News in Brief

By Rice Thresher Staff     11/5/13 6:00pm

Students will have until Nov. 17 to submit their desired course selections for this spring semester to Esther, according to University Registrar David Tenney (Sid Richardson '87).

"An important thing to highlight ... is the fact that some departments might be adding courses," Tenney said. "I don't see that as a bad thing. We are pleased to see new courses get added, [but] students will want to be aware that there might be some courses added late next week .... For that reason, we encourage students to regularly check the online schedule and to update their Esther Course Registration Planner ... up to its closing day."

According to Tenney, the add/drop period will begin Nov. 11 at 7 a.m. and will be available for 15 minutes to each year's matriculants, starting with 2010 and proceeding by year until 2014. He said that, until 8 a.m., at which point all students can add, drop and wait-list courses, students will need to enter a registration PIN, which is the last six digits of their student ID number, to access the system.

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"There was a time discrepancy last spring," Tenney said. "Behind the scenes, on the technical side, when loading PINs, there was an error made which allowed some students ... to register in the earlier 15-minute time slot. That was identified, and steps have been taken to ensure that this doesn't happen again."

Tenney said the 2014 spring semester course catalog is currently available on Esther or Schedule Planner, an unofficial application created by Rice professor in the practice of computer science Scott Cutler that can be accessed at scheduleplanner.rice.edu.

"Schedule Planner is not an officially supported Rice University application," Tenney said. "[Cutler] has built a very nice graphical tool, and I know that its intuitive interface is deeply appreciated by the students. The structure and technology behind the tool is different from what is supported by Rice University and the Administrative Systems department, and for that reason there are no plans to integrate it into Esther."

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