Education made easy
UNM-Gallup registration quick and painless

Diandra James waits in line to register for classes at the University of New Mexico at Gallup on Friday afternoon. The university is holding a One-Stop Registration program through Wednesday of this week to make it easier for students to register for spring classes. [Photo by Brian Leddy/Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Students registering to attend the University of New Mexico — Gallup are seeing something that no one thought would ever happen — a quick and painless registration process.

Forget the days of old when you had to be prepared to spend the good portion of a day going from one line to another to get registered, get your financial aid package worked out and see your adviser.

Irene Tsosie, a Gallup resident in her third year toward a bachelor’s degree, was in and out in less than an hour.

“This is the fastest it has ever been,” she said, adding that she found that one secret of getting through registration quickly is to do so as early as possible.

For Frank Alieto, who came in the afternoon, was in and out in less than 12 minutes.

With the spring semester beginning Monday, students are being given an opportunity to participate in the school’s “one-stop” approach to registration through Wednesday, when students encounter only one line and a bevy of school officials eagerly waiting to make the process as quick and painless as possible.

Suzette Wyaco, the school’s registrar, said the one-stop approach has greatly cut down the time involved in registering with returning students spending between five and 15 minutes to go through the process. Students new to the campus can take an hour or more, she said.

Student enrollment is down a little this year from last year — 1,459 had registered as of Friday morning — but Wayco said the recent snowstorms may have been the cause of that.

The issue of student enrollment has been on the minds of college officials during the past couple of years because of a state policy that would see the branch college from the state if its enrollment went down by 5 percent or more.

“We have had lower enrollments,” branch director Beth Miller said, “but fortunately each time it was just below the 5 percent threshold.”

Still, the college has been taking steps to get as many students in the classrooms as possible, including coming up with a new approach to students who began the semester without enough funds to cover their tuition.

Until a couple of years ago, the policy required by the main campus for the branch colleges in the state was rigid: If you didn’t have the funds at the start of the semester, you couldn’t attend classes.

This forced a lot of students who were still waiting for their tribal scholarship or other funds to arrive to drop out.
Miller said this affected not only the Gallup branch but other branches as well, and when the directors of these branches began complaining, UNM officials listened and agreed to allow for some leniency.

Now, Miller said, as long as the branch knows that the funds are forthcoming, the student is allowed to go through registration and start classes.

Miller said the college checks the student’s grades from the previous semester to make sure that they still qualify to get a scholarship, and if they do, the college is willing to wait until the funds come in.

If the funds don’t come through as scheduled, the financial aid officials for the school sit down with the student and set up a payment plan.

“We make every effort possible to enable a student to go here,” she said.

Also this semester, as it did in the fall semester, the branch won’t be as quick to cancel a class if enrollment doesn’t reach the minimum number of students for that class — usually eight or 15 — by the end of the first week, Instead, college officials look at the enrollment on a class to class basis in an effort to keep enrollment up as much as possible.