Chuck Hurley
A collaboration between the Office of the Registrar and the Alumni Association has heightened security and accelerated delivery of student transcripts and diplomas. The process, with applicants authenticated through Alumni’s myNotreDame portal to guard against identity theft, provides same-day service for electronic transcripts.
“For decades, alumni could only order transcripts by completing a paper form on our website,” says Registrar Chuck Hurley (’93, ’01, ’07). “It was not the most elegant solution. We were really interested in trying to collaboratively construct a secure application with our friends over at the Alumni Association and increasing services to alumni.”
The transcript service came online in late 2013. Once the system was in place, the process for requesting diplomas was implemented last fall. Both systems automatically fill out the request form with most of the person’s information. For diplomas, the applicant can choose sheepskin (for graduates up to 2011) or paper, delivered by Federal Express.
“By collaborating on transcripts, that laid the foundation for integrating the Registrar system with the myNotreDame portal,” Hurley says. “All the pipes were essentially there. We just had to hook them up, so to speak. We do not receive that many diploma requests in comparison to transcripts.”
The office processes a few hundred diploma requests a year compared to some 50,000 transcript requests — about half from seniors applying to jobs or graduate schools, half from alumni who are changing jobs, returning to school or fulfilling requirements for visas, background checks and other processes that involve such documentation.
“Most people want the transcript sent from the registrar’s office to the receiver directly — to the grad school, to the law school, to the employers, to the person requesting the background check,” Hurley says. “They want to remove the opportunity for potentially tampering with the transcript. We have a secure electronic PDF transcript that we send to those recipients directly. In the majority of instances, electronic delivery and receipt have become the expectation for alumni, and we are pleased to provide such a service.”
Hurley initiated the move to a new transcript request process in 2012, partnering with Mark Welch (’04), Alumni’s director of information technology. Assistant Registrar Paul Ullrich (’08), App Integration Architect Brandon Rich, Alumni Association Interactive Specialist Paul Weikel and Senior Associate Registrar Amika Micou helped establish it. Commencement and Records Specialist Amy Jennings (’95) helped add the diploma service.
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