California State University, Bakersfield has been dealing with registration issues among students due to COVID-19 and immunization holds.  

According to Dr. Vernon Harper, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, during orientation, CSUB dealt with a COVID-19 incident. As a result, the faculty had to push the event back and registration was compressed.  

“Because it was compressed, we had to make some changes to our advising structure and the holds so that students can get into their classes,” Harper said.  

One of the two main holds that students have been facing are COVID-19 and immunization holds. However, Harper stated that CSUB did make some modifications over the last week to ensure that if a student has a COVID-19 or immunization hold, they were going to fully address those students and allow them to register.  

According to Harper, the main reason why this issue is occurring this semester is due to the ongoing issue of COVID-19. The office of the Chancellor also made changes to the immunization requirements, which caused some difficulties.  

As mentioned by Harper, CSUB is working through these issues by making adjustments. “We modified the immunization holds earlier this week and we will continue to make modifications to orientation, as well as to focus on our COVID holds,” Harper said.  

When asked about how this has impacted faculty, Harper stated, “I don’t think they are affected greatly. We were able to make some adjustments to the course schedule to make sure that faculty and their classes are populated.”  

Despite all of this, Harper said that enrollment should be similar to last year. He mentioned that CSUB is always observing how the institution has changed due to the pandemic. “About 80 percent of our courses are going to be face-to-face or hybrid and the faculty has done a marvelous job of selecting the best modality for their students,” said Harper.  

Nevertheless, John Harte, a communications professor at CSUB, has stated that his course had been impacted by low registrations. “Unfortunately, my journalism class this semester was canceled due to low enrollment,” Harte said. Because of this, he will not be teaching at CSUB this semester.  

“I wasn’t surprised at the cancellation, but I was surprised how severely the overall numbers dropped because I started teaching here in 2015, and I’ve had either full classes or classes with enough enrollment, wasn’t a consideration,” Harte stated.  

Some students have also had problems with registering for classes. Morgan Dunshee, a pre-health major at CSUB, said that she had a COVID-19 hold due to not having the booster shot. She also mentioned that she had an advising hold and needed to attend an advising session. Dunshee resolved these issues once she received her booster shot. As for the advising hold, it took a while to get cleared because there were many students making appointments.  

Another student shared her experience as well. Julissa Vargas, a computer science major at CSUB, stated, “it was just a little bit complicated because we’re all like new to the system. We didn’t know how to work things around.” She mentioned that in high school she had advisors who helped her enroll into her classes, but when she arrived at CSUB, she had a tough time learning how to navigate everything by herself. However, Vargas resolved this issue by making an appointment with her advisor. After this, everything was easier for her.   

When asked about how academic advisors are helping students with registration, Arts and Humanities advisor Christina Ramirez, said, “when a student comes to me with enrollment issues, I make sure they review all holds and to-do list items on their MyCSUB.” She also said that one of the main reasons why students have trouble registering for classes is due to COVID-19 and immunization holds.  

Ramirez advises all students to check their MyCSUB portal for any holds or to-do list items and their CSUB email accounts daily in order to relieve some stress for students.