Upgrades continue to impact the process of requesting academic transcripts from Missouri Southern. The Missouri Southern registrar’s office, which uses third-party vendor National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) for online transcript orders, has received new system upgrades from the service that are aimed at improving the efficiency of transcript ordering programs.

“[The NSC] partnered with [third-party system] Banner — which is our student information system — and have an integrated computer system,” said Cheryl Dobson, registrar. “So the [two] systems actually talk to each other … With this integrated system, it goes directly from the order placed to the Clearinghouse into Banner.”

The new system upgrades provided by NSC will make it possible to generate transcripts automatically, without requiring Registrar staff to manually input any necessary information with each individual request. With this new streamlined automated system in place, transcripts are now expected to be processed and generated within 15 minutes.

Once the transcripts are generated, they can be sent out via an electronic copy to businesses or schools at any time of day, every day of the week. Transcripts can also be held at the Registrar’s Office and picked up during office hours.

If there is a hold on the transcript or if an error occurs during the request process, students will receive an automatic email response alerting him or her to the issue.

“That was a big improvement in 2012,” said Dobson. “The automated email system, people really liked it because it was really efficient.”

Currently, a computer with a mouse is required in order to sign the electronic consent form, but NSC is looking to develop some future upgrades that may allow the consent form to be signed via a touchscreen device.

Online transcript requests can be filled out at www.mssu.edu/registrar. Students can also fill out the necessary forms through their LioNet accounts — which allows the process to become mobile-friendly since the electronic signature is substituted with the Lionet login information.

For more information, contact Cheryl Dobson at (417) 625-9340.