Jeffrey Von Munkwitz-Smith recently retired as Assistant Vice President and University Registrar at Boston University. This article provides a commentary by Von Munkwitz-Smith on an address given by Lotus Delta Coffman (then president of the University of Minnesota) in 1926 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Collegiate Resistrars, held in Minneapolis, Minnesota. "The Registrar: A Profession" was the title of the talk, and in it Coffman discussed his view of the function of the registrar in a previous generation, what it had become in 1926, and what it would become in the future. Coffman called on registrars to rise to a new level to support the needs of the institutions. Parts of this commentary were adapted from a keynote address Von Munkwitz-Smith gave at the 2012 annual meeting of the Illinois Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. The theme of that conference was "Zen and the Art of Registrars and Admissions Officers: An Inquiry into Our Profession."