A program called Coursicle, designed by a University of North Carolina and a Harvard college student to make class registration easier, is now available at St. Thomas.

Coursicle is a free online service that allows students to browse classes, plan their schedule and receive text notifications as soon as a class they are looking to take has open seats available. Neither students nor the schools themselves pay for the service.

Joe Puccio and Tara Aida, the program’s creators, offered Coursicle initially to UNC students, but interest elsewhere has skyrocketed in recent months. Puccio said that the business has received over 150 requests in the past month from students wanting their schools’ course information to be added to the website.

“We really wanted to reduce the stress and tedium around the registration process,” Puccio said.

Both Puccio and Aida agreed that the initiative for Coursicle came out of the frustration that they and their friends experienced during the registration period.

“I spent several hours trying to plan out my class schedule, and then when I finally went to register for my classes, I got into only one of the five I needed to take,” Puccio said in an email interview. “That night, I started working on a program that would text me when a class I wanted had an available seat.”

Puccio said currently more than 80 percent of students at UNC use Coursicle.

“One of my friends suggested opening it up to other students, and at the end of the registration period about 900 students had signed up,” Puccio said. “The next semester, 1,800 students had signed up, and it just kept growing by word of mouth.”

St. Thomas sophomores Maeve Dowdle and Erin O’Connor are two of many students who have taken advantage of the recent addition of Coursicle on campus.

“My favorite part about Coursicle is how easy it was to add the classes that I was waitlisted to,” O’Connor said. “I really like how I will receive a text to notify me that there is an opening in the section.”

“I think it will be helpful because now I instantly will know if a spot opens up in the class I am trying to get into and will probably have a better chance of getting into the class right away,” Dowdle said.

Coursicle started as a program that would text students when a class they want to take opens up, but it evolved into a program that helps students figure out their schedule.

“A few months later, Tara suggested we try to solve the other side of registration: the arduous process of figuring out what classes to take and trying to fit them all into a non-overlapping schedule,” Puccio said.

One of Puccio and Aida’s favorite parts of Coursicle is the design. One of their ideas was to make the browsing images more pleasant than looking at row after row of text.

“We’ve assigned an image to represent each subject, and display that image on the front of every class ‘card’,” Puccio said. “The images act as a visual aid in grouping search results by subject.”

Puccio said the feedback so far has been remarkably positive. One of their secondary goals was to create a product people would fall in love with. They plan to support St. Thomas indefinitely and hope to receive that same feedback here at St. Thomas.

“We get emails from students every week thanking us for helping them get into a class they needed to take to graduate, or for making the registration process a lot less stressful for them,” Puccio said.

“There is no need to stress about constantly checking Murphy,” Dowdle said.

Lydia Lockwood can be reached at lock0052@stthomas.edu