Five College Course Registration
This coming semester, I will be taking “two” computer science courses "at" UMass. The “two” is in quotes because one of the classes is a one-credit online course and the “at” is in quotes because I won’t actually be going to the UMass campus. Remote and online classes differ in that remote classes are synchronous over videoconference technology like Zoom whereas online classes do not have a set meeting time and make extensive use of prerecorded lectures and other preprepared materials. The UMass spring semester starts this coming Monday, a full two weeks before Smith's. I will be writing about the specific courses in my usual beginning of the semester blog post. The Five College consortium includes Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
While not all classes are open to Five College students, the consortium adds a bunch of great course options. In addition to classes not offered at Smith, at least in a remote semester, Five College courses can help solve scheduling issues. That said, scheduling is still a nightmare as all of the colleges have different course start and stop times. In a normal semester, factoring in travel time is what makes Five College classes a lot less attractive. I initially looked to the consortium to deal with some scheduling issues that have since sorted themselves out. However, I am still going ahead with my Five College classes because I am excited about the course content. Furthermore, the specific courses should help reduce scheduling issues in the future as they count as a core course for my computer science major.
I will start off by saying that I am by no means an expert on Five College registration. That said, I learned a lot through the process and hopefully have some useful information to share. For general information from Smith about Five College course registration, click here. In a given semester, Smithies must be registered for at least eight credits at Smith. First-semester first-years, need class dean approval to take a Five College course. Second-semester first-years in good academic standing can take one Five College course (or two with class dean approval). Course credit is earned in accordance with the value awarded by the host institution. At Smith, regular classes are 4-credits and lab classes are 5-credits. On the other hand, at UMass, regular classes are 3-credits and lab classes are 4-credits. This potential credit shortage isn’t usually a problem but is definitely something to keep in mind.
To get started, you can explore the Five College course catalog here. To get enrollment data, you will need to use the course search of the respective school. For Umass, go to this website and then click “Search Classes/Catalog”. Unfortunately, there is no consortium wide version of Coursicle for building your course schedule. (To read about first-year course registration at Smith, click here). You should also review the specific policies of the respective institution. To get a course preapproved by the Smith registar, you will need to email them the syllabus (obtained by emailing the professor) and course description. The formal course request takes place on BannerWeb. If the course is for your major, it is especially important to check that the respective department will accept the course. For instance, the two courses I am taking this spring together replace a core computer science course at Smith. If I had just taken the 4-credit course, I would have only been able to apply the course to my major as an elective. For most classes, that’s about all you need to do. You will be notified by email about whether your request was accepted or not. If the request is accepted, the registrar will get you officially registered.
In terms of my specific registration process, I got initial approval and submitted the request through BannerWeb at the end of October. However, my specific courses required me to submit an override form through the UMass computer science department. For these courses, the form is required for all students who are not UMass computer science majors. In this form, I had to explain how I fulfilled the prerequisites, my reason for taking the course, and rank lab sections. I filled out the override form as soon as it opened at the end of November. In the intervening time, I changed my plans for the rest of my schedule and had to send an email updating my requested lab sections. At the beginning of December, I was approved by the UMass computer science department for the one-credit class. It wasn’t until the beginning of January that I was approved for the other class. I was surprised and relieved to have gotten approval because the class was already above capacity. However, at this point, I still didn’t know which lab section I had been approved for.
On Monday of this week, Smith officially registered me for the classes on their end. On Wednesday night, I received my UMass email and ID number. This meant I was finally able to learn which lab section I had been approved for. I immediately set up my UMass email to automatically forward all emails to my Smith email. I will still have to log in to send actual emails, but this should help a great deal. I will also need to use my UMass account to access my classes through the UMass Moodle. Lastly, this evening, I got an email from the UMass registrar confirming Five College class enrollment.
As long as there's something noteworthy to say I'll be sure to have an end of semester post about my Five College course experience. In general, I've seen the Five College consortium as a nice thing to have, but not much of a selling point because of the hassle of scheduling across the campuses and the fact that we have great courses at Smith. UMass is definitely the most interesting to me because it has an engineering department, a great computer science department, and is very different from Smith.
