Design a graduation application process that promotes completion

Abstract

When Margo Landy, Ph.D., became University Registrar at San Francisco State University in fall 2019, the graduation evaluation process was paper based, and it took at least two to three months to award degrees after end of term processing. The university had a degree audit system, but it wasn't being used to review student completion. Also, the deadline for students to apply to graduate was in the middle of the term the student intended to graduate, so if a student hadn't completed all the requirements, it was too late to do anything about it. That made for difficult conversations when students learned in March that they weren't going to graduate, Landy said.