Starting Monday, April 28, returning students will be registering for classes for Fall 2025 using a new student information system. The Chronicle spoke with Associate Provost for Student Retention Initiatives Greg Foster-Rice, who is hopeful that the new system will address some of the common issues during registration week. Here are three things to know about class registration for Fall 2025.
TRANSCRIPT:
0:06: Welcome to the Three C’s with the Columbia Chronicle, your go-to source for the top three things every Columbia College student, faculty and staff member needs to know.
0:17: We’re here to bring you credible information about our campus and provide the clarity you need on the issues that matter most.
0:24: I’m your host, Sydney Richardson.
0:28: The course schedule for Fall 2025 is live today, April 21st.
0:33: Returning students will be able to register for their classes starting next week on Monday, April 28th.
0:40: Students should check their email for their designated registration date and time.
0:45: This semester, Columbia is adopting a new student information system that will combine several functions into one portal.
0:52: Students will register for their classes using this new system, which is still accessible from MyColumbia.
0:58: Faculty will be added to the system in the summer.
1:02: The Chronicle spoke with Associate Provost for Student Retention Initiatives Greg Foster-Rice, who is hopeful that the new system will address some of the common issues during registration week.
1:13: Here are three things to know about the new information system and class registration for Fall 2025.
1:20: First, Foster-Rice emphasized that students can help make registration go smoother by preparing and planning before registration begins.
1:29: I would argue that there’s sort of three phases to registration, and our new student information system really plays a role in the second two phases.
1:36: The first is just preparation.
1:38: Preparation involves looking at your You Achieve or your degree audit.
1:42: Looking at what classes you might need to finish your degree program, double checking under financial holds to make sure that you don’t have any under holds, to make sure that you don’t have any financial holds, academic holds, immunization holds, all that kind of stuff, and then just double checking that email that everybody should have gotten on Friday, April 11th that lets you know what time your registration day is.
2:02: Planning, which begins on Monday, April 21st, is gonna look a little bit different.
2:07: And that’s because of the new student information system, which is a sort of long, complicated term for the portal that you’re gonna be registering for, and eventually the portal for all things Columbia.
2:16: You’ll get to it through the same my.colum.edu.
2:20: And then when you go to Fall registration starting on Monday to be able to look at the course schedule, to be able to see what courses are available, starting the week of registration on the 28th, you’re gonna be taken to a whole new portal and it’s gonna be in, I hope, an incredible experience.
2:35: It’s gonna be a lot more clear, offers a lot more advanced search options, the ability to sort of block out your courses and look at them on an actual calendar, see when your courses are available, what times they are, look at different sections, and then hold on to that.
2:48: And then that’ll get to register, the third phase, which is gonna be the week of April 28th when you actually, whenever your registration date is. Earlier in the week for seniors and those getting closer to graduation, later in the week for new students.
3:03: When you have your registration date, you go back into that same portal and then you’re just gonna see the buttons, you’re gonna make sure that there’s still available seats in the courses that you wanted, and if there’s still available seats in all those, you can hit register now.
3:15: Additionally, if students need help with registration next week, they can make appointments with advisors using the old system, but that will change for future semesters.
3:26: Students will still make appointments with and talk to their advisors using the old mechanisms that they’ve been using, on my.colum.edu.
3:34: And what students are gonna see is increasingly beginning in the fall of 2025 when you come back to campus for the fall semester, there will be a standalone app for your phone, and my.column.edu is going to have a completely different visual interface with a series of tiles across the page.
3:53: I understand that it’s been frustrating on the part of students to get appointments with their advisors.
3:57: There are several new advisors who were onboarded and are working for the college now to fill some of those gaps, so we’re hoping that that’ll make the experience a little bit easier for students this registration period.
4:15 Although those folks are new to the college and they’re a little bit learning on the job during this registration season, we also have a group of faculty who’ve been identified as faculty advising fellows in each of the schools.
4:25 Those are faculty who are a little bit of a, sort of, complimentary add-on.
4:28: They may not be able to answer all of the very specific details about things like course waivers and substitutions and some of the more complicated stuff that an official adviser would be able to handle, but they can specifically, they can really help students with some of those program-specific, what course should I take next in this sequence for my professional development.
4:48: Students should also keep an eye on waitlists while registering for courses.
4:53: Oftentimes that is, you register for classes, especially if you’re a newer student, first year, second year, that you might be on those waitlists.
5:02: This year there’s gonna be waitlists for just about every class I’m pretty sure.
5:06: What will happen is as a seat opens up, which happens because people’s schedules change, they determine that they need a different course, the first person on that waitlist will get notified by email that they have 48 hours from the moment when that seat has become available.
5:22: They’ve got 48 hours to take that seat.
5:25: If they don’t, they get bumped off the waitlist and the next person gets an email, says, you’ve got 48 hours kind of thing.
5:31: Foster-Rice said the implementation of the new system is a response to student feedback.
5:37: And I just really, want to get across to students that we have heard you, that we recognize it’s important for us to step up and create a student experience that allows you to focus on the other work that you do here and that you do so amazingly well that we’re so excited about.
5:53: And hopefully this makes it easier for all of us by centralizing communications, by unifying our various advising and support services, and giving everybody holistic wraparound support to then do the amazing creative work that we know is happening between our faculty, our staff and our students, so.
6:10: Listen to our other stories at ColumbiaChronicle.com and sign up for our newsletter at ColumbiaChronicle.com/newsletter.
6:18: Be sure to also check out conversations for weekly campus highlights.
6:23: I’m Sydney Richardson.
6:25: Thanks for listening.
Copy edited by Trinity Balboa
