By TINA IYER
Features Editor

And yet Braz herself would be able to move through Bates relatively incognito if she so chose (which she does not). She is, whether or not students acknowledge it, ultimately responsible for a great deal more than course registration.

After settling into our seats at Austin's, I question her about her position. She is rarely seen, I note; her office is not visible from the counter in Lane Hall. Braz agrees, explaining that the women who are most often at the registrar's counter are Mary Meserve, the associate registrar, Sarah Bernard, the technical specialist, and support staff.

When she does meet with students, Braz said tellingly, "I tend to see a lot of seniors."

"I also have office hours, because I do think it's important for people to meet with the registrar," she said, smiling. "I am the one who ultimately clears [a student] for graduation."

Braz mentioned the humor of her job; her official title is the Registrar, and yet most students do not recognize her as such. She related one story of a student who came to the registrar's door after hours, wanting to speak to the registrar. Braz introduced herself, but the student pointed behind Braz to one of the women who is usually at the registrar's counter, and said, "No, the registrar. Her."

To counter this anonymity, "One of the things I've done for the past couple of years is to be involved with first-year orientation," Braz explained. This lets incoming first-years know right away who the registrar is.

When I asked Braz to briefly provide a job description, she said, "There is the obvious visible part of facilitating the whole course selection process," which includes getting course information from the faculty and disseminating that information to the students, as well as the actual registration process itself.

When Braz first came to Bates seven years ago, the registration system was no longer meeting the needs of the college. "The first task I was asked to do was look at the registration system," she said. "It wasn't working."

The former system, convoluted and difficult to explain, had students sleeping outside the Gray Cage the night before registration, and often resulted in first-years ending up with no classes that they wanted to take. Since then, Braz had helped to facilitate a leaner, cleaner registration system.

Braz is also involved with the college in other ways; she serves on numerous committees from Educational Policy to Academic Standing. "I do a huge amount of committee work. Once, I was on 19 committees. Part of it is because the registrar has a central perspective, and I can provide a lot of data," she said.

There is no such thing as a registrar-training school, but Braz, who said she has always been "committed to small liberal arts colleges," a background of archival work and record-keeping made her well-suited for her current position. She also has her teaching certificate, and has taught high school.

"Registrars come from a huge variety of backgrounds," Braz said, "But there is a very large technical component to being a registrar. Now everything is done using the computer."

The conversion from handwritten information and files to the computer was "a huge thing," in Braz's words, as was the changeover to the Banner system, and the help of Information Services "really made a big difference for us."

Banner will be a great help to the college, she said, noting that eventually, "there will be more direct access to records, students will be able to see their grades as soon as they are posted, and faculty can send their grades through the system."

Braz likens the registrar's office to "Grand Central Station" because of the incredible input and output of information that goes through it daily. If Braz herself doesn't have the answer or the access to a certain question, then "I usually know who to send [the questioner] to. Part of what we [at the registrar's office] try to do is stay in touch," she said.

Although Braz and her coworkers often face the wrath of angry students, she knows that the key to communication is to recognize the emotion and tend to it. She stressed the importance of empathy, and noted that while she and her colleagues earn their bread by knowledge of deadlines and such, that these registration priorities are not necessarily the same as students'.

On the whole, however, she said that "most students are really polite, and our goal is really to help work things out for people, even if sometimes it's not possible."

While Braz also recognizes the sticky position that she is in as the "law-enforcer" for both students and faculty, she is also impressed by the manner in which she has seen the Bates faculty put their students' interest before all other concerns. "I truly feel its a privilege to work at this college. I feel that I've had success here because I've had that support [from the deans and her colleagues]," she said. "It really makes the job very different."

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