contact Barmak Nassirian, AACRAO Associate Executive Director, at nassirianb@aacrao.nche.edu or at (202) 293-9161 ext. 6401.

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Annual Meeting Early-bird Registration Deadline is March 5

Don't miss the opportunity to register for the AACRAO Annual Meeting at the special early-bird member rate of $295 by March 5. This one fee will entitle you to four days filled with opportunities to enhance your knowledge and network with professionals from the United States, Canada, and around the world.

* Choose from over 180 sessions.
* Visit with vendors displaying the latest products.
* Exchange ideas and experiences with your peers.
* Enjoy Spring in Charlotte.

To qualify for this special rate, register by fax, mail (postmarked by March 5), or on-line at the AACRAO web site
http://www.aacrao.com/am98/index.html by March 5. You may obtain registration forms there also or by calling the AACRAO document on demand service at 888-6AACRAO and requesting document # 224.

Questions?  Email meetings@aacrao.nche.edu or call Gloria Rutberg, Manager of Meetings and Conferences, at (202) 293-9161.

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Next in the Data Dispenser

Included among the articles in the February issue of the Data Dispenser, to be sent to you by USPS mail soon from the AACRAO office are:

1-    Budget issues and Proposed FY2000 AACRAO budget to voted on in Charlotte.

2-    Proposed Constitution and Bylaws changes (see article above for links to the documents).

3-    An interview with Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-IL), the author of the bill that would have repealed the reporting mandates on colleges and universities in connection with Hope/Lifetime tax credits.

4-    Brief updates on federal issues (not finalized yet, but it looks like Voter Registration and Distance Education will be included).

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Caligula Virus Alert

According to the February 8 issue of TechWeb (http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990205S0011), the Caligula virus "is capable of retrieving information off of a computer and sending it to an FTP site run by the hackers who created the virus. Caligula steals a user's PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) key ring and sends it to The Codebreakers' FTP site. The key ring is encrypted and very difficult to break, so the user's security is probably not at risk, but the virus illustrates the capability of having one's files stolen off the computer."

The article says that Caligula is one of a several increasingly complex viruses, the result of more voluminous operating systems and applications software that provides camouflage for a large virus file. "(A virus) used to be written in assembler and made as tiny as it could be," says a technical director with security firm ICSA. Now, hackers can "do it with impunity and are protected by the First Amendment while dramatically contributing to the problem. If they were slapped by the law, it might give them an incentive to stop."

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Caught in the Surf, Websites You Can Use

E. Michael Staman, vice chancellor and CIO, Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, has compiled ten critical questions that information technology managers and institution administrators should be asking themselves with respect to their Y2K readiness. These questions, as well as an assessment of the readiness of SPEEDE (Standardization of Postsecondary Education Electronic Data Exchange) by Dave Stones of the University of Texas at Austin are the latest additions to the EDUCAUSE Y2K directory at:   http://www.educause.edu/issues/y2k.html

Check out http://www.charlotte.com/livinghere/ for a comprehensive city guide to Charlotte. skyline.jpg (15697 bytes) 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/.   The picture is of the Charlotte skyline, and is ample evidence of the business hub that Charlotte has grown to be.

See http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayCareers.pl?990201ref.htm for a good article about the value of checking references, what you should hope to learn when doing so and how fear of lawsuits complicates things.  Also, take a look at Interview Guide for Supervisors at http://www.cupa.org/bookstor/details/intervw.htm. In addition to an abstract, there are excerpts from the book.

Irene Checkovich, College Registrar at Fisher College in Boston, checkovich@fisher.edu, tells us of  an Interim Report by the NCES Taskforce for IPEDS Redesign dated January 20, 1999. This is available online in PDF format at http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/ipedsrd.pdf.   This very comprehensive document provides a background of IPEDS past and present, an outline of the proposed changes, and who to contact if you have comments or suggestions, according to Irene. Additional web sites which will give some background information are http://www.fsu.edu/~air/ipedsrev.html, http://www.fsu.edu/~air/alert9.htm, http://www.nces.ed.gov/ipeds/newicitems.html, http://www.nces.ed.gov/ipeds/augdraft.htm, http://www.nces.ed.gov/ipeds/auginst.htm and http://www.nces.ed.gov/ncesnew.html. "None of the proposed changes have been finalized. If you see anything that concerns you, or that you would like to see changed, it is not too late to make your feelings and suggestions known. Obviously the NCES and AIR websites will be good sites to check periodically to see what the final changes will be," Irene adds.  Also, NCES has provided us with http://nces.ed.gov/Ipeds/whatsnew.html that is designed to keep you informed about the redesign of IPEDS.

And since tax time is upon us, you will find the most commonly requested tax forms and intructions by accessing federal forms online at http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/forms_pubs/index.html.

Kim Bell, Director of Records and Registration at Southwest Missouri State University, writes that she was looking at the web page of North Central Association and found some very general information on what they require
their accredited schools to publish in catalog. The website with this general info is at http://www.ncacihe.org/overview/ovgeninst.cfm.   Kim adds that it states that complete info is published in their Handbook of Accreditation. 

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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Y2K Panic may be worst part of "the Problem"

According to a recent article in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/02/biztech/articles/09panic.html), expert advisers on the "year 2000 problem" are saying that panic about the problem could be worse than the problem itself. Planners are warning that overreaction to the perceived problem could cause bank runs, food and gasoline hoarding, and social disruptions.

But overreaction now may be preferable to overreaction later, says Y2K expert Charles Halpern, who is urging those most likely to worry about the problem to go ahead and stock up now on the supplies that would make them emotionally comfortable. "There's sufficient information for people to say there's a substantial risk of disruption. Overreaction now is so much preferable to overreaction in November that it's a risk worth running. People who want to lay in supplies of canned vegetables can do it now without disrupting anything."

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Does One Year of E-mail Equal a Pound of Fat

Jane E. Brody reports in her "Personal Health" column in the New York Times that Stanford University exercise expert Dr. William Haskell has calculated that "if you spend just two minutes an hour of each workday sending e-mail to office mates rather than walking down the hall to talk with them, you will accumulate the caloric equivalent of 11 pounds of body fat in a decade." That's a little over a pound of flesh a year.  Pretty quick by Shylock's standards.

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Humor

A Registrar, Director of Admissions and Director of Institutional Research apply for the same job.

The interviewer calls in the Registrar and asks "what do two plus two equal?" The Registrar replies "four." The interviewer asks "four, exactly?"  The Registrar looks at the interviewer incredulously and says "yes, four exactly."

Then the interviewer calls in the Director of Admissions and asks the same question "what do two plus two equal?"  The Director of Admissions says "on average, four, give or take ten percent, but on average, four."

Then the interviewer calls in the Director of Institutional Research and poses the same question "what do two plus two equal?". The Director of Institutional Research gets up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer and says "what do you want it to equal?"


And, you've hear of a nanosecond, but do you know what an ohnosecond is?   It's the moment you hit send on your e-mail and wish you could go into your computer and take it back.  This "daffinition" was on TFTD-L, where it was attributed to Janis Liebold.

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Calendar of Events

The New Jersey-New York Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers will hold its Spring Conference on Wednesday, March 17 at Drew University in Madison, NJ. Conference information is available on the Web at http://pages.nyu.edu/~nag2/njny-acrao.html or by contacting Ninette Gironella, Program Chair, at ninette.gironella@nyu.edu,
or (212)998-7150.

NERCOMP (The New England Regional Computing Program), "Doing IT: Partnering for Practical Campus Solutions and Outcomes", March 21-23, Sturbridge, Massachusetts. For more information see: http://www.educause.edu/nercomp/

Council of Independent Colleges and EDUCAUSE, March 25-27, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  This is the annual working meeting to keep independent colleges and universities on the cutting edge of technology. The workshop is designed for administrators and faculty. For more information see: http://www.cic.edu/conferences/technology/technology.shtml

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

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

MOSIS (Managers of Student Information Sytems) will hold its annual conference on July 18-21 in Daytona Beach.  Please see http://mosis.sc.edu/ for the details about this premier summer conference.


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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