New registrar at Rider looks to ‘stabilize’ the university

By Grace Bertrand

Stepping into his new role as registrar just two years after he became assistant registrar at Rider, Daniel Pavlick has witnessed a lot of change firsthand. More than that, he has learned to understand the weight of universitywide changes when he had to manually remove the schedules of 30 full-time faculty who were laid off in late December. 

Naming emotional and logistical challenges, like the layoffs, Pavlick’s short-term goal for the Registrar under his new leadership is now stability.

“Every challenge is an opportunity,” he said. “There’s a lot of change happening with faculty. A lot of change happening with students. And we just want to be steady as we go.”  

Over the years, the registrar has flip-flopped back and forth between the faculty and student sides of operations, Pavlick said, which he wants to fix. Working with Academic Affairs and Enrollment Management, Pavlick is trying to find a middle ground where the Registrar’s Office can be a happy medium for both students and faculty.  

Pavlick recalled what students used to call the “Rider runaround,” when they had to walk to different offices in various  buildings just to get one question answered. He hopes that with the registrar getting moved to the second floor of the Bart Luedeke Center, there can be one central hub for the Rider community to go to.

“It’s important to me that when a student, or even an instructor or department chair, comes to one place, they get that answer,” he said.

Pavlick’s long-term vision for the Registrar’s Office, however, is what he likes to call “tech forward.” Pavlick’s plan is to use the technology available to improve the staff’s everyday tasks, also allowing for cross training to take place so that multiple people are equipped for various tasks. 

His hope is that an overlap will begin to develop beyond the Registrar’s Office and into other offices too, including One Stop Services and the Student Navigation Office, which was recently brought back to Rider after a year-long hiatus. 

Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs Kelly Bidle welcomed Pavlick into his new role in a facultywide email on Feb. 2, where she explained the work they had been doing to “streamline processes” in the Registrar’s Office to benefit the whole Rider community. 

She wrote in her email, “[Pavlick] sees a great deal of potential in working with our Rider community to ensure the Registrar’s Office is not only the keeper of records, but a modern hub where process, procedure and technology are all seamlessly managed.” 

Getting to work closely with Bidle, Pavlick said they formed what he called “a dotted line” working relationship, so that he is kept up to date on the faculty side of Rider, while she is also made aware of the registrar’s operations.  

Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff for Student Experience Mary-Alice Ozechoski also called the relationship between the Registrar’s Office and Enrollment Management “critically important,” adding, “They evaluate transcripts for students coming in with course credits, approve credits for AP testers with appropriate scores and help our enrollment staff better serve students by communicating time to graduation.”

Pavlick’s appointment to the position comes after former Registrar Sue Stefanick, a Rider alum, retired over the winter recess, after serving 47 years at Rider. 

Not having his roots in Rider as Stefanick did, Pavlick recalled wanting to pick up a bachelor’s degree in Spanish with a minor in Chinese at Rider when he became assistant registrar in 2024, but decided to wait until he got more adjusted. 

Pavlick’s new quest has now been pursuing a master’s degree in business administration at Rider as of fall 2025, which he said allows him to stay connected to the students on campus. Already having a background in computer science, engineering and possessing some musical talent, Pavlick is on his way to being a jack of all trades. 

“This is very egocentric of me, but I love that I can be connected to different parts of Rider,” he said. 

Pavlick hopes that through his connections with the different departments at Rider, the campus will see more of the personalities that live in the Registrar’s Office. His goal is to “demystify” the Registrar’s Office for students and faculty who only come in when they have a problem, and often do so with an intimidated look.  

Starting his career as an academic adviser, Pavlick said a part of him misses getting to interact with students, but he knows that there are other people at Rider to fill in those shoes. The other part of him, however, knows the Registrar’s Office is running smoothly when no students come to see him. 

 “It’s very weird to say but I hope that people don’t come see me,” Pavlick said. “Most people only come here when they have a problem, so I don’t want people to have problems.”