University of Great Falls Dives Into eTranscripts

Founded in 1932, the University of Great Falls (UGF) is a small private Roman Catholic liberal arts university with just over 1,000 students who participate in their undergraduate, graduate, and online nursing degree programs.

The registrar’s office is tasked with everything from traditional duties, such as registration and transcript processing, to athletic eligibility, scheduling, cataloging, and institutional compliance. Its staff also supports the university’s robust online nursing program, extensively assisting students through the application process and transcript evaluations.

In order to optimize their office’s efficiency, UGF embarked on an ambitious role as a beta tester and early adopter of Ellucian eTranscripts. eTranscripts, developed through the Clearinghouse’s strategic partnership with Ellucian, is a first-of-its-kind service that offers “touch- free” electronic transcript processing and delivery.

New Opportunities on the Horizon

As a beta tester, UGF eagerly embraced the opportunity and challenges to be part of a revolutionary solution that would enhance the service and efficiency of their registrar’s office. UGF has used the Clearinghouse’s Transcript Ordering service for a number of years, but never had the capability to produce PDFs due to limited IT resources and other hurdles.

UGF worked with the Clearinghouse and Ellucian to get a comprehensive understanding of what was required from eTranscripts beta testers.

UGF and other beta testers provided receiving valuable feedback on how the system was performing, with the Clearinghouse working collaboratively with them to troubleshoot any issues they encountered.

Hard Work Pays Off

Prior to eTranscripts, UFG’s registrar’s office was burdened with, among other responsibilities, the manual data entry of transcript orders. Explained Kerri Koteskey, UGF’s registrar at the time, “We don’t have the volume, but every order prior to eTranscripts had to be manually entered into Banner, printed, stamped, sealed, addressed, then mailed. There are so many different steps involved that it’s a time-consuming process, despite being relatively simple.”

Normally, it took two to four hours for UGF to process transcripts that needed to go out the same day. eTranscripts eliminates manual data entry and automatically populates Banner with the necessary information, reducing the average time spent on each transcript order from 15 minutes to four. “We’re saving about 90 minutes a day using eTranscripts,” said Koteskey. “It doesn’t seem like much, but spread over the course of a week or two, that’s a lot of other work you can get done.” This added time has allowed the registrar’s office to allocate staff resources to other pressing projects.

UGF students have also enjoyed the added convenience of 24/7 processing and delivery that eTranscripts provides. The registrar’s office noted a lot of students order after hours. “We come in in the morning and there’s always something on the printer or that’s been delivered electronically overnight,” recalls Koteskey. “That’s something that we would never be able to do, since we’re not staffing 24/7.” With touch-free processing from eTranscripts, UGF processes 98% of transcript orders without any human intervention. As the number of orders processed through eTranscripts rises, overhead mailing costs fall amounting to, as Koteskey calculated, “enough to pay for airfare to a conference or its registration.”

eTranscripts provides the University of Great Falls a scalable solution for their electronic transcript ordering needs as well as a time- and cost-savings process that benefits students, alumni, and the institution. “We have not had a single complaint about the service. I think if we hadn’t delivered the level of service we promised, we probably would have gotten pushback from students and probably administration. But we’ve been able to meet and exceed those expectations. It was the right move for us,” said Koteskey.