"They (The IT unit) wanted to know what specifically do you want displayed when you — the student- applies for an override? What do you need to see? How do we need to communicate with the student?" Chadwick said. "That it’s been entered, or who needs to be involved, or what other systems is this going to have to interact with. So in terms of our enrollment system, the registrar’s office, the actual scheduling system, student’s personal email and all those aspects that are involved when an override has to go through.”

Chadwick said he has already witnessed the benefits of the new online system he helped to design.

“When I’m presented with an override request I get all the student’s information in terms of their background, their major, their credits, so I can tell right away if it’s a need for them to be in a class that’s full,” Chadwick said. “It helps me make a good decision.”

Chadwick said one improvement he would like to see for the system being utilized by the MSU mathematics department, is the ability of the system to link up to both schedule builder and the registrar’s office. This way, if a student seeks an override into a specific class, they can access the contact information for the specific department with the ease of a click of a link from web-enroll.

The enrollment override process is currently not a uniformed or streamlined process on campus. CornerStone Residential (CoRe) academic advisor Lindsay Naylor, who advises freshmen engineering students said that the various colleges throughout the university have different processes, and even different departments within those colleges can make their own process.

”I think just on a big campus it’s just hard for students to know if departments are going to have similar guidelines from different ones," Naylor said. "I think it can just get confusing."

While the current state may on the surface seem like a maze, having students navigate various override process, Naylor conveyed the benefits to current system.

“I think it gives students the opportunity to try and get into the classes that they’re not able to right now because they’re full,” Naylor said. “Sometimes we have students who, just based on how their credit looks in the system, (it) won’t let them enroll because technically they are a different major. But maybe they are a transfer student trying to change majors or something like that. So I think it just gives students more options for getting into some of the classes they need.”

Class and department size are also a vital aspect to a student’s chances of gaining a coveted enrollment override.

Anna Brunsman, a biosystems engineering senior, said the smaller sizes of her major, specifically upper level classes allowed for a much smoother enrollment override process.

“With our department, you just see (the advisor), because it’s a really small department, pretty much 50 kids," Brunsman said. "So we just go to see our advisor and he normally gives us an override."

Brunsman also said she was satisfied with the ease of use of the Department of Biosystems Engineering override request process.

“I just emailed him and told him what classes I needed to get into and what not, and they were on my schedule the next day,” Brunsman said. “I think he sends it to someone else who does scheduling, and then they’ll appear on your schedule builder.”

While it may be difficult for each individual department to adopt a university-wide system, the efficient system designed by the MSU Mathematics Department, shows how strides are being made to better cater to student’s scheduling needs.