Students,

I understand there were some questions about course registration and so I thought I would send a note to try to cover some of the common questions and concerns.

1. The most common question seemed to be will there be enough seats in technical electives?  The simple answer is that even with increased total enrollment, there should be if current student course interest is similar to past student interest. Having said that, we are aware that interests change from year-to-year and so we will be monitoring enrollment and making changes where we can.

I did want to talk about what we have done to prepare for this year. Historically, many of our electives have been only offered in 1 semester (fall or spring). This year, many of our electives will be offered in both the fall and the spring. The list below are those that will be offered in both the fall and the spring. If a student is not able to get a seat in the fall term, they may take the class in the spring term.

The Negotiations (EGRMGMT 514) class is new for the fall. It was previously only a spring class.  We also increased the number of practicum sections, and added a number of Advanced Topics classes (EGRMGMT 590) that we think will be of interest. The advanced topic classes are related to managing product design, managing product development and managing software development.

Based on scaling our historical enrollment in these classes, we believe we will have enough elective options and seats to accommodate our incoming class of ~ 225 students.

2. There are also questions about in person classes (room listed) and online classes for students in the MEM residential program (indicated by time listed and room is “online course.” All of these class seats are intended for our MEM residential students. (Note: classes for our MEM Online students are in the room “online course” and do not have a time associated with them. These classes are not typically available to MEM residential students.) In the above table, I combined the in-person and online seats for residential students. We will allocate seats in the in-person and the online sections for residential students as needed.  We made an initial guess as to how many residential students may be studying remotely or may be arriving after drop/add (Sept. 3, 2021) and would need to start the class online. Please sign up for the class for your situation, even if it puts you on a waitlist. We will monitor enrollment and reallocate seats as appropriate. Students will come off of the waitlist depending on their waitlist number. If you sign up for the online class, the system should not let you enroll. Even if it does let you enroll, if you want to switch from an online section to an in-person section, you will go to the end of the waitlist. Therefore, it is important that you sign up for the class that you want and let us manage the allocation of seats between in-person and online sections.
3. We have heard that some students are planning on enrolling in 5 electives and not signing up for any core courses in order to hold potential seats in case they might want to take that elective. There is not any safeguard in the system that would prevent hoarding of electives, but we strongly discourage this. It is one of the many reasons we talk about professionalism and the 5 principles within the program. Just because something is not forbidden, does not mean that it is the appropriate and ethical thing to do. By hoarding elective seats you will not use, you are preventing one of your peers from securing a seat in a class they want to take. Hoarding classes also limits our ability to expand seats/sections of a class because we will not be sure if there is an actual need or a bubble due to hoarding. Our recommendation is to sign up for the classes that you intend to take. This will allow your peers to sign up for the classes that they want and will allow us to better respond to any waitlists that may occur.
4. Many of you are seeking clarity about the different ways you can plan your Fall schedule in DukeHub. Under the “Enrollment” menu, DukeHub offers three tools — Planner, Schedule Builder, and Shopping Cart — to assist you in your course selections.

The Planner tool is primarily designed for undergraduates’ use in mapping out current and future semesters. The Planner tool does not automatically add courses to a student’s Shopping Cart. The Planner tool does not integrate well with graduate classes; for this reason, we discourage MEM students from using it to plan their MEM path. Instead, we encourage MEM students to utilize Stellic, a web-based platform for degree planning and auditing, to map out potential course paths.

The Schedule Builder tool allows students to create and save multiple possible course schedules for the upcoming semester. Students can create a schedule, view it in a weekly calendar view, and save it (e.g., first-choice schedule, back-up schedule, etc.). Multiple schedules may be saved in the Schedule Builder as you look for different possible class combinations. The Schedule Builder does not automatically add courses to a student’s Shopping Cart, but students may add courses to their Shopping Cart when they are in the Schedule Builder. For more information about how to use the Schedule Builder, please click here.

The Shopping Cart is what you will ultimately use to enroll in your Fall 2021 courses. You should add your intended Fall 2021 courses to your Shopping Cart and then enroll in your courses when registration goes live on July 7 at 7:00am (EDT). At any time prior to enrollment, you may also validate your course selection to ensure that you meet any prerequisites for your selected courses, and that your selected courses do not meet at overlapping times. For more information about registering from the Shopping Cart, please click here.

I hope this helps to address your questions. If you have other questions, please let us know.

Best Regards,

Brad

Brad Fox, Ph.D.

Associate Dean, Masters Programs