By Kayla Perry
The Centre of Academic Excellence (CAE) has brought a new type of transcript to Laurentian: a co-curricular record.
The co-curricular record, or CCR, will serve as an official university document, showcasing students’ activities “outside of the classroom” – things such as club involvement, volunteer work, and even sports activities.
“I think, 20 years after graduation, a lot of the things people will talk about will not be what they did in class, but instead what they did outside of class,” said Charles Fink, the Manager of Student Engagement for the CAE. “That is, really, what enhances the education process… It’s becoming the way of the future.”
Students can access their record by logging on to LU Net, and clicking on ‘academic excellence,’ and then ‘student engagement.’
Once students have accessed the CCR, they can search and select activities that they have participated in – from there, a request to validate the activity will be sent to an authority figure in that activity, whether that is a professor or club leader. All activities must be validated before they officially show up on the CCR; something Fink said will take about two to three days.
When students wish to use their CCR, they can log on to the universities intranet, access the document, and then select which activities they would like to showcase, depending on their use for the CCR.
“You can tailor the print out to the job that (the student) is applying for, or whatever else they may be using the record for,” said Fink.
The CCR is live on LU Net now, and has been in operation since September 2013, although Fink said the administration is still “hammering out some bugs in the software.” Before it went live, staff worked on the CCR for over a year.
Given that the document only went live in 2013, Fink said that any activities students did before the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year will not be in the database.
“The biggest challenge for me is getting activities in this database, so students can say they did them,” said Fink. “That’s why we’ve added a function that asks if students have done something that isn’t in the database –students can let us know, and we can make sure to get (the activity) registered in the database.”
Fink said that Laurentian is one of many Canadian schools that have a CCR, although Fink maintains that LU’s software is built in-house by Laurentian staff, and is in his opinion “far superior to anything (he) has seen out there.”
The CCR is bilingual, and although Fink said there are “still glitches” in the record, it’s “nothing the staff can’t overcome.”
“I invite all students to use (the CCR). It’s great for moving forward into interviews and careers, but also as a personal record of what (students) did during (their) time at the university,” said Fink.