As you know, pre-registration for the fall semester of the 2011-12 academic year begins on Friday, April 15. You recently received from the Office of the Registrar information about the pre-registration process, and I would encourage you to review that document before Friday.

I write now in order to inform you, first, of several steps we have already taken over the course of the current year in response to enrollment pressures on the Whitman curriculum; and, second, some of the steps we will take following the completion of pre-registration for the fall semester of the 2011-12 academic year. The latter in particular will open up many additional enrollment opportunities, and you will have an opportunity to take advantage of these opportunities during final registration in the fall.

1)           Steps taken over the course of the current year to date: At the beginning of the 2010-11 academic year, I requested that the Registrar work with my office as well as WCTS to create a web-based mechanism for the submission of course information. This spring, department chairs used that mechanism in entering their course, enrollment, and scheduling information for the 2011-12 academic year.

Analysis of this information has provided us with a global perspective on course offerings for 2011-12; and that in turn has enabled us to compare these offerings to projected student demand. More specifically, last month, the elected leaders of the faculty met with members of the Registrar’s Office in order to review the overall course schedule for next year. Our aim in doing so was to determine whether proposed departmental schedules adequately distribute courses across semesters, across upper and lower levels, and among the available time slots within any given semester. In conducting this review, we attended not simply to the distribution of courses, but also to the number of available enrollment seats across semesters and among different time slots during each semester.

Following this analysis, in instances where we found cause for concern, we returned to departments in order to indicate that courses needed to be shifted from one semester to another; that courses needed to be better balanced at different levels; that courses needed to be better distributed among time slots in order to reduce the phenomenon of “course compression” (i.e., the fact that certain time slots are more heavily utilized than others); etc.

Adoption of this process now enables us to secure a better balanced set of course offerings that anticipates and is responsive to college-wide enrollment needs. No doubt, this process will require modification and refinement as we learn from its use; and, no doubt, there will be bumps along the road. Still, these represent important steps toward ensuring that our curricular offerings are managed in ways that serve well the interests of Whitman students.

2)           Steps to be taken following the completion of pre-registration: Pre-registration is a vital step in the overall registration process, but it is not the only or the final step. Indeed, pre-registration is one of the best ways we can identify the course needs and preferences of students for the fall semester, which in turn enables us to make whatever changes we can prior to final registration at the beginning of the 2011-12 academic year. In addition, please recall that we are still in the process of completing several tenure-track hires, and that we are in the midst of hiring faculty members on one-year appointments for 2011-12. Accordingly, many of the courses to be taught by these faculty members are not yet indicated on the list of courses for which you may now pre-register.

As I did late this past summer, following the completion of pre-registration this spring, where there appear to be insufficient enrollment spots in specific areas of the curriculum, I will ask faculty members, if possible, to increase enrollment caps, to reserve seats in lower-level courses for incoming as well as second year students, to admit students from waitlists, and so forth. In addition, as I did last summer, I will seek to identify and hire qualified faculty members to teach additional sections of existing courses and/or entirely new courses.

Moreover, I will ensure that newly-added courses are scheduled in under-utilized time slots in order to minimize the effects of course compression. Once again, please recall that many of these changes and additions to the curriculum are not included in the list of courses for which you may pre-register now, but will be available at the time of final registration.

I would like to close, first, with a request that students appreciate certain of the ineradicable limits to our efforts to engage in advance planning of the curriculum. Whitman’s Director of Institutional Research has developed an enrollment projection model, and I have and will continue to employ that model in my efforts to strike a reasonable balance between anticipated student demand and available instructional opportunities. Such reliance, however, is less than a perfect science. This is so for a number of reasons, including the fact that the adequacy of measures taken now in planning for the 2011-12 academic year turns in large part on a key variable that will not be known with complete certainty until late August: specifically, the number of new students who will actually enroll next fall. This uncertainty is compounded by the fact that student preferences for courses and majors can be predicted with some, but only partial, accuracy. Accordingly, while the mechanisms we have put in place this year enable us to engage in more accurate and effective enrollment planning, it is important to recall that these efforts are undertaken under conditions of imperfect and incomplete knowledge.

Second, and more important, I wish to repeat a pledge I made in a communication I sent to all students last November. It would be misguided to hold that Whitman College will, can, or should guarantee every student access to every course he or she wishes to take in any given semester. I strongly believe, though, that we have an institutional obligation to ensure that incoming students are enrolled in our required first year course; that all students are able to take sufficient credits to stay on track for an on-time graduation; that students have adequate opportunities to satisfy their distribution requirements; that declared majors can fulfill their major requirements; and that students are provided adequate opportunities to take elective courses that correspond to their particular interests even if these courses are not necessary to fulfill a college requirement. Toward this end, between now and fall registration, within the limits imposed by staffing and budgetary constraints, I will make every effort to expand the enrollment opportunities available to students in fall semester courses.

Finally, if you encounter difficulties during pre-registration process, please do not forget that a key responsibility of your academic advisor is to help you sort through these issues.

Thank you.

Tim K-O

Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn

Provost and Dean of the Faculty