The last thing a student wants to hear before graduation is that he or she is missing a required course.

The evaluation staff at Lassen Hall is available to advise students on graduation requirements and to assist in making sure all requirements are met for a smooth road to graduation day.

Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Edward Mills said the number one goal of his staff is providing the criteria students must meet to graduate on time. If something important is missed during the evaluation process, graduation would be delayed.

“The most important thing we do, and the most complicated, is to give students the information on what they need to graduate,” Mills said.

Jayme Richards, degree evaluation adviser, said the most common mistake is when students do not meet the 40 upper division minimum unit requirement. Richards said oftentimes a major will have a requirement of 30 units for the major and an additional required nine units of upper division general education courses. This only adds up to 39 units, leaving the student one unit short.

Richards said a typical day for an evaluator includes following up on policy questions from students and staff, conferring degrees on student records, reviewing and preparing a graduation evaluation for the student and setting up advising sessions with students who have applied to graduate.

Because Mills staff is behind, students are not receiving their evaluations in time to add necessary classes to meet graduation requirements.

Sacramento State implemented the Common Management System known as CMS last year, a software program used for finance and student administration. Mills said the software program slowed down the evaluation process. Graduation checkouts went down from 25 an hour to four to six an hour.

Mills said demand on the California State University system data center infrastructure reached an all-time high due to the increase in CSU campuses that recently migrated to the PeopleSoft Student Administration System. Several campuses were also simultaneously going through enrollment. Since that time, the CSU has added additional hardware to support campuses and is working proactively with campuses to anticipate periods of high demand.

An inefficient system is one reason why the degree evaluation process can get behind; staffing is another reason. Right now, Mills has 12 people on his staff processing degree evaluations. Due to budget cuts this year, he cannot add more people to his staff; he said training evaluators is a complicated process.

An evaluator must have a tremendous amount of knowledge concerning differing scenarios of each graduating student. Mills said it takes one to three years to train an evaluator.

Richards said her job includes understanding the transfer credit processes and the accreditation and evaluation of all transfer credits. She must also have extensive knowledge of policy and education codes for systemwide and university policies, as well as each individual major program.

Vivian Llamas Green, associate registrar, said the student graduation application could have multiple updates, which adds time to the process. In the first meeting with the student, the evaluator looks at the application and checks off each requirement that has been fulfilled. In that process, if the evaluator finds something missing – such as a transfer transcript – the student has to come back with the missing item. There could be multiple tasks a student must follow through on in order to meet graduation requirements.

“Checking every single graduation application is a labor-intensive process,” Llamas Green said.

Richards said incoming freshmen have it a little easier since all of their graduation requirement information is in the Sac State system.

Llamas Green and Richards said the evaluation is easier when a student has used the online tools to check their graduation requirements. An area on the MySacState website allows students to see what they have completed for graduation.

Richards said there are students who work closely with their faculty adviser but might still miss out on something vital needed for their degree. Faculty advisers are not always aware of the changes in policies to obtain a degree, and new programs may or may not be in the school catalog.

Richards strongly encourages students to look at the information that is available online for graduation requirements. Llamas Green and Richards encourage students to drop by with questions; they are here to help. They will let students know if any red flags are holding them back from graduating on time.

“Online information will never replace the human touch,” Richards said.

University registrar Dennis Geyer said he and his staff attend evaluator conferences and share best practices with one another, talking about what works in the evaluation process and what does not work. He said the software program is a very integrated system, and they have to pay attention to how it works, while students need to understand all of the steps required to earn their degree.

Mills said he met with his staff last week to brainstorm and come up with more efficient ways to get student graduation requirements out to the students in a more timely manner.

Mills would like to see all schools require the same education requirements. He is working on having a central online location for all graduation requirements, showing an easy-to-follow tutorial with a 60-second video explaining what the student needs to do to meet graduation requirements.

Sally King can be reached at [email protected].