Is your diploma on hold?

Many seniors will don caps and gowns and enter the real world in a few days, which eventually means diplomas and a confirmation of their degree posted online.

Although about 3,600 seniors will participate in the commencement ceremony, some will not actually know if they’ve earned their diploma beforehand because of a backlog in the processing of graduation evaluations.

The Evaluations unit of the Office of Academic Records (OAR) has been unable to notify 600 seniors if they are set to graduate or if they failed to meet all requirements. All were students who did not turn in their graduation evaluation requests until after Nov. 1, 2006; the Evaluations office recommends turning them in four quarters in advance to avoid a backlog such as this.

Some students, like journalism senior Megan Marderosian, received a notice from their department that their evaluations would not be handed back before graduation. Therefore, if any classes or degree requirements have not been fulfilled, a student will not know until the ceremony itself.

“I received an e-mail from the journalism department saying that everyone who turned in their evaluation after fall quarter would not be getting their graduation evaluation back before they graduated,” Marderosian said.

She added that she has managed to independently keep track of her own academic progress and doesn’t expect any surprises.

“I did everything to ensure that I graduated on time,” Marderosian said. “I don’t feel like I should have to come back to San Luis Obispo and take another class.”

Thomas Zuur, OAR registrar and director of academic records, said that the biggest reason for not giving back graduation evaluations is because students were late to turn them in. However, he said that the friends and family of those students will not be disappointed on graduation day.

“The students just didn’t file a timely request to graduate,” Zuur said. “However, they’re not being held out of commencement ceremonies.”

Although there are only two formal graduation commencement ceremonies at Cal Poly during spring and fall quarters, the college graduates students every quarter. This adds more stress to the 10 people who work in the Evaluations office.

“We go student by student, and we check everything that was left after your graduation evaluation,” academic progress counselor Helen Bailey said.

Zuur said that the Evaluations office works hard every quarter to ensure that students meet graduation requirements and get out of college on time.

The OAR, which is in charge of evaluating a student’s progress toward a major, strongly encourages seniors to turn in a graduation evaluation form at least four quarters before they walk the stage.

“It’s a manner of planning and resource (usage),” Bailey said. “It lets us plan and kind of handle our workload a little bit better. We get a sense of what’s out there.”

Bailey noted that this is the first time she remembers there being so many students who won’t receive their graduation evaluations ahead of time. Although she said that transferring to the PeopleSoft program played a small role in that backlog, being short-staffed also contributed.

“We are hoping that given that we’ve gotten over the conversion to PeopleSoft . and we’ve got more staffing, with those things in place, we’re looking ahead to next year,” Bailey said.

She added that they plan to work more closely with the departments in the next year so fewer students turn in their requests late.

“We’re sending the word through advisers even more thoroughly that they need to be sending the message to students that they need to turn things in four quarters in advance,” Bailey said.

The workload of graduation evaluations is broken down according to college and major. Bailey said that these divisions exist so that the Evaluations office can “specialize more in the complexities and kind of minutiae of the various curricula.”

To make the process of graduation evaluations go faster, there is a push to have an automated degree audit system where degree requirements are checked on a regular basis. Right now the system is known as “Poly Progress,” available to some students.

“We’re hoping that it will be a good tool,” Bailey said. “The more automated the system is, the more efficient our office could be.”

Until such a system is widely used for instant degree audits, OAR recommends that students turn in their evaluations in a timely manner so they can walk the stage at the right time.

“It’s kind of a shared responsibility,” Bailey said. “If (faculty and staff) can all work together on completion because if students are on top of their curriculum, it’s a smoother flow for everybody.”