In this issue. Check out MSACROA s social networking pages!

Spring 2015

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Click here to check out The MSACROA Daily.

In this issue…

Greetings from the President



Message from the President-Elect

Message from the Past-President

84th Annual Meeting in Photos

2015 Executive Committee

Federal Regulations Update

Website Updates



Save the Date

Greetings from the President

that we are nearly three months in to 2015. As I compose this message I am wondering if spring will ever truly return to Pittsburgh and the Middle States region! Hopefully warm temperatures will be in our near future.

As I think back I am amazed that it has already been four and a half months since our 2014 Conference and Meeting in Niagara Falls. I went to send out a special thanks to all of those who participated in the conference, especially the presenters who offered us their time and talents over the course of the conference. I also want to thank the awe-some LAC committee and their volunteers for their hard work before and during the conference. We could not pull this off without the efforts this special group of dedicated MSACROANs!

I am excited that the 2015 Conference and Annual Meeting will be held at Dover Downs, in Dover Delaware from No-vember 30th through December 2nd. If you haven’t already marked your calendars please do so now and be on the lookout for more information from President-Elect Richard Sunday.

If you plan to attend the AACRAO conference in Baltimore in April please consider joining your MSACROA colleagues for dinner on Tuesday, April 14. We will meet at 6:30 PM at the Kona Grill located next to the Convention Center at 1 E. Pratt Street. Please RSVP to mathay@pitt.edu by Tuesday, March 31. Hope to see you in Baltimore!

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve as your President!

Regards,

Patti

Patti Mathay

MSACROA President

Message from the President –Elect

As we plan for the 2015 Annual MSACROA Conference- a special 85th anniversary- fond memories of our 2014 confer-ence still are fresh in my mind. Meeting new professionals and reconnecting with longtime colleagues and friends al-ways is a special part of every MSACROA conference. What stood out this year was how many of our longtime colleagues and friends, myself included, had new titles, new roles, new office structures, even new workplaces. Admission profes-sionals told me that to successfully recruit, increasingly they spend time working on financial aid, advisement and student schedule issues. Registrars reported that they are more in-volved in recruitment activities focused on continuing stu-dent retention and in predicting enrollment patterns. Simply put, our boundaries are expanding – we are increasingly re-sponsible for areas outside of our traditionally-defined scope.

This year’s Conference Theme will center on our “Expanding Boundaries”- ways our daily roles are moving be-yond our traditional office borders and, more importantly, ways we can expand our own boundaries. Our Program Com-mittee is working hard to create a varied conference program with sessions that will help you to add and diversify skills, to explore big-picture issues, and of course, to share with col-leagues best practices for your daily work.

We hope you will be able to attend our 2015 Conference. Better yet, why not expand your involvement in MSACROA at this year’s conference? In the coming weeks, we will be send-ing calls for workshop proposals and for volunteer opportuni-ties to get involved. Have you gone through an ERP or data conversion that changed how your office interacts with other offices? Has your office become part of a One-Stop Model or Welcome Center? Have you been part of an outcomes assess-ment or accreditation team? Share your expertise on these and other topics! You don’t have to be the primary presenter; many presenters serve on an expert panel or roundtable dis-cussion. If you would like to get involved and need sugges-tions for session topics or ideas on where to start, I encour-age you to contact me or a member of the Executive Com-mittee.

So, mark your calendars for November 30, 2015 to De-cember 2, 2015 at Dover Downs Hotel and Casino. Also, be sure to check MSACROA.ORG for the latest news about the conference.

See you in Dover! Richard Sunday

MSACROA President-Elect

Message from the Past-President

As we welcome Spring, I am reminded of our marvelous conference in Niagara Falls, NY in early November. The sun shined, the leaves were still turning, and we dodged the snow before and after the conference. (So glad we moved the conference from our “normal” time!) To those of you who attended, I am so glad that you came. We had a great conference thanks to Patti Mathay and the rest of the Pro-gram Committee. Peter Falk and Julie Washington joined the executive board (Tom Mantoni, Melissa Lenhart Young, Richard Sunday, Michael Maysilles, Ian White, Luke Phillips, Lisle Henderson, and Helena Minerva) in recruiting and pre-senting a truly diverse group of sessions. We had 4 work-shops, 47 sessions, and 11 cracker barrels and roundtables. We enjoyed a charming presentation by Walt Stasinski re-minding us all to have FUN at work.

We encourage you to continue accessing the conference sessions and use the online materials as a resource throughout the year.

A few years ago, we decided to try moving the date of the conference earlier in the month. This worked out great for the 2014 conference since the area got slammed with snow

at our regular conference time. However, next year we’ll be back at our “normal” time just after Thanksgiving week-end, Monday, November 30 – Wednesday, December 2, 2015, and down in the South at the Dover Downs Hotel & Casino, in Dover, DE. We encourage you to join us and bring a colleague!

In other activities, Luke Philips spent the year designing our new website: please visit us http://www.msacroa.org/ and see the streamlined site. We have been working on ways to increase the committees’ membership for the upcoming conference and to better align our board with the caucuses of AACRAO. By the way, WE’RE HOSTING AACRAO in Balti-more, Maryland, April 12-15, 2015. We do hope you will attend AACRAO and join us for dinner at the Kona Grill on Tuesday, April 14 at 6:30 PM.

MSACROA has been an amazing experience and I’m very thankful for the people I’ve met and learned from and con-tinue to grow with. I hope that you find a home here as well.

Fran Burman

MSACROA Past-President

President

Patricia Mathay

University of Pittsburgh

President-Elect

Richard Sunday

Long Island University

Immediate Past President

Frances S. Burman

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Secretary

Melissa M. Lenhart Young

DeSales University

Treasurer

Helena F. Minerva

Fashion Institute of Technology

Vice President for Admissions and Enrollment Services

Anne Daly

Cumberland County College

Vice President for Communications

Michael E. Maysilles

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Vice President for Information Technology

Ian K. White

Caldwell University

Vice President for Professional Development

Luke Phillips

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Vice President for Registration and Records Management

Lisle Henderson

Pratt Institute

Federal Regulations

regu-lations as well as new interpretations of current reguregu-lations. Here are a few things to watch:

Department of Education has ended their contract with the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC)—In November, George Levathes, Vice President, Operations, NSC, communicated via email to participating institutions. NSC will no longer provide weekly updates to the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) for Direct Loan borrowers. Rather, the FSA believes that the SSCR process provides sufficient enrollment status notification for the borrowers. On March 12, FSA released a letter addressing schools who have indicated they are seeing an increased num-ber of requests for paper deferment forms as a result of this ended contract. The letter can be viewed by clicking here.

Please read this document to ensure your office and institu-tion remain in compliance with the reporting requirements.

The Task Force on Federal Regulation of Higher Education—

U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Richard Burr (R-NC), and Michael Bennet (D-CO) created this task force in Fall 2013 to examine higher education regu-lations and to report on tactics to ease regulatory burden and costs associated.

The final report was released on February 13, 2015 and con-tains a number of recommendations for streamlining and sim-plifying federal regulations. The report can be found on the American Council of Education website, click here.

Department of Education Proposed Regulations for Teacher Preparation Programs—On December 3, 2014, the Depart-ment of Education published proposed regulations for Teacher Preparation Program and asked for comments to be submitted by February 2, 2015. The proposed regulations can be found in the Federal Register. The Department of Education would establish a structure for assessing teacher preparation perfor-mance. States would be required to identify low-performing programs, take action against at-risk programs, define conse-quences of losing State funding and approval, and establish ways to reverse those consequences. Many higher education

associations submitted comments expressing serious concern over proposed regulations. Final regulations are expected to be published in 2015.

Michael E. Maysilles

Vice President for Communications

Website Updates

NEW WEBSITE DESIGN

Vice President of Professional Development, Luke Phil-lips, has unveiled a new website design for msacroa.org. Our old site was based on outdated technology and the template was no longer supported by our Internet Ser-vice Provider. “We needed to find a solution that would allow for faster updates, cleaner page designs, and more features for our members,” said Phillips, “and we were fortunate that this solution is provided by our In-ternet Service Provider at no additional cost to

MSACROA!”

Please visit our website at msacroa.org and check out what the website has to offer: Association history, the Constitution and By-Laws, and a live Twitter feed to name a few. Future plans include a searchable member directory and a members only forum.

Please feel free to reach out to VP Phillips at

luke.phillips@mssm.edu to offer any suggestions for the site.

LOOKING FOR A JOB?

LOOKING TO HIRE STAFF?

Be sure to visit the

MSACROA Jobs Page

. We

list the latest job postings upon

request for the benefit of our members.

Recent postings include:

Senior Systems Analyst - University of Pittsburgh - 03/05/15 VP and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid - Franklin Mar-shall College - 02/18/15

Associate Registrar - Keuka College - 02/03/15

Assistant Registrar Data Manager - Drew University - 01/27/15 Director General Education - University at Buffalo - 01/22/15 Data System Specialist - Salus University - 01/21/15

Save the Date

2015 MSACROA Conference

Dover Downs Hotel

Monday, November 30

– Wednesday, December 2

Mark your calendars now and be on the lookout for additional information in the coming months!

To view take a virtual tour of the facility click this link:

MSACROA Membership

If you haven’t renewed your membership for the 2015 calendar year it is not too late. Membership registration for the 2015 calendar year is still open. We invite you to join or renew your membership today. Active membership in MSACROA has the following benefits:

 Voting rights on business of the Association

 Discount rate at the annual conference

 Contact information listed on the MSACROA website directory

 Associate email updates

 Opportunity to serve as officers and on committees of the association

MSACROA, founded in 1930, is the oldest of the regional groups of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Ad-missions Offices (AACRAO). MSACROA is committed to the professional development of its members through a collegial ex-change of knowledge and professional relationships.

To renew your membership logon to www.msacroa.org and click on the link for Membership Application/Renewal. Member-ship dues are $45 per individual and are based on a calendar year, there is no limit on the number of individual members per institution. Upon completion of the registration process an invoice will be generated that can be mailed with your dues pay-ment. We also accept Visa and Master Card. Be sure to update your contact information during the registration process.

Please note that the last day to register for the 2015 membership is August 1, 2015. Payment must be received by August 31, 2015 in order to be eligible for the member rate for our 2015 conference. Also note that membership is not transfera-ble.