Online appointment

problems A Transfer Center glitch slows scheduling

Sofi Matzaganian

Campus Life Editor @sofimatz

Students are not getting where they need to go due to a scheduling glitch within the Transfer Center. Recently, students have been having problems making appointments with counselors at the Transfer Center using the online appointment system. To make an appointment, there are certain criteria that must be met, such as having a history of at least 24 units at Pierce College.

The problem some students are facing is that they have met this requirement, but are not able to make the counseling appointments via the online system.

“Since last semester every time I had tried to make an appointment, the system would tell me that I had less than 24 units,” said Pierce College Student Allan Rivera. This process has proven grueling for some students. Especially those who do not attend classes every day of the week and are not here regularly. In order for these students to actually get these appointments, they must go through a series of steps. As a result of the glitch, Rivera had to make an appointment with the Transfer Center in an alternative way. Students who have completed over 24 units at Pierce, but are having trouble with the online system must go into the Transfer Center. From there, the student would have to fill out a form and have it reviewed by the clerk. After the student has verified they have completed at least 24 units at Pierce, they must again see the clerk to make an appointment for another date.

During appointments with counselors, students can ask questions pertaining to the transfer process as well as their personal educational goals.

“It’s important because they need to have access to that

[ENROLLMENT from page 1] resource so that they have access to that information, so that they know how to go about the process of transferring,” said Transfer Counselor Akadina Amrekhasadeh.

Students’ accessibility to materials and information is an integral part of finding transfer success.

The current glitch with the online appointment system has prolonged students in Rivera’s position from receiving the help they need from the during this transfer season.

While some students are experiencing the online appointment glitch for the Transfer Center, they may still have their questions answered by other counselors.

“Every single counselor is a transfer counselor,” Sunday Salter, director of the transfer center, said. “We do it this way because most students at Pierce plan to transfer.”

The problem is currently being explored further and will hopefully be resolved soon. smatzaganian.roundupnews@gmail.com

“I think the positive that we can take out of this, is the administration's willingness to acknowledge their mistake, take responsibility and their will to correct it in a timely manner,” said Roberson. Regalado hopes as the college and district staff continue to learn the integrities of our new student information system (PeopleSoft Campus Solutions), the staff will become more familiar with the system, making a smaller margin for error.

“This incident made me realize that we need to develop a policy and schedule on when to purge the waitlist,” said Regalado. “The date should be sometime after the last day to add classes for each unique session to prevent something like this from happening again.”

She assured that no student that was accidently auto-enrolled from the waitlist on September 11 will receive a “W” on their transcript and they are retaining an Excel file of all the students affected by the waitlist auto-enrollment issue. That way, if a discrepancy does occur, for example, they do receive a “W,” not only will the system record the add date of the invalid auto-enrolled class but we will have a hard copy of the transactions performed.

When asked about the current status of the students enrolled, Donna Villanueva explained that they do not have anymore updates at the moment.

“We are still waiting to hear, I don’t have any updates right now” said Villanueva.

If students are still experiencing problems with autoenrollment or adding classes, they should contact a counselor to get further assistance.

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