KNOXVILLE — Students enrolling at the University of Tennessee this fall will miss out on some longstanding college traditions — hunting for parking, standing in long registration and fee lines, and hassling with paperwork.
UT administrators have put Circle Park, home of the Student Services Building, on-line so that students can register, pay fees, see grades and order transcripts on the Internet.
“There is no need for students to come in person any longer to the Student Services Building,” said Richard Bayer, dean of admissions and records. “Students can now come to Circle Park 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to do many of the transactions they need to do.”
The new student services Web site is called Circle Park On-line or CPO, Bayer said, and is designed to allow students to accomplish normal registration and payment tasks without showing up personally.
“CPO gives students another option in meeting their financial deadlines with the university,” said Jonee Daniels, UT’s bursar. “They can still pay in person, but if that’s not convenient, they can pay by telephone or on-line, from their homes or dorm rooms.”
CPO went on-line on July 7 and Daniels said traffic on the site will grow as an August 14 fee-payment deadline approaches for fall semester. Administrators expect the Web approach to reduce errors and waiting time on the current voice-response phone registration system.
“The visual presentation of registration and fee payment is more powerful than doing it over the phone,” Bayer said. “Students won’t be getting busy signals. We think it’s a better way of doing business.”
Phase two of CPO will include on-line ways to change addresses, view grades, check schedules and change privacy information, he said.
The registrar’s office, the bursar and UT’s Division of Information Infrastructure began planning for CPO about nine months ago. EPOS from Auburn, Ala., the outside vendor which operates the VOLXpress phone registration system, also helped develop the CPO Web site.
The Web address for CPO is http://cpo.utk.edu.