By Nicole McGovern

A new system that spread course registration over four days instead of two made the process much easier for students registering for their fall classes.

Previously, undergraduate registration took place in just two days, and with too many students trying to access the internet or telephone phone registration system at the same time the system would crash, leaving students dissatisfied, as reported last week in The News.

The Office of the University Registrar, along with Information Services, has been working on ways to expand the time when registration is available and reduce the amount of students trying to access the system at once.

“We installed a four-day PASS (Primary Access Schedules) – starting with rising seniors, then juniors, middlers and sophomores,” said Nina Ledoyt, senior associate registrar

This year, each class had an entire day to register for classes, and could log on or call according to an allotted time period that corresponded with each student’s ID number.

Last semester, the first group of students would begin at 8 a.m., and the next group would sign on at 9 a.m., etc. There was not enough time between groups and the system would be constantly jammed all day, Ledoyt said.

“There are now three hours for each section. This allows students to register in between class time,” Ledoyt said.

Dianna Mastromauro, a sophomore cardiopulmonary and exercise studies major, said she thought the three-hour time slot was going to be a problem at first, but it worked out well for her on registration day.

“I thought it was going to be hard to get into the classes I wanted because it was so spread out, but it was easy and stress-free,” she said.

Along with an expanded registration period, Information Services was also keeping an eye on the Web.

“The system was being monitored by quite a number of people at every change point to make sure there were no problems,” Ledoyt said. “And I know that Information Services implemented some other changes to the web.”

This semester’s registration ran extremely smoothly, Ledoyt said.

There was only one outage of 35 minutes reported, Ledoyt said. The system was immediately rebooted, affecting minimal students, she said.

Gabrielle DiBuono, a sophomore communications major, was satisfied when she tried to register for classes.

“I got through on the phone and computer every time I tried,” she said. “I thought it was a lot better; good job NU.”