Advising Coordinating Committee


Thursday, November 17, 2005

11:00 a.m. - Merrill Library Room 204

ATTENDING

*University Advising & Transfer Services: John Mortensen (conducting), Cara Allen, Michelle Bogdan, Becki Broadbent, Susan Haddock, Stephanie Hamblin, Lisa Hancock, Wade Oliver, Deborah Reece, Brandy Reeves, Renee Tuke

College of Agriculture: Lisa Allen, Juanita Hunting, Betty Murri, Cathy Myers-Roche, Tami Spackman

College of Education & Human Services: Tressa Haderlie, Harry Heap, Melanie Jones, Marilyn Kruse, Darcie Peterson, Karen Ranson, Denise Taylor

College of Engineering: Kathy Bayn

College of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences: Reid Furniss, Margaret Garr, Susan Parkinson

College of Natural Resources: Kristy Hodson, Maureen Wagner

College of Science: Geri Child, Myra Cook, Liz Heffernan, Janalee Johnson, Karalee Ransom, Judy Schalow, Linda Skabelund, Dennis Welker

Distance Education: Blanding, Brigham City, Logan (Vince Lafferty), Salt Lake City

Registrar’s Office: Roland Squire

Student-Athlete Services: Brian Evans

Student Support Services: Carol Sainsbury

Excused: Krystin Deschamps, Emily Hoffman, Mary Lou Reynolds, Spencer Watts, Sue Young, Moab, Price

NOTE: The roll did not make it all the way around, so there may have been others in attendance.

MINUTES:

Welcome to our new UATS Advisor, Michelle Bogdan, and to Cara Allen, UATS Articulation Specialist.

1. Advising International Students on Friday, January 6

Maribeth Evensen-Hengge reported that USU has 801 international students/scholars representing 79 countries. These students cannot enter the United States until 30 days before classes begin. Most students want to take the IELI exam because if they pass, they are not required to take the TOEFL. The IELI exam is not offered until the first Monday of class, and results are not available until the following Wednesday. Since some students take some IELI classes and some University classes, advising becomes almost impossible. Representatives from the Office of International Students and Scholars and the Intensive English Department will meet to discuss if IELI exams could be offered earlier to make the process easier for everyone.

January 6 is International Student Orientation. Advisors need to let the International Office know if they can meet students in the Ballroom from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM, or if they would prefer student mentors to bring international students to their individual offices during that time.

2. Changes in Requirements for Language Minors

Mark Larsen asked advisors to send Spanish majors to the department and/or refer students to their web page for requirements and sequence of courses. There are changes as of summer semester. A full-time faculty member is being hired to teach Portuguese starting fall semester. Changes will made to the Portuguese minor; there will be more upper division level courses required. Interested students are encouraged to declare major/minor immediately before requirements change. Remember that a language major is really a Literature major and does include native speakers.

3. Change of Matriculation & Deadline (SGASTDN)

Bill Jensen reported that e problem that any change of majors will not show up until the following term. The information will be incorrect for Fall or Spring. Any necessary changes must be done manually. Therefore, changes will be made for graduation only; if a student is not graduating, the change will be made next term. This delay has many negative implications for advisors, which were discussed. Hopefully, these issues will continue to be addressed.

4. Self-Service Banner Registration, Overrides, and Authorizations

Bill didn’t have enough information from Heidi to report on this. We will address this issue in a future meeting.

5. UAOA Call for Proposals

The Utah Advising & Orientation Association 2006 Conference will be held at the Park City Marriot on May 24 and 25, 2006. The Association invites you to submit a presentation proposal that will reflect the conference theme, “Keeping It All Together.” Wade Oliver passed out a brochure giving details; should you need more information, please contact him at wade.oliver@usu.edu.

6. Major Fair Evaluations Overview

Becki Broadbent expressed appreciation to everyone who participated. The response from students was very positive. There were 98 evaluations last year and 223 this year, and 345 interest cards were received. 94% of staff evaluations preferred the Major Fair and Preview Day being combined. The event for 2006 will be Thursday, October 12. Sally Peterson, Fawn Groves, Amy Crosbie, and Becki Broadbent volunteered to be on the committee.

7. Possible Changes Regarding Math Placement Exams

The state is looking at using a standardized math placement exam, such as COMPASS. Once a decision is made, regardless of whether USU goes to a standardized exam or continues to use our current math placement exams, we will begin to enter the test scores on SOATEST in Banner. That way the advisors can see the scores, the scores can be used to satisfy prerequisites, and students can register via the internet from any computer.

8. October 20 Workshop Video Tape Available for Checkout

We had an excellent workshop on October 20, presented by LuAnn Helms and Tom Berry from the Counseling Center. The workshop focused on decision-making of millennial generation students. John Mortensen has a VHS copy of the workshop. Those who would like to see the video may check it out through John.

9. ENGL 1010 (CL1) and ENGL 2010 (CL2)

In order to better articulate transfer coursework, the General Education Subcommittee has approved a code modification for the Communications Literacy requirement. English 1010 will be coded as CL1, and English 2010 will be coded as CL2. This will help better identify those courses which satisfy freshman- and sophomore-level composition courses at other institutions, and will also better accommodate transfer work from schools that have multiple courses that might satisfy the sophomore-level English.

10. Common Course Numbering Identified in Publications

John provided samples of how the common course numbering changes will appear in next year’s publications. Changes will be identified in the Course Description section of the catalog, the University Studies Requirements sections of the catalog and Advisor Handbook, and the articulation section of the Advisor Handbook. The advisors requested that the changes also be identified on the major requirement sheets.

11. Articulation of Associate Degrees

There are several institutions for which USU will accept an Associate of Science or an Associate of Arts degree as satisfying all of the General Education requirements at USU. These degrees are currently under review by the General Education Subcommittee. It is anticipated that degrees from some institutions will be removed from the approved list. Exceptions may need to be made for degrees from some of our more popular feeder institutions. John will report the outcome of the decisions at the January ACC meeting.

12. Southern Virginia University Articulation

Last year, the associate deans voted in favor of allowing general education courses from Southern Virginia University (SVU) satisfy general education courses at USU. The General Education Subcommittee is reviewing a list of proposed courses and will make recommendations at a future meeting. Course approved will be included in next year’s version of the Advisor Handbook.

13. Discoverer for Advisors – Creating Reports from the Reporting Warehouse

Several advisors have attended some training regarding the use of Discoverer to generate reports from the Reporting Warehouse. However, that training focused on a lot of tables and information that advisors do not need in their day-to-day jobs. John spent about 10 minutes demonstrating how to create simple advising reports, filtering the data, and exporting the results into Excel. He will arrange for additional hands-on, in-depth training targeted specifically for advisors.

14. Articulation Issues in Banner

John reviewed many of the current articulation problems associated with Banner.

First, not all courses had to be articulated in SIS Plus. If a course articulated to elective credits, the information did not have to be built into SIS Plus. However, in Banner, everything must articulate in order to show up and count. As a result, Tracy Jones is going through our top 17 feeder institutions’ catalogs, line by line, and entering ALL of their courses into Banner and creating an articulation, most of which are articulated to elective credits. This is a very time-consuming process.

Second, there were problems with Advanced Placement credits and how those were articulating. AP records that were in SIS Plus, may or may not have come across into Banner correctly. When these problems are identified, advisors are calling Brandy Reeves, who can re-articulate the AP coursework.

Third, none of the one-to-many articulation scenarios in SIS Plus were brought across. All of those need to be rebuilt in Banner.

Fourth, SIS Plus had a course prefix limitation of four characters. For example ACCTNG 2010 at Weber State was entered as ACCT 2010. However, Banner does not have that limitation, so the course is now entered in Banner as ACCTNG 2010. This causes a problem because the SIS Plus articulation is for ACCT, not ACCTNG. This will necessitate building two sets of records for all Weber State courses that have prefixes longer than four characters, so that the articulation is covered in Banner.

Fifth, common course numbering adds another huge wrinkle to all of this. All of the other state institutions changed to their common course numbering this year.

Sixth, our Banner consultant informed us that there are 20 known defects on SHATAEQ, the main form we use to do articulations. It is no wonder that articulation is a huge frustration for the entire state.

Please be patient. We are doing our best to work through these difficulties. On the positive side, Cara Allen has been hired to help with articulation. Cara worked in the Registrar’s Office three years ago. In addition, we will be able to create the nonexistent articulations quicker by entering the data in Excel and having it loaded into Banner.

15. Recap of Spring SOAR

Thank you to all those who helped with Spring SOAR. This year we had two SOAR dates and it appeared that all went smoothly. Our only concern is that there are still a number of students who are in the process of being admitted for spring semester. We would like to propose having three or four SOAR dates for next spring, spread out so that there might be one per week during the month of November. We will discuss this again in a few months.

16. Request to setup Roundtable to discuss Priority Registration

17. Location and Times for Future Meetings

We are still in the process of finding a new room for our meetings next semester. As soon as we have something arranged, the advisors will be notified through the e-mail list.

CALENDAR

Jan. 18 11:00 AM Advising Coordinating Committee

Jan. 26 11:00 AM Advising Workshop Series – Banner Sharing Session

Feb. 9 11:00 AM Advising Coordinating Committee

Feb. 21-24 NACADA Regional Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico

Mar. 9 11:00 AM Advising Coordinating Committee

Mar. 23-24 Scholar’s Day

Mar. 28 1:30 PM SOAR for students coming Summer 2006

Apr. 6 11:00 AM Advising Coordinating Committee

Apr. 21 1:30 PM Early SOAR Advising for students coming Fall 2006

May 11 11:00 AM Advising Coordinating Committee

May 19 1:30 PM Early SOAR Advising for students coming Fall 2006

May 22 1:30 PM Early SOAR Advising for students coming Fall 2006

May 24-25 Utah Orientation and Advising Association (UAOA) Conference in Park City


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