A new notification system is in effect to help reduce time and cost to members of the Eastern community and to lower the risk of students making late withdrawals.

Sue Harvey, of the Office of Registrar, said there are three email notifications regarding dropping or withdrawing from an individual course.

“Sending student notifications so they can drop or withdraw by the deadline will reduce the amount of time instructors, department chairs, the Office of the Registrar, Student Accounts and the Late Withdrawal Appeal Committee spend on processing late withdrawal requests,” Harvey said.

She said the first notification is sent a week before classes start to inform students of the deadlines to drop the course with a full tuition refund along with fee information and the deadline to withdraw from the course.

“This email also informs them that the Office of the Registrar may assist them, prior to the deadline, if they are unable to drop or withdraw from PAWS because of a hold on the student’s record,” Harvey said.

The second notification is sent the day before a course’s drop date, and the third notification is sent before a course’s withdrawal deadline.

Harvey said the second and third notifications contain an attached PDF that show drop and withdrawal dates for each class a student is enrolled in.

She said they created the notifications so students can drop or withdrawal from a course before the deadline to avoid being charged the late withdrawal fee of $25 per credit hour.

Students have the potential to pay up to $100 for filing each late withdrawal request.

“This is important because Eastern offers courses that begin at different times and have different drop and withdrawal deadlines based on the length of the course,” Harvey said. “We found that students were often only aware of the full term drop and withdrawal dates which appear on the academic calendar and did not know of the deadlines associated with course taught in special formats such as weekend courses.”

Harvey said notifications are created in the Office of Registrar, and they are sent using the office email account.

“Dropping by the deadline will ensure that the correct refunds are available to the student while withdrawing by the deadline will ensure a withdrawal appears on their record,” Harvey said.

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or rjrodgers@eiu.edu.