Fall is upon us again with a new cohort of graduate students. Welcome!
With one term now behind us, using our now, not-so-new registration system, I thought I’d reflect on it. First, all new students should make sure that they are connected to the myHRinfo system. This can be done through your department secretary. Those of you who have been at UW for a while should already be connected to it. Once you visit this site, you can see a list of all workshops that are offered by our Centre. Some, you will see, are active, and some are not. (You’ll have to scroll a bit to find the workshop.) More workshops are added to the list each term. Numbers between 001 to 499 are assigned to grad students. Please note that numbers between 500 to 999 are restricted to faculty, as some of you may have found out, when your registration was canceled. I must admit, it is not an easy process for the first-timer, but it does get easier.
The good thing about this registration system is that no matter what workshops you register for, they will show up on your myHRinfo record, with a few conditions. If you have completed the CUT Program or ITA Training, the workshops will keep accumulating. We do monitor attendance. Participants that arrive late/leave early will get no acknowledgment on their record as having attended the workshop. Part of ITA Training is attending six workshops, meaning, participants need to be there for the entire time. CUT participants also need two workshops for attendance so, they too, need to be there the entire time. It is only common courtesy to arrive on time and stay. This makes it less disruptive for the participants and facilitator.
What participants may not know is that, if you register, and do not attend a workshop, a “no show” is assigned to your name. If you cannot attend, just give us a call or send an email before the event so we can assign “dropped”. If you have too many “no shows”, we may restrict you from registering for events. As our enrollment is limited for most workshops, someone not showing up takes a space from someone who is genuinely interested in attending.
Overall, once you get over the initial frustration, it’s not too bad. It allows participants to have a record of their attendance. It does, however, create more work behind the scenes for us.
If you would like to comment or share your registration experience, we would appreciate it.
