Groggy, still laying in bed and blearily blinking at their laptops, dozens of students across campus eagerly awaited for the clock to strike 7:30 a.m. It was the morning of Monday, Nov. 10: the first day of class registration for the spring 2026 semester. But when mid-hour arrived and students who had landed in the coveted first registration slot rushed to click the “Register Now” button on Self-Service, error messages crowded their screens. None of them were eligible to register for classes, and each thought the problem was unique to them.

Interim Registrar Ann Liska said she began receiving emails and calls from students immediately after 7:30 a.m. describing the problem.

She quickly conscripted an Information Technologies team to find the root of the issue. The erroneous error messages were solved by the Registrar’s Office and the IT team, allowing students to register by 8 a.m. the same day.

Assistant Director of Enterprise Systems Molly Smith, ’12, explained it was an easy fix. Self-Service — the student-facing portal for services such as class registration, transcripts and financial aid — is driven by “rules,” logical scripts coded into the software that shape the requirements of the registration process. For example, two “rules” require that students have adviser approval and must have updated their emergency contact information before the system will permit them to register for classes, Smith said. These types of requirements are coded into the software. Smith said that IT helps the Registrar’s Office write the rules that control the registration process, but the application of the rules is typically the sole responsibility of the Registrar’s Office.

On the morning of registration, students experienced difficulties registering for classes because a rogue rule was still in effect blocking all class registration. That type of rule is manually put in place and removed from several different places in the system each semester, Smith said, to prevent students from registering for classes outside of their approved slots.

Once Smith was made aware of the problem on Monday morning, she quickly realized that during testing of the system, the IT team had forgotten to remove the rule in one place in the “deep depths” of the code. Once she removed it, students were then able to register for classes, no longer than 30 minutes after their scheduled time, she said.

Though it is typically not IT’s responsibility to turn on class registration, according to Smith, she has supported the class registration process for over 10 years. Given staffing turnover and pressures on the Registrar’s Office this year, she felt compelled to help with the process.

“None of this is anybody’s fault,” Liska said. “It’s just due to a set of circumstances.”

“In these kinds of offices — because I’ve been doing this for a very long time — we tend to become very close with each other and work together and support each other,” Liska continued. “So, you know, if one of us messes up, we all feel like we messed up.”

The registration blip occurred a few days after inaccurate registration announcement emails were sent to students across campus. The emails, which are personally tailored to each student, arrived in students’ inboxes on Nov. 6 shortly before 9 a.m., incorrectly identifying many students’ registration groups and copying the wrong academic advisors. A correction email was then sent to all students around 4:30 p.m.

Liska said that an employee in the Registrar’s Office sent out the first round of emails, but made a mistake while using the “mail merge” software, a tool that allows the mass creation of documents that are personalized for each recipient.

“I take responsibility for that,” Liska said. “I’m responsible for what goes on at the office. She felt very badly about it. Nobody wants these mistakes to happen, believe me. I know we all agonized over it, and, you know, over the things that get said. We’re human and we can make mistakes, especially — there is a lot of pressure on the office right now.”

The Registrar’s Office has experienced significant turnover this semester. Liska is currently serving as interim registrar while Roslyn Perry, the permanent registrar, is taking a leave of absence. Liska said Perry is expected to return in January 2026. In addition to Perry’s leave of absence, Smith said that cumulatively — with the retirements of former Associate Registrar Deborah Zinz and former Assistant Registrar Christine Bell in August and Pamela Shreve’s move from being the student records coordinator in the Registrar’s Office to executive assistant in the Student Experience Department — the Registrar’s Office has lost over 100 years of combined experience in a matter of months. The college is not planning to hire anyone to fill the associate registrar position due to budgetary reasons, according to Liska. However, Liska does have interviews scheduled in December with several candidates for the assistant registrar position. She noted that none of them are familiar with the backend program the Registrar’s Office uses to manage classes, which Liska said is old and a “niche” skillset, so there will be a “learning curve” for the new associate registrar.

Liska is a contractor with The Registry, an international company that has connected higher education institutions to “experienced and vetted” senior interim professionals for over 30 years, according to its website. Liska has worked with the organization as a registrar since 2021. This is her second interim position at Allegheny, after previously serving as interim registrar in spring 2022.

“It’s really a nice campus — great students, great faculty,” Liska said. “My partner and I like going there. He says, ‘When can we go again to Allegheny?’”

Liska brings decades of experience with her to Allegheny. Prior to contracting with The Registry, Liska spent her entire career as a registrar both in the U.S. and around the world, including an eight-year stint in the United Arab Emirates.

Given the turnover in the registrar’s office this year, Liska has focused this semester on ensuring that the new staff have the necessary skills and knowledge to maintain smooth operations.

“When you’ve worked with some people for a long, long time like this, you just have a lot of knowledge that’s just in your head and you just know what to do,” Liska said. “Someone new comes in and they don’t know that stuff. You can’t transplant somebody’s brain.”

Liska works remotely and makes occasional visits to campus. But most of the time, it is just Curriculum Director Shirley Cronin and Student Records & Transfer Credit Coordinator Carolyn Hogg in the Registrar’s Office in Murray Hall.

“They’re resilient,” Smith said. “They know it’s a big change, but they’re taking it in stride and really willing to learn.”