Newsletter Fall 2010-11
Reminder: Add Day is Approaching
Just a friendly reminder that the last day for adding courses
and removing incompletes is this Friday, October 15th. Please
remember to bring your add cards to the Registrar's Office by
5:00pm on Friday.
Annual Notification of FERPA
The Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) affords students
certain rights with respect to their education records and the
Institute is required to notify you of this. These rights
include:
·
The right to inspect and review their education records within 10
days of the day the Institute receives a request for access.
·
The right to request an amendment to their education records that
they believe are inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise in
violation of the student's privacy rights under FERPA.
·
The right to provide written consent before the Institute
discloses personally identifiable information from the student's
education records, except to the extent that FERPA authorizes
disclosure without consent.
·
The right to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of
Education concerning alleged failures by the Institute to comply
with the requirements of FERPA.
Additional information regarding FERPA including the Public
Notification of Directory Information can be found on the
Registrar's website at
http://www.registrar.caltech.edu/ferpa.htm.
Race and Ethnicity Reporting Changes
The National Center for Education Statistics instituted changes
effective for the fall 2010 term on how institutions report
aggregate race and ethnicity data to the U.S. Department of
Education. The new changes now allow for individuals to
self-identify their ethnicity and race, and permits individuals
to select more than one race to allow for multi-racial
reporting. If students would like to re-identify using the new
standards, please feel free to come by the Registrar’s Office.
New 2010-11 Catalog
The new 2010-11 catalog is available online at
http://pr.caltech.edu/catalog/. There have been a few course
changes that we wanted to bring to your attention. Ch 24ab
has been split into Ch 24, Introduction to Biophysical
Chemistry: Spectroscopy and Ch 25, Introduction to Biophysical
Chemistry: Thermodynamics. The split is to accommodate different
prerequisites for the two courses. Also, ChE 110ab is now ChE
118 and ChE 120. ChE 120 is considered a lab
course and does not have ChE 118 as a pre-requisite.
Emergency Contact Information
Be sure your contact information is up to date on access.caltech
so you can be reached in case there is an emergency! Most new
students to Caltech have provided this information but if you
are a continuing student, please be sure to check that we have
the most current numbers on file for you.
Parent Contact Information
The Development Office at Caltech wants to keep in touch with
your parents. To make sure they are invited to Caltech’s many
special events and programs and receive all the Caltech news and
information available, please add your parents to the mailing
list at
https://irsecure.caltech.edu/webforms/student_info/index.php/.
House Librarians
All eight undergraduate houses have their own
House Librarian. The library hopes a more personal
connection between the library and houses will lead you to seek
out its resources and help when you need them. You can contact
your house librarian with any library-related questions, big or
small. Find out who your Librarian is!
REGIS Tips
To all of those seniors currently applying to graduate schools –
remember that students can order their official transcripts
through REGIS. Simply click on the Academic Information
link in REGIS and then the Request for Official Transcript tab.
If any student needs an enrollment verification letter to prove
they are a current student at Caltech, this can also be printed
out through REGIS. Again, simply click on the Academic
Information link in REGIS and press the Enrollment Verification
button at the bottom of the page. Stop by the Registrar’s
Office if you would like the official Institute seal applied to
the letter.
The Top 5 most popular options
The top 5 options for the Bachelors degree account for 56% of
the undergraduate student body (minus undeclared freshmen).
They are: Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Electrical
Engineering, Chemical Engineering (all types), and Computer
Science.
Bioengineering, which was created just two years ago, is already
the eighth most popular option.
Of the PhD-seeking students, the top 5 options are Chemistry,
Physics, Biology, Electrical Engineering and Chemical
Engineering. These account for 48% of the PhD-seeking student
body.