The major changes made by Registration and Records to the MyPack Portal registration page, which overhauled how students register for classes, has been met with mixed response from students and faculty alike.

Louis Hunt, vice provost and University registrar, said the reactions to the new system have been what he expected.

“The reactions are mixed,” he said. “It’s quite a bit of change and people are having some difficulty adjusting at times.”

The changes, introduced in mid March, included things like automatic prerequisite enforcement and the addition of a wish list feature and were designed to make the registration process easier and smoother for students.

Hunt said the transition for Registration and Records has been smooth despite the somewhat mixed feedback from students.

“We’ve heard some very positive feedback and others have said they wanted the old system back, it’s been really mixed,” he said. “Our [transition] to the new system has really been quite smooth. The folks from [the Office of Information Technology] have done a good job to mitigate problems and minimize the change.”

Michael Clayton, a junior in parks, recreation and tourism management, said he didn’t have too many problems when he registered March 24.

“My first impression was that I thought it would be harder to look up classes by sections and it took me a while to do that,” he said. “But I liked the wish list feature because I could look up classes before I enrolled and I ended up not caring that it was harder to find classes.”

Clayton did say the new system is somewhat harder to navigate and has more steps than the old system.

“The new system makes it harder to view your schedule and try to add classes at the same time,” he said. “You had to either browse by subject or by course number. It just took a little longer.”

Elizabeth Stevens, a freshman in psychology, also said she had trouble when she registered Monday.

“Once you find the class you want, there are like three steps to actually add it,” Stevens said. “And it doesn’t have the time table like the old system for printing your schedule. You can’t read the new one so I ended up drawing my own.”

Another problem Stevens said she had came when she tried to drop a class from the fall semester but almost dropped a class from this semester.

“You had to make sure you chose the right term,” she said. “It would have been really easy to drop one of the classes I have now.”

One feature which Stevens said is an upgrade is the wish list.

“I used the wish list before I made my schedule so when I logged on to actually register it was faster,” she said.

Hunt said the system will continue to be improved by OIT and changes will continue to make the process easier in future registration cycles.

“We’re quite pleased that we’ve enrolled tens of thousands of students and we haven’t had any system crashes,” Hunt said. “Many of the things people have indicated as problems have been able to be adjusted because of the abilities of the new system.”

Hunt said things should continue to run smoother as students learn the new system better.

“It’s going to take some learning,” he said. “But as [students] become more familiar with it they will benefit from it.”

Clayton agreed and said change is something everyone has to deal with.

“It’s something we have to get used to,” he said. “Everybody hates stuff at the beginning. It’s exactly like when Facebook changes. For a week there are a thousand groups wanting to change it and then everyone gets used to it.”

Despite the initial challenges and a bit of a learning curve, Hunt said the infrastructure of the new system has held up well.

“Our first goal was to get the system up and have a successful registration cycle,” he said. “We certainly seem to be well on our way to that.”