Last semester, the Registrar Advisory Committee (RAC) approved student committee member recommendations for changes to online course pre-registration. The two primary changes, intended to better inform students about scheduling and seat availability, will add calendars to the University’s online course catalog, WesMaps, and provide information about how many students have ranked each course on their list of desired courses.

The calendars will show students the meeting times of their ranked courses in order to avoid scheduling conflicts when selecting courses, according to Jeff Stein ’10, Chair of the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) Academic Affairs Committee and a member of the Registrar Advisory Committee.

“This should give people a better idea of how to rank their courses,” he said.

The RAC was formed at the beginning of last semester in order to increase student involvement in the policies of the Registrar, including course selection and the Reading Week schedule. It consists of the four members of the WSA Academic Affairs Committee, Registrar Anna van der Burg, and representatives from ITS, the Provost’s Office, and the Deans’ Office.

The Office of Academic Affairs and Deans’ Office also approved the changes, which will be implemented by Information Technology Services (ITS), ideally in time for the fall 2010 pre-registration in April, according to van der Burg.