I am excited to announce a new initiative for Trinity Western University, where I currently work as the Registrar. This week we officially launched an eRecords system for students at TWU, using the MyCreds platform. [insert fireworks, a marching band (including bagpipes), and free e-cakes for all!]

We launched this new service on Monday, August 22, 2022 and so far we have issued eDegrees, Verification of Graduation eLetters, Verification of Enrolment eLetters, and eTranscripts with no issues whatsoever. We have a report built by our IT department that verifies it is all working as expected. (aside: it had better be working because we tested it until our eyes were bloodshot!)

I am excited about this for several reasons:

First of all, it will transform our services available to students. Previous to this, almost all parts of these services were manual. Students could order a transcript online using a credit card, and that would trigger a process that ran overnight and would print the transcript orders and a page of labels for envelopes. Then a staff member would have to go to the printer each morning, collect the transcripts, look up the orders via a report, process the orders, fold the transcripts, stuff the envelopes, stick the labels on to envelopes, prepare them for shipping, and take them to our Shipping/Receiving area and hope they are securely delivered. Using this process, our old directions told students to expect 3-5 business days to process their transcript requests. Now it can be virtually instant. Students can order an etranscript, eletter, or an electronic version of their degree parchment and get a link to share that eRecord with whoever they want wherever there is internet service. This transformed service is truly amazing.

Second, it will hopefully reduce our carbon footprint. I planted hundreds of thousands of trees to pay my way through college, but the number of pages of paper we printed for these services up until Monday probably put me in a deficit of millions of trees that were cut and processed into paper. I know the internet is not carbon free, but at least we’re not also using up paper faster than we can grow paper-producing trees. In addition to this, we are no longer using trucks and airplanes to transport these documents all over Earth. For this, I am thankful!

Third, it has already proven to be a very efficient process. I expect that it will save our office 6 hours of work every single day. Even better, the people who were processing these eRecords manually are now able to do much more important, life-affirming, student-focused work. Instead of folding paper, sticking labels, stuffing envelopes, etc., our wise and caring staff can help students solve problems, remove barriers, and accomplish their life goals for their careers as students.

I spoke with one of our staff who used to process transcripts and asked how it is going. Her response? “It is almost too good to be true!” Wow! What an endorsement! I hope it is actually that good for the long term.

If any of you readers want to know more about how we made this work, please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Many thanks to Joanne Duklas and ARUCC, as well as to Charlotte French and all the folks at Digitary for making this happen. Special thanks to all the TWU staff in IT, the Registrar’s Office, and Marketing and Communications Office for a great example of teamwork with a better-than-hoped-for outcome.