Changes to the Advising System Beginning Fall 2020

PRIMARY ADVISORS

After an investigation of practices at other institutions and of FERPA regulations, the Council of Deans has decided that all faculty will be given access to all student records. This will support faculty as they fulfill their mentoring roles by providing them with academic information in a timely fashion as they speak with students.

This access, however, will be constrained by FERPA regulations that require that the faculty member have a student’s permission (in the form of the student’s identification number) to access the files and that the access is limited to work internal to the university’s operations. Further details about this access will follow in emails over the summer.

Further, beginning in the fall, each student will have a single academic advisor recorded in the Office of the Registrar. This advisor, either faculty or professional, will be assigned based on the student’s first major and/or class status. All other advising roles will be removed.

CAPS PETITIONS

The academic deans and the Committee on Academic and Professional Standards (CAPS) prefer having faculty who serve as primary advisors attend any meeting at which there is a petition on behalf of one of their advisees. The goal is to have the best advocate for a student speaking on their behalf before the CAPS committee.

While the change will officially begin with the fall term of 2020, if you are currently a faculty advisor, please speak to your assistant dean for more information about the committee procedures.

The Office of the Registrar will send faculty advisors a reminder of their students’ petition(s) before a meeting, and they will be scheduled first on the agenda. If an advisor cannot attend a meeting to represent their advisee, the advisor should contact the appropriate assistant dean before the meeting, allowing them to learn more about the request and advocate for the student.

ADVISING SURVEY

Later this spring, all undergraduate students will receive an invitation to complete an online survey of our academic advising services. This base-line survey will enable us to identify opportunities to improve our advising process across campus and will not be used for evaluation of individual advisors.