The Knox Student

The new ‘one stop shopping’ site for the Registrar hopes to bring many new features and an easy to use layout to replace the dated system that most students use regularly.

Over winter break the Registrar launched the My Knox website with some hiccups, but an easier to use layout that will benefit students, faculty and staff.

“The communication when the site went up frustrated me; nobody was told [about it] and it was down for a while,” sophomore Caitlin Stone said. “But functionally it works.”

Despite some frustration by students when the site originally launched, the website’s functionality has made it easy for students to navigate the pages.

“It’s actually been a big improvement from the last website. There are a lot of things that have been added to the website that I couldn’t find in the last one,” sophomore Gabe Moreno said.

The Registrar was forced to do the upgrade after the software host Jenzabar no longer supported the old software.

In addition to the software upgrade, a Degree Audit program created by Jenzabar has replaced the computer code for the Educational Development Record (EDR), which was designed by a student in the 90s.

“I like that they provided the moment you got on there, a frequently asked questions thing so people didn’t have to bumble around,” Stone said.

“It was quite a lot of work,” Director of the Registrar Kevin Hastings said. Hastings has been working on getting the new site up and running with the help of the Computer Center and Associate Director of Web and New Media Services Sean Riedel.

The new site brings greater search capabilities for students as well as faculty and the site allows faculty to reserve rooms automatically online.

“I think it’s a lot easier to use. And working in the Computer Center, there are a lot less questions about it than the other program,” junior Amanda Lee said.

For the students that spend a large part of their time off campus, the new website will allow for their access from anywhere on or off campus.

“The other nice thing that I can think of is the ability to produce unofficial transcripts on your own,” Hastings said. The need for unofficial transcripts has grown recently for jobs and grad school applications.

It is expected that there will be additional uses for the site over the next year as the My Pages and My Groups begin to be used by organizations around campus.

“I like the feature that you can add your own pages,” senior Adrienne Wagner said. “I’ve not actually used it yet, but if I ever get around to it that would be really cool.”