Oracle Online

Herbrand had taken time on the weekend to check into the apparent errors in my transcript as well as to research the history of AP course equivalencies in the university’s administrative database, Banner. When
I met with herlast Tuesday, she immediately apologized to me, admitted her office had made a mistake on my transcript, and said I should have received many more course equivalencies than I did. She allowed me to pick and choose which of my AP tests I would like to apply towards my transcript (there is a maximum of 20 credits allowed), and I opted to take the courses that translated directly into useful coursework.

Having taken AP Statistics in high school, I had once dreamed that thecourse would count towards my “big R” formal reasoning requirement at Hamline. Well, it does now, but a semester too late. Last semester, I took Logic in the philosophy department, and, while I enjoyed the class, I shouldn’t have had to take it.

Additionally, my AP U.S. Government test now counts as American National Government under political science, which is my minor. Had I not gone to the registrar’s office to get this course on my transcript, my political science minor would have seemed incomplete to me. Herbrand said that she and her office will be conducting a full audit of AP students’ transfer credits, in an attempt to find out what went wrong and to prevent these errors from occurring in the future. Because Herbrand was not employed at Hamline when these policies were implemented or when most of the errors in student transcripts seem to have occurred, she can’t explain exactly what happened, but she believes it may have been a case of simple human error. Herbrand says there is a command within the Banner system which “articulates” students’ transfer credits into the appropriate Hamline course equivalencies, and this command may not have been run on a number of student records.

Still, she says, and I agree, that there is little point in trying to figure out what went wrong and why. Rather, the registrar is focusing on setting students’ records right and making sure these problems don’t arise again. For those students who feel they didn’t get the credit they were due, Herbrand says the best thing to do is alert her office of the issue so that they can examine the relevant files and fix any errors that may have occurred.

For my part, I am impressed with the registrar’s office and its commitment to set things right for AP students who didn’t receive the credit they deserved. While I am pleased with the outcome of my work on this project, I don’t think this is something that should have required three weeks of amateur investigative journalism to discover.

The admissions office, the registrar’s office, and the college shouldbetter coordinate their information and efforts in regard to Hamline’s AP policy, if just to give students and easier time of understanding this complicated issue.

Students, faculty, staff, and administrators will now have a clearer view of the status of the AP policy at Hamline. Hopefully, all these groups can come together to create a policy that maximizes the interests of both students and the university as a whole and ensure that policy will be accurately and fairly implemented.