“We’re all about making the student happy – and the faculty too,” Kay Van Toorn says about the Student Records office, where she has served as the University Registrar since June 2003. For three years before that she worked in the President’s Office.

Mrs. Van Toorn and her staff thrive on providing great customer service that includes value-added touches. “We aren’t represented at orientation,” she said, so when students come by or call Student Records, “we not only help them with their need, we also try to give them information about where they can get other services” that might be related, she said. “We steer them to the right place. It’s just good customer service.”

When Mrs. Van Toorn became registrar, the university was just transitioning to Datatel, a widely used student information system, which helps educators and administrators keep track of academic records, including degree audits, reports that match a student's transcript information with the requirements for a particular degree. The computer system changed everything, she says.

“The faculty wasn’t used to having such a sophisticated system,” said Mrs. Van Toorn, whose department was responsible for training. “For a while we had a hybrid system until we were completely converted,” and faculty had “to learn how to use the system for a degree audit, which previously was done on an Excel spreadsheet.”

Though Texas Wesleyan’s student record systems have changed, Mrs. Van Toorn said, “our friendly personal service to students” has not. “We give the personal touch.”

Education:
Degree in marketing from Columbia (Missouri) College

Did You Know:
Mrs. Van Toorn has a green thumb. “I love to plant flowers and shrubbery and I plan to do more of that when I retire,” she said. “Being from the Midwest, I find it very difficult to have a successful garden” in North Texas.