As deadlines approach

I didn't have any "extra" activities like I did last week (campus meetings, calling campaign). But I have been keeping very busy meeting with students who are anxious about the THE March 11 deadline. March 11 is the last day to drop a course, elect credit/no credit for a course, and apply for grade replacement.

This time of the semester is especially busy because students are receiving their first big grades of the semester - which correlates with a rush to find out if dropping a class would be all right. This usually involves an in-depth discussion about the student's long-term plans in terms of major. For example, today I met with a student who was thinking about dropping chemistry (which she is actually retaking) but wants to go to medical school. If she drops, she will be a year behind in her requisite courses. These scenarios can be very tough for students as they try to make the best decision for both their current schedule and future plans.

Something that makes course-dropping even more complicated is that fact that our university offers some second-eight-weeks courses. They fill up super-quickly and complicate discussions about how many credit hours you'll have if you drop a course. For some students, this is a great option. For others, it would add extra undue stress. For still others, it would be a great option but they wait too long to do it and the classes fill up, leaving them with too few credit hours which can affect things like insurance coverage and international student status. I have mixed feelings about the second-eight-weeks courses because I think that too many students lean on that option, but in some cases they are good because they can save a student from a bad academic situation if something unfortunate happens.

And as I mentioned in class, I've also been meeting with many of my probation students as they trickle in for their second PASS meetings (Program for Academic Support and Success). This is very challenging and I won't re-hash the details here since I discussed this yesterday in class, but I am glad that the program seems to be helping at least some students significantly so far.

One final item that came up this week is that the other new advisor and I might be presenting at the campus academic advisors' conference in May about the experiences and learning curve of new advisors. We're going to talk about this next week so I'll keep you posted. This came up at the staff meeting today and Julian thought this might be a good way to inform advisors who have been here for many years about what is required/desired to get started in advising on this campus today and about what has been helpful to us.