The death of a student can be a traumatic event on campus. Registrars play an important role in the necessary administrative actions following a student’s death, and can be instrumental in providing support and institutional outreach to the grieving family. In today’s episode, we talk with Kim Barber, University Registrar at Florida State University about some of the practices employed at FSU to navigate these sensitive situations.
Key Takeaways:
- The posthumous degree policy at your institution can apply in specific, but narrow, cases. Institutions might consider other ways to recognize and celebrate the life of a student who dies prior to being eligible for recognition under the posthumous policy.
- Student deaths affect the community in many ways. Institutions need to be sensitive to the feelings of students, faculty, staff, and the decedent’s family when making decisions about public recognitions at ceremonies like commencement. Working with your Dean of Students office (and others) is recommended to best reflect the culture and values of your institution.
- Dealing with student death is emotionally challenging. Make sure that you’re taking care of yourself and your staff, even as you conduct the necessary record-keeping work.
Host:
Doug McKenna, Ph.D.
University Registrar
George Mason University
cmckenn@gmu.edu
Guest:
Kim Barber, Ph.D.
Assistant Vice Provost & University Registrar
Florida State University
kabarber@fsu.edu
References and Additional Information:
Study Finds Depression, Suicidal Ideation Among College Students Increased Over Past 15 Years
Consequences | College Drinking Prevention
Causes of Mortality Among American College Students: A Pilot Study – PMC
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| 0:00:00.17 | 14.1s | Kim Barber | You’re listening to For the Record, a registrar podcast sponsored by AACRAO. I’m Kim Barber, assistant vice provost and university registrar at Florida State University, and this is Honoring the unfinished journey. |
| 0:00:21.73 | 67.7s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Hello. Welcome to For the Record. I’m your host, Doug McKenna, university registrar at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. I apologize, I’m a little froggy today. I spent the weekend dancing and singing and cheering at back to back fish shows at Merriweather Post Pavilion, uh, Saturday and Sunday nights. Great times, but I should have done more to take care of my voice. It happens. Um, today’s episode is a sensitive topic as we’ll be talking about what happens when a student passes away during their academic career. What are the practical, administrative and record keeping considerations, and what are ways that we can provide support, solace, and community for the grieving family. If you or someone you know are struggling with mental health issues, please pick up the phone and dial 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention hotline. Joining me for today’s conversation is Kim Barber, assistant vice provost and university registrar at Florida State University. Kim, thanks very much for talking with me today. Welcome to the podcast. |
| 0:01:30.23 | 12.6s | Kim Barber | Thank you so much for having me. This is a, this is a difficult topic, but as registrars, it’s one we deal with all the time and I would say any new registrar out there that hasn’t, dealt with this yet, it’s coming. |
| 0:01:43.2 | 33.2s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Yeah, and I’m sorry if I took the air out of the room with that sort of heavy lead in, but it is, it’s a sensitive topic, and we don’t necessarily have to be super dour about it. And as I imagine this conversation unfolds, we’ll uncover that dichotomy of joy and sadness that comes along with being a human being. So. First, let’s talk about you. Tell me how you got to where you are, sort of the arc of your career and your experience, and then if you would, a little bit about Florida State University. |
| 0:02:16.58 | 20.9s | Kim Barber | Sure, you know, like every young girl, I dreamed of being a registrar, uh, yeah, not. I graduated with a bachelor’s of Arts from Florida State in English with a major in creative writing, which is a wonderful degree to place you to do lots of different jobs. And so I went out on the job market, |
| 0:02:38.97 | 0.6s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | yay, |
| 0:02:40.5 | 113.6s | Kim Barber | went out on the job market and then shortly afterwards got a call from the registrar’s office that they needed a catalog editor. So that was right up my alley, came back to the university and started my First professional higher ed job there. Moved from that position up within the registrar’s office and over time decided that this registrar gig was, was not so bad. I really loved being in higher ed, still love being in higher ed uh and uh decided to take advantage of the university’s tuition program and got the master’s with the idea that I’d go out into the corporate world. Worked full-time while I was doing that. So I got to see 3 years of my fellow colleagues graduate with their master’s, go into the corporate world, and then that really solidified the fact that higher ed is the place I want to be. And I have worked corporate before, so I really did have a compare and contrast. And then I decided if I was going to make this my career focus, that I probably needed the doctorate. And strangely enough, that was cemented at a Saro in Birmingham. When I sat at a table with 8 other peers, uh, well, wannabe peers I should say, they were all registrars or chancellors or whatever, and asked them, do I need the doctorate to be a sitting registrar, and they all to a person said yes. And so that’s fascinating. Went back after swearing up and down I would never go to school again and worked on my doctorate and finished that at Florida State and And moved on and again did all that while uh working. The, the fun fact of that is I defended my dissertation the same semester we implemented and went live with Campus Solutions and at our SAS 2013 reaffirmation visit. So it was a fun semester. |
| 0:04:34.17 | 4.2s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Wow, wow, that is a lot going on at the same time. |
| 0:04:38.70 | 6.0s | Kim Barber | It is. And as a true Floridian, I then went to Disney World for three days afterwards to recover. |
| 0:04:46.98 | 32.1s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | That’s so interesting that the group of peers that you talked to, everybody said, yes, go, go get a doctorate. And for a long time just reflecting on my own career and as a person who just finished his doctorate, way back when I talked to people, and similarly, they were like, you should do it. But more recently, after I started it, a bunch of people were like, you might, I don’t know. I don’t know if you really need it. And so like I had that sense of, well, I’m, I’m already in it, so I’m gonna finish it up, it’s fine. |
| 0:05:19.33 | 57.6s | Kim Barber | What was presented to me was a master’s is sufficient to be registrared. Now, keep in mind this was back in 2005, 2006, something like that. Master’s was sufficient if I wanted to be a registrar at, at, at a state college or smaller liberal arts or whatever. And, and so no offense to any of those at all. But the peers that were talking to me at the time said, if you’re going to be at a major research one university. Particularly as a woman, you need the doctorate as part of your credentials to back up being the registrar and uh the authority on campus for your domain if you will. And so, not trying to get into gender wars or big school versus small school, not. Trying to get any of that. This is, I’m simply repeating what they told me. And I will say that I have leaned on that credential a time or two in conversations with faculty or parents or even students. So, yeah, |
| 0:06:17.5 | 43.2s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | when you need to pull the doctor out, you’re like, I’m sorry, it’s Dr. Barber. Yeah. Well, Kim, this is gonna be kind of a weird question. And overall, I want to say at the top that anytime a student dies is a tragedy and that as we go through this conversation, putting some, some boundaries a little bit, I don’t want to talk about like mass casualty events in this in this conversation. There’s a, a whole side of things, yeah, that that that’s beyond the scope of what I want to deal with today. So. What was your first sort of experience with a student’s death in your professional role? |
| 0:07:01.48 | 68.8s | Kim Barber | It’s hard to remember because it’s been a long time and I’ve, I’ve had a number of them over the years. But as I recall, the first time was I got an email from our dean of students, or actually back in the day, it might have been a memo from our dean of students, uh, informing us that a student had passed away. And here was the contact information for the parents, and that was it. And then it was sort of left up to us to, to figure out what do we do with that. And at the time where I was in the registrar’s office, not as registrar, but I think I was assistant or associate, you know, I look, I had to look up the SOP, what do we do? How do we handle student records, dropping classes, notifying the bursar’s office, financial aid office. Housing, you know, did dean of students take care of notifying the food contract vendors? Did they like, I, I didn’t know who notified whom about what because it touches on so many aspects of where a student might be within the university and things they have going on. Who tells the faculty, do the faculty need to know? So there was lots of questions like, what do I do with this? Yeah, |
| 0:08:10.47 | 82.0s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | and I think that’s a similar thing. My experience at As an undergraduate, even my first was my first real experience of like, oh, we are all transient. The my neighbor upstairs neighbor died in a car accident about two weeks before graduation. And as you might imagine, that was awful. Um, and you know, there’s a lot of grieving, a lot of all of the things. And it wasn’t until later when I worked at Michigan State, again, large school, the odds are in your favor that you’re going to wind up having to deal with having to navigate this particular situation. And so it was early on in my time at Michigan State that Scott McMillan walked down the hall to me and poked his head in and mentioned that we had a student. Pass away. And, you know, in my naivety, I was like naivete, in my, in my inexperience, I sat and said, sort of, OK, what do you need me to do? And so similar for you, I had to go dig up the sort of standard operating procedure in the memo and walk through all of the steps. Where does that document or set of documents live for you in your office? And how often is it reviewed? Who has access to it, and how is it put together? |
| 0:09:33.45 | 94.4s | Kim Barber | We have the SOP stored in a shared network drive. I imagine most institutions have a team site or network drive or something like that. So, the site of my office that accesses it most recently or, or Accesses it more frequently than anybody else is the area of my office called academic services. And so this would be the area of the office that for most registrars’ offices is the front facing. This is where the students going to walk up and do drop out or withdraw or asking about whatever question has brought them into the office and that’s the area that also deals with enrollment, registration changes. Basic student record updates, as opposed to things like auditing the transcript to see if transfer credit is posted. That’s another area of my office. And so, We’re a large institution. You had asked a little bit earlier about Florida State. So, for anybody that doesn’t know, Florida State’s a large public R1 institution. We’re in Tallahassee, Florida, and our fall enrollment, uh, this last fall was over 46,000. So, if we are just looking at statistical numbers, the chances of us getting a, a notification each semester. It’s more statistically likely than not likely that we’ll get at least one notification. So, that means these Guidelines and SOPs are referenced with some degree of regularity, but because we do it with some degree of regularity, we don’t always have to reference them because it’s still fresh in our mind from the last time we did it, |
| 0:11:08.41 | 1.0s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | which is unfortunate. |
| 0:11:09.73 | 54.1s | Kim Barber | It is unfortunate, um. And I will say, you know, We want to be compassionate to the families and the students. It’s not just a student ID and let me set 3 flags and we move on. After you do several of them though, it does become more or less a, a routine that you perform with some awareness though of what you’re doing for that student and by default what you’re doing for the family and this is where we lean quite heavily on our dean of students and student affairs partners to help us with what is needed beyond just clicking some boxes on a record and dropping some classes and so. That’s the start of the process. It is not the end of the process, and it, it goes from there as to what the next steps are. And that’s where the SOP only takes you so far because every family and situation is different. Yeah, |
| 0:12:04.19 | 135.1s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | that’s a really good segue that I’m going to put a pin in, because you mentioned sort of the statistical things. There have been a number of studies about causes of mortality among American college students, and they generally come back with similar results. This is a study from 2017. I’ll put a link in the show notes if you want to check it out. But per mortality rates per 100,000 individuals, total accidental injuries were 10.8, uh, from suicide was 6.17, from cancer, it’s 1.94, and then from homicide, 0.53. Then you get into accident and injury categories, where per 100,000 people, 3.37 were alcohol related non-traffic injuries. And men had significantly higher rates of suicide than women. And so, if you think about, as you said, like with an enrollment of 45, 47, 50,000 students, these are not insignificant rates. And so you as a as an institution will deal with these things more frequently. That does not mean That an institution with 8000 students or 5000 students also will not deal with these things. And so, but statistically, the larger your enrollment, the more likely it is that you will have to navigate these processes with some regularity. So, and I, I want to say to affirm what you just said about the nuts and bolts part, the, the administrivia of making sure that the student is marked as deceased in the student information system that you put a hold on any advancement notifications that go out, like you definitely don’t want to send the request. For money to a family who is grieving. Those types of administrative things are the start of the process. It is not the, the complete response from the university to that given situation. And so, Kim, I assume that Florida State has a posthumous degree policy in place at the university. |
| 0:14:19.44 | 0.6s | Kim Barber | We do. |
| 0:14:20.48 | 8.6s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | When you learn of a student’s death, who initiates that process? Talk me through your posthumous degree handling. |
| 0:14:29.53 | 235.9s | Kim Barber | OK, so as part of inactivating the student record, so we set flags to indicate that they’re deceased, we dropped the classes. Like you said, the last thing we want to do is send a bill for overdue tuition or something to a family. The staff that is setting that is also looking how close is this person to graduating with a degree and the way we handle a posthumous degree for a bachelor’s is a little different than what we do for graduate degrees. In the case of a bachelor’s degree, we’re looking to see, are they in their last term of enrollment or Are they close enough that they could have had the degree awarded if they had completed that term satisfactorily? And usually, we will then reach out to the dean of students and ask, is there an intent for the family to request a posthumous degree because dean of students has had conversations with the family and have a much better idea of where they are, what’s going on in their headspace, and the circumstances around the student passing. And to a certain degree, the relationship between the family and the student. So we follow their guidance if they indicate that yes, there’s an interest in that, our dean of students representative is reaching out to the college. The college dean is the one that recommends and submits the request for a posthumous degree to our faculty advancement Development office, and they are the ones that determine the student meets the criteria, which basically means that they are close to graduating and that they have more or less satisfied. The major or minor and other degree requirements in which they could have been awarded the degree if they had completed the term. Awarding a postor’s degree though is more about the compassion and recognition for the family than it is about degree integrity in the same way we would look at a degree awarding for a graduate that’s going into the job market. I completely agree. So, I say that to mean that if they were enrolled in 15 hours and they needed 18 to graduate. If they were on track, we more than likely would award that degree and not worry about the fact that they were going to miss it by 3 hours and needed another semester because that’s not the point of, of degree integrity is not the point here. However, we do have unfortunately very young students, so you’re a college freshman or sophomore that passed away for a variriety of different reasons, and they are dramatically far away from awarding a posthumous, and that is a little different. One of the things that we did, uh, a number of years ago, I don’t wanna say it was maybe 10, is we created a memorial degree or an acknowledgement that you were here and part of the university community. And this can be requested in lieu of the actual you’ve earned a Bachelor’s of Science in English or Bachelor’s of Arts in whatever. And the way that reads is the president’s trustee and the faculty of Florida State University proudly honor insert student’s name. whose life has enriched our lives and whose spirit will live in our hearts forever. We therefore confer upon insert student name, this honorary memorial degree. And it’s a way to acknowledge that they were part of our community. They were enrolled, they, they did stuff. Some of these students are more active in the community of the university than others and this can be a big help for some families. So that’s how we straddle the degree integrity issue of awarding a degree that’s actually posted on the transcript for that student, which we do for our posthumous degrees. Versus a memorial degree where we don’t post anything, but we are providing a certificate that looks degree-esque to the family. Yes, |
| 0:18:25.72 | 77.2s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | when I was the registrar at American University here in Washington DC, one of the things that we would do for posthumous degrees, we would print the diploma and then we would print, uh, Sort of a pocket size, a laminated pocket size, like a wallet diploma and give both of those to the family at commencement. Before the ceremony began, we would meet with them and give them to them. Those are some of the most moving experiences that I’ve had as a registrar to be present for the family and to Acknowledge that their child was here and now is not, but we have these things for you to both help you remember, but also to help us remember and um to keep them present. And so at commencement. When you have awarded a posthumous degree, as we were chatting before, you said your practices have sort of evolved around this question. So how do you at Florida State acknowledge, recognize a student who has passed or students who have passed during the commencement ceremony? What do you, what have you done and what do you do now? |
| 0:19:43.61 | 148.5s | Kim Barber | In the past, what we would do is the president would read a short sentence or two that roughly phrased indicated that we had lost students or members of the university community in this last semester and would read the names of those individuals. We have moved away from doing that and instead, what we do in the commencement program and in the script is we simply acknowledge that we have had members of the university community and students who have passed away and we want to take a moment of silence to honor them and we have chosen not to read the names at commencement anymore. And we decided to move away from that because there were several points of consideration that are more about the families and also about the students that are there in the audience and friends and family that are there in the audience. Most people that are showing up commencement don’t know who that person was. They’re there for a happy, joyous occasion and just reading this out and and sort of putting this out into the ether’s not a happy, joyous thing. That’s part of it, but the sort of the larger part of it is kind of two issues. One, we found that in some respects it was causing more harm than good because there was always somebody we didn’t find out about until after the fact, and then the family or the friends that were there were hurt that we didn’t read John Doe’s name or Jane Doe’s name. And why did we not do that? And we’ve skipped them and this was their opportunity to be recognized at commencement and we didn’t do it. The second reason is you have all these graduates on the floor and even not talking about a mass casualty situation, there are students that are much more active in the community or have a deeper ties to the community in some respect and You don’t know the circumstances or maybe you do in some cases of, of how they passed and what impact that had on their very specific community, their fraternity, their sorority, the research lab, the art studio, the theater troupe, the orchestra, whatever it was. And when you start reading those names out, particularly if some of those students were not necessarily involved in the death, but much more intimately aware of the details, you bring all that back up for them on the floor at graduation, which we all know is already a highly charged emotional day. |
| 0:22:13.0 | 5.8s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Right? Students are crashing into commencement exhausted, but elated and like that |
| 0:22:18.80 | 2.2s | Kim Barber | is tired, dehydrated, didn’t eat, |
| 0:22:21.11 | 0.4s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | yes, |
| 0:22:21.80 | 22.0s | Kim Barber | exactly. And so it can be. Traumatic on top of where it wasn’t in their mind and all of a sudden you’re putting it front and center in their mind and then you’re expecting them to walk across the stage and smile and get their picture taken and everything. So we decided that we were not going to do that. Instead, we would honor all those lost in a more |
| 0:22:43.78 | 1.5s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | sort of uniform holistic, |
| 0:22:45.72 | 90.3s | Kim Barber | I was, I was drawing a blank, but, you know, not calling them out by specific name. Uh, and allowing everybody to have their moment of silence to honor them whichever or remember them in whichever way they want. For those that know them and for those that don’t, it’s, it’s a moment of silence. But what we have done instead now is that we, once a year, we have a memorial service in May. It’s after the graduation is over and the families are invited and they can choose to come or not. And it is a specific memorial service for everybody in the last year who has passed away, um, for the families of those students, and we have guest speakers at it and they’re acknowledged in a much more personal way. Uh, if we’ve not already presented the diplomas to the family or the memorial certificates, they can be presented there. Every person, every family member that shows up at that memorial service knows that that’s what they’re walking into and so. They’re not sitting in a crowded arena with 10,000 other people who have no idea who this person is. They’re there with their 3 people or their 10 family members or their whatever, but they also are, they’re also with other families who have suffered a loss at some point. And so, our student affairs people are the ones that run it, university relations is involved, the president, provost’s office are involved, and so it is a very structured event similar to commencement. But it really is acknowledging them in a very specific and much more compassionate way. |
| 0:24:16.28 | 36.9s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Yeah, I think that’s a beautiful way to handle it. And it is definitely a fundamental difference to go to an event where like commencement, where it’s like, hooray, we did it, versus to go to an event. To say we’re specifically going there to celebrate people who are no longer with us. Like just the, the emotional preparation is different. The way you engage is, is different. So I think that’s a really good way to handle things. And that’s nice. Do you get a lot of people? Are there, are they well attended? |
| 0:24:53.31 | 72.3s | Kim Barber | Yes, we granted, it’s a ceremony that is established based on who has passed in that last year. So, but yes, the families, yeah, it varies and the families do attend. Um, we have had pushback. So if there’s an institution. that’s thinking about maybe changing their process. We’ve had pushback from families where they have wanted that acknowledgement at the commencement ceremony. We’ve had requests for an empty chair to represent that missing student. We’ve had requests for the names to be printed in the commencement program and again, we, we have changed our practice for the reasons I outlined and so we have politely but firmly denied those families’ requests and, and continually point them to the memorial ceremony, which everybody has an idea what commencement’s like or at least you can look it up on YouTube or something like that. So, I will say, you know, they don’t have an idea what a memorial service might look like. And so, we have found that when they do attend, they’re very appreciative and, and find that helpful to whatever degree that that was a meaningful milestone for them to observe for their student. |
| 0:26:05.96 | 38.1s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Yeah. And because this is a registrar focused podcast, and we are mostly all either records nerds or process nerds or both, talk me through the conversations, who was involved in the decisions to print the names in the commencement bulletin or not print the names. How The conversations evolve about, hey, we’re not going to read the names anymore. This is, we’re just going to do a moment of silence. Was that a sort of a hierarchy top down? That’s what we’re doing? Or was there more of a collaboration between different offices? And how did that unfold? |
| 0:26:44.26 | 53.8s | Kim Barber | So the registrar’s office would get the calls after commencement of so and so’s name wasn’t in the program and for those of us that do this, you know, you go to press a week or two before your actual ceremony. So we always were missing a name in the printed program, which then essentially created some trauma for families because even if they weren’t going to come, that was going to be something they were asking us for that didn’t have the name in it. The presence office would typically get complaints that the name wasn’t read. Or the dean of student’s office would get the complaints. The name wasn’t read, you know, and, and so it kind of depends on which conduit and connection point that family had with the institution as to where the complaint registered from, and I’m, I’m using complaint not to, not as a, a slam family |
| 0:27:38.4 | 1.5s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | in the technical term of it |
| 0:27:39.51 | 112.9s | Kim Barber | that in the geek data nerd sort of way, and so. Over time, because it was sort of dispersed across the different offices, you know, we didn’t realize how many of them we were getting until we sat down and talked through it. And I, I want to say, I think it was our dean of students in conjunction with the registrar staff where we really asked the, do we have to print these because it’s a problem. And that the problem being, of course, that you’re going to always miss somebody. And then that’s where we led into the, do we just not print them and have only a moment of silence and then what is student affairs? How do, how do our partners in student affairs step in and sort of close that gap for the families because that’s not our domain as registrars, you know, and that’s where I swear up and down, I love my student affairs. People could never, would never do their job. Uh, strangely enough, they say the same thing about registrars, so we’re, we’re paired nicely there. But we work very closely with them and, you know, my staff knows to reach out when we have uh a, a decedent letter come through for a student. Are we doing an honorary degree, a memorial degree? What’s going on with that? How are we gonna do it? I had mentioned earlier that master’s and specialist doctorates are a little bit different. They’re more or less the same thing, but the recommendation is coming not only from the dean but with support from the students graduate committee that. So we don’t require that the dissertation be done or the thesis or the final creative project be done, you know, they have to have completed a substantial portion of their coursework, be well on their way. The committee has to acknowledge that, yes, they, they were heading down the right path to be that independent scholar, researcher, creative artist, whatever. We could do a memorial degree if, if they were, say, in their first semester and had not attained that. So we, it’s not an. graduate only thing. It’s any student that ends up passing away during the term could be eligible. |
| 0:29:32.71 | 33.2s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Got it. Our graduate level posthumous degree policy is much more stringent, I think, than what you’ve described. Like for a doctoral degree, you have to have a defendable, defensible, defendable dissertation written. So you have to be done with coursework. You have to have passed comps or reviewed your portfolio reviews, whichever system you’re going, and you have to have done a significant amount of work on your dissertation in order to receive a posthumous degree. |
| 0:30:06.30 | 10.5s | Kim Barber | Our doctors are the same way. You have to have a, you have to have a significant portion of your research underway completed, but it doesn’t have to be done and defended. |
| 0:30:17.10 | 46.0s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Right on, OK. We’ve talked about ways to acknowledge students who have passed. I recently had a request from our student affairs people, and we have a student who is in hospice. And so I’m just wondering if you do any sort of, I hate to even call it preposthumous, But while the student is still alive, when you know that the student is not going to make it to the end of their degree program and may not make it through the year based on their health or other considerations, is there anything that you do or provide to the family or the student themselves for people in that situation? Yes. Tell me about that. |
| 0:31:04.6 | 153.2s | Kim Barber | So, this is based on my experience in most cases where we have a student who is in hospice or has been determined to be terminal for whatever reason, could be accident, could be cancer, some other major illness, um, but it’s, it’s not gonna make it. In my experience, in most cases, those are graduate students. Typically, for whatever reason, my undergraduates don’t wind up in those types of situations as often and this is a matter of, of numbers when I say as often. It’s not that they don’t, it’s just population wise, it’s different. I think we have awarded, if memory serves, 3 or maybe 4 bedside degrees. And typically where that has come up is the student is in hospice, uh, either at home or in the hospital. The committee, typically the major professor. Uh, you know, has been really invested in the student and they want this student to earn their degree before they pass, you know, and that is the reality of the situation is that when, when we have been involved in these situations, the student has had days typically. So we work with our diploma, uh, vendor, we get the diplomas printed up, we present it to our dean of students people who then coordinate. And make arrangements with the college and then it’s dependent upon sometimes we will go and work with our bookstore and get regalia sent over to the hospital, kind of depends on what the student is able to do or not able to do and we have done bedside conferrals of the degree. Our, our provost in the past has attended in some cases it’s the academic dean of the college and typically it’s the major professor. And the, the degree is presented to the student and conferred at bedside with university appropriate dignitaries there in place and typically the family is there. And again, this is where we go back to the, the registry. Our degree integrity academic policy versus the gray area that the sitting registrars sit in, which is we’re the ones that make the hard calls and you know my policy says posthumous degree technically that’s not we’re rewarding, we’re awarding bedside degree, but in the grand scheme of things, does that really matter? No. Yeah, at least not in my opinion, and |
| 0:33:37.23 | 17.9s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | the gift that you’re giving them and giving the family, I think for me personally far outweighs someone complaining that like they were 3 credits short in their, you know, they never finished their humanities requirement for their general education. You’re like, OK, yeah. |
| 0:33:55.54 | 62.8s | Kim Barber | Yes, you know, the point counterpoint is you don’t know that they wouldn’t have, but for, um, and I think, you know, as a, as registrars and advisors and um depends on the different roles you have on your campus because in the, in the world of enrollment management, you may be overlapping into some student affairs as well or academic advising. There’s lots of exceptions that we will consider, uh, and possibly honor based on circumstances beyond the student’s control, and this is clearly beyond the student’s control and so why would we not be flexible and support the family and in the case of bedside degrees, you’re. Giving that student, particularly in the case of graduate students, something they’ve worked so hard for and potentially have invested years in and to say, well, I’m not going to do it because you didn’t complete your dissertation, that, that’s not the compassionate registrar, that’s the, the stereotypical no because the policy says registrar. |
| 0:34:59.8 | 113.6s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | We don’t have a memorial certificate in the same way that you do. And in fact, just this recent example, I worked with a bunch of people on campus to create a certificate of recognition and honoring the students participation as part of the Mason community, knowing that they are, they were not close to completing and so I think. For us at Mason, I think I’m going to bring back from this conversation, how to actually formalize the memorial certificate option, because our policy right now just is the posthumous degree. Um, and so, in case you’re a senior administrator at George Mason University, and think that. I’m played hot and loose with the things that there isn’t a policy that said I couldn’t give a certificate of recognition. So acknowledgement that’s right. That’s right. And as Stacy Tidball from Minnesota likes to say, the diploma is a ceremonial document. So if we want to That comment was said in the context of like, should we put a preferred name on a diploma? I mean, yes, if that’s for international students, the considerations are different. But here, the gift that we’re giving to the family is not the piece of paper. The gift that we’re giving to The family is the acknowledgement, the celebration of their students’ participation in our community, and the contributions that that student has made to our community, and that we as a community were changed because of that student’s involvement and participation and association. And I think that that’s it exactly. I think those things far outweigh the counterpoints that might be made. |
| 0:36:53.22 | 86.4s | Kim Barber | It does. And that, and that’s why we added the memorial acknowledgement because we did have situations where I had a first term freshman, second term freshman, and maybe they had 45 hours because they brought in dual enrollment and AP credit and whatever and they had 12 hours of FSU coursework and it’s like I, I can’t award. I mean like this is nothing close to a degree. But yes, they were a member of the community and they were involved in sorority where they were involved in a sport or a club or, you know, like I said, the band or, or whatever and even if they weren’t in all of those things, they were part of the community and, and, you know, Florida State wants to acknowledge that and recognize that and particularly for families that lose a student, um. In some respects, it hits harder, I think in some ways when they’re so young. Um, You also don’t know in some cases, what happened. And so, sometimes this is a way to help families overcome trauma when they didn’t realize there was an issue. And they’re now finding out when they show up on your campus because dean of students or PD called them. And to then put those families through sort of rigorro mole. You know, when you’re looking at it from that perspective. This is bureaucratic red tape, |
| 0:38:19.73 | 4.3s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | yeah, and anything we can make easier at that point, I think we should do. |
| 0:38:24.62 | 78.9s | Kim Barber | Right. And so our memorial degrees, we don’t post them on the transcript. The posthumous degrees are posted on the transcript, um, and for anybody in the state of Florida, as you know, we have a lot of Requirements for reporting. So, our IR people know how to recognize these degrees and so that they’re not reported inappropriately for metrics or any of those things that matter, iPads and stuff like that. So, you know, if you’re looking at doing something like this and haven’t already done it or you’re considering loosening your standards, I would make sure you also just talk with your IR people. So they can identify them and determine what’s appropriate reporting and accounting for that institution. So this is again where we go back to the sort of data geek nerd part of it’s more than just checking a couple of tick boxes. We have to think about housing and food and tuition calc and waivers and Title IV refunds and All those types of things that can kind of come into play and what levers as registrars do we pull when we’re closing out a record but trying to also do the least amount of damage if you will, in terms of the fallout that would normally occur by the fact that you’re canceling all these courses before the 60% date and all that type of stuff. |
| 0:39:43.90 | 18.9s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Kim, are there any pieces of advice or guidance that you would give to a new registrar, a less experienced registrar, someone coming into the role, maybe they’ve never dealt with a student death, and how would you advise them to prepare for this kind of situation? |
| 0:40:03.63 | 193.8s | Kim Barber | My best advice is to sit down with your dean of students, people or whoever on your campus is sort of the point of contact for families and do it before this crosses your desk and have a conversation with them. How does this go? What do you do? What is the office that I need to then pass information on to if, if you guys don’t already do it? Um, so if you’re not notifying housing or you’re not notifying the instructors, what do I need to do as the registrar processing the records updates? I would also say, talk with your institutional reporting people or whoever does your data surveys to make sure you’re clear on what System checkboxes you need to be checking to make sure that it’s appropriately reported and picked up. It’s not a bad idea to talk to your financial aid office, particularly in light of some of the federal bill changes coming down, so that you just have an understanding because again, this is about mitigating fallout for the family after the fact. Um, you have parent plus loans and different loan situations out there where some of this could come back, um, to a family. Months after the fact, where they have no clue what’s going on. So, just educating yourself on all the different parts of the university or college and how it responds when a student has passed away is a, is a good thing. Take a look at your SOPs and if you haven’t updated them in a while, double check if some of that is still relevant, particularly if you’ve had a system change or you’re contemplating uh an SIS change. What are the new flags I have to set? What are the new reports that have to be updated or changed? Those, those are all good things. I would also say if you’ve not dealt with this before, everybody has their own personal history. You’re gonna find out over time different circumstances and some of those personally could be triggering, you know, lean into your own employee support, employee assistance program or whatever you have or personal therapist or friend or um. Colleague who has dealt with this previously and, and sort of get them to walk you through because some circumstances that are going to cross your desk can be very upsetting uh as to how things went down. And again, that doesn’t even go into sort of mass casualty events, which is totally different. But certain things that you’ll find out about your students. So the community that they were in can ripple out across your institution and that can bring up feelings and emotions, you know, registrars or, I half the time I dress in black and it’s, it’s the kind of the joke, but, you know, we have kind of the reputation of being in the office of no. And it, and I’m using that in general as registrars, but we’re, we’re not unfeeling automatons and so, you know, be aware of that and it, it’s OK if one hits you harder than maybe another one because of the circumstance and use your resources to, to help deal with that. You may also find that there’s one that’s really weird circumstances and that’s where I’ve leaned on colleagues. What have you done in the past with this? How have you handled this? |
| 0:43:17.76 | 13.3s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Kim, thank you so much for sharing all of this. I appreciate it very much. I think that people are gonna benefit from that advice and from your expertise, experience in this realm. So thank you so much for being here today. |
| 0:43:31.33 | 1.6s | Kim Barber | You’re welcome. Happy to do it. |
| 0:43:34.28 | 75.5s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Thank you to Kim Barber for sharing her experiences and some really good advice about how to prepare for the situation of a student’s death. Take a moment and review your office’s procedures and documentation to make sure you know what to do in case you’re called upon. Review your institution’s policies to make sure they’re. Aligned with your institution’s values and don’t be afraid to suggest a new kind of recognition or acknowledgement beyond the traditional posthumous degree. Registrars are human beings and especially at critical events, focusing on our shared humanity can make an enormous difference. Thanks very much for listening. If you’re enjoying for the Record, please subscribe to the podcast from your podcast streaming service of choice. Never miss an episode. Also, consider sharing this with your colleagues or your leadership. And did you know that Acro has other podcasts as well? Admit It is admissions focused. The transfer Tea is learning mobility focused, and H.E.A.R.D, higher education and real diversity lives at the intersection of diversity, equity and inclusion and higher education. Give them a listen. |
| 0:44:54.14 | 14.7s | Doug McKenna, Ph.D. | Mind the heat, drink water before you’re thirsty, stretch your legs, work on a puzzle, pick up that instrument, but most importantly, look out for one another. Until next time, I’m Doug McKenna, and this is For the Record. |
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