On the first day of the winter 2025 registration on Nov. 18, 2024, several coding errors and pre-requisite classes left some students of the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication frustrated and confused when registering for classes.
“I had a hard time picking (because of) the classes filling up so quick,” Shawn Oezcelik, a sophomore majoring in sports journalism, said.
Students were first alerted of these coding errors through email correspondence from the SOJC’s Advising department on Nov. 18, 2024, at 10:41 a.m.
A follow-up email was sent at 2:15 p.m. and then again at 3:44 p.m. updating students on which class codes had been fixed as well as those that still needed to be addressed.
The final update was sent out to students on Nov. 19, 2024, at 10:03 a.m. stating that all issues had supposedly been resolved.
These registration errors follow the second term of the SOJC’s new curriculum shift from “J” to “JCOM.”
“When you have a program change, where everything comes together and is finally approved after the schedule has already been created, you’re absolutely right that you’re going to have some things that need to be updated very quickly,” Heather Gustafson, associate registrar for registration and records, said.
According to Deb Morrison, associate dean of undergraduate affairs, as the SOJC navigates reshaping the curriculum, it’s expected to have some difficulties on the technical side of things but did not expect the rapid filling of prerequisite courses.
“At the onset, we were not as concerned because we knew they (issues) were going to be there. We knew that winter was going to be our real shakedown cruise and we were ready to fix things,” Morrison said.
According to Oezcelik, he was not able to register for some of his classes because they were filled by the time his registration time opened.
“As someone who is a sophomore and sometimes late for paying their fees, I definitely got the short end of the stick when it came to picking classes so I didn’t get the exact classes I needed,” Oezcelik said.
According to Morrison, the SOJC opened several more courses following the registration error.
“We (SOJC) needed more of the platform courses, particularly story craft, audio and visual, so we added another section,” Morrison said. “We opened up a number of courses for students, adding to the totals we added 300 seats all over the place.”
