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Welcome to your new program! This page serves as your virtual orientation. You may read the text, watch the videos, or both! It is all the exact same information. We look forward to working with you on your academic journey!
Introduction
Introduction
Welcome to ASU! We’re glad you’re here. We’re excited to partner with you for success! The following information will help get you acquainted with being a graduate student, important information for beginning your program, and all the resources available to you. After reviewing the information here, you’ll be all set to hit the ground running with your new program!
We know you are busy. Maybe you are sitting down to go through this information first thing in the morning, on your lunch break, just before bed, or on the bus. That’s why we’ve designed this to have both text and video, so you can choose which format works best for you (or both). Whatever format you choose, we still recommend checking out the links and resources at the end when you have time.
Your Support Team
Your Support Team
Your advisors are here to help with all things academic–this includes your course sequence, policies and procedures, navigating the University, and more. If you are an ASU Online student, you will also have a Success Coach. They are there to help with things such as time management, incorporating school into life, and managing stress. You will hear from your academic advising team and success coach in different ways, including phone, email, and texting. You can find the contact information for the academic advising team and success coaches on your MyASU homepage under "Academic Support Team".
Your college has its own Success Coaches, too! Let’s learn more about them.
Academic Coaching - your academic coach is there to help with your college transition, time management, organizational skills, goal setting, studying, note-taking, test preparation, and more.
Career Coaching - your career coach is there to help with making informed decisions regarding your education degree and experiences with the goal of long-term success. They can help you with your current and post-graduation goals. They are also able to discuss career options outside of the classroom.
Financial Coaching - your financial coach is there to help with understanding your finances, answering financial questions, helping prevent financial roadblocks, and ensuring finances are not a barrier to you successfully completing your degree.
Wellness Coaching - your wellness coach is there to help with defining and achieving your wellness goals and balancing the eight dimensions of wellness, in addition to learning resilience and coping skills to achieve overall well-being.
You may access these coaches here: https://education.asu.edu/student-experience/success-coaching
Being A Graduate Student
Being A Graduate Student
Being a graduate student carries different expectations than an undergraduate student. Let’s go over a few of them. For more information, please check out the link provided: https://catalog.asu.edu/policies/mlftc . You can always reach out to your academic advising team if you have any questions about graduate student policies.
Your courses will usually (but not always) be offered in an accelerated format, meaning that a full college course is being compressed into a shorter time. This allows you to focus more closely on each individual course, as your courses are typically spread out one-at-a-time. You should expect to spend 15-18 hours per week on each course. Please be aware that some courses will require group work with your classmates.
You will be doing a significant amount of reading and academic writing. Citing your work is very important using APA style, as ASU and the Graduate College take academic integrity, including plagiarism, very seriously. You will go over this in your courses.
You may be using new technologies that you might not be used to, including Zoom, Slack, and others. Please note that Chromebooks, cell phones, and tablets are not ASU compatible to complete assignments. Even if some course content is able to be accessed using these, these will not provide access to all of the required components to complete the classes for your program.
Your graduate courses will use a rigorous grading scale which may differ from the one used for your undergraduate classes. For more information, please review the syllabus in your classes carefully.
The learning platform you will use for your classes will be Canvas. For an orientation into Canvas, you can check out the following link: https://lx.asu.edu/student-support-resources . You will have access to the syllabus and schedule when the course opens, which can be found on the Academic Calendar. Please note that courses typically do not open up until a few days before the class starts.
If you are an Online student, your classes will be asynchronous, meaning you will not have to log in at a certain time, but will still have due dates and deadlines throughout the session. It will be important to look ahead to upcoming assignments and due dates in order to stay on track with your courses.
Session, Semester, and Academic Calendar
Session, Semester, and Academic Calendar
ASU has three semesters: fall, spring, and summer. Within each semester, there are sessions. Session A is the first half of the semester, Session B is the second half, and Session C is the longest, which spans the entire length of the semester in the fall and spring (it will look slightly different in the summer). In the fall and spring, these accelerated sessions (sessions A and B) will be 7.5 weeks; in the summer, they will be 6 weeks. Session C will be 15 weeks plus final exams in the fall and spring, and 8 weeks in the summer. Here’s what it looks like all written out:
Fall/Spring Session A:
first 7.5 week session
Fall/Spring Session B:
second 7.5 week session
Fall/Spring Session C:
full semester (15 weeks plus final exams)
Summer Session A:
first 6-week session
Summer Session B:
second 6-week session
Summer Session C:
8-week session
If you have any questions about this, you can always find these dates on the Academic Calendar.
Important dates and deadlines can be found on the Academic Calendar (https://registrar.asu.edu/academic-calendar) . It’s important to familiarize yourself with the dates and deadlines there. Let’s go over a few important ones.
Add deadline - this is the last day to add a class.
Drop/tuition refund deadline - this is the last day to drop a class before the tuition refund deadline and without incurring a “W” grade.
Course withdrawal deadline - this is the last day to withdraw from an individual course (after this, you can only withdraw from all courses in a session).
Complete session withdrawal deadline - this is the last day to withdraw from all courses in a session.
University closed dates - these are dates when the university and your advising team will be closed.
Please be sure to review all of the important dates and deadlines on the Academic Calendar, as these are just several of them. Please reach out to your advisors right away if you are experiencing any challenges in regards to adhering to these deadlines or have any questions about these deadlines.
Important Policies
Important Policies
Please familiarize yourself with the student handbook for each program. This can be found on the individual program page: https://sites.google.com/asu.edu/mlftc-grad-student-support/masters-programs . We will go into several important policies in more detail here:
Continuous Enrollment - graduate students must complete at least 1 credit of graduate coursework each fall and spring semester. Please work with your advising team if you anticipate any challenges with this.
Leave of Absence - each graduate student is allowed two leaves of absence. Please connect with your advisors if you wish to request a Leave of Absence.
Academic standing: you must have a 3.0 in all of the following GPAs. These can be a little confusing at first. Usually, they will all be the same, but if you take any classes outside of your program, they may look a little different. Let’s review them:
Plan of Study (iPOS) GPA - this is the GPA for all approved classes for your program.
Overall Graduate GPA - this is the GPA for all graduate courses on your transcript after admission to a graduate program.
Cumulative GPA - this is the GPA for all courses completed after becoming a graduate student, including undergraduate courses.
Academic Integrity - all graduate students should familiarize themselves with APA style to avoid plagiarism. ASU’s courses use technology to check for plagiarism in submitted assignments, so it is vital to check your work and cite appropriately. ASU takes issues of plagiarism very seriously.
Your iPOS
Your iPOS
iPOS - what is it? It stands for Interactive Plan Of Study. It lists out the courses that will complete your program. It is basically an agreement between you and the Graduate College as to the courses that will complete your program and the GPA necessary to do so. What is it used for?
It is used for planning. It’s helpful for keeping you on track.
It is used for progress. It is used by the graduation office to determine if all of your requirements are met.
It is used for expectations. It is an agreement of expectations between you, Mary Lou Fulton, and the Graduate College.
It is used for graduation. It is required before you can enroll in your culminating experience and before applying to graduate.
How to find it: you can find it by going to your MyASU → My Programs → clicking the down arrow by the name of your program → clicking the down arrow by the line that says “iPOS” → and clicking on the “Graduate Interactive Plan of Study (iPOS)”. Once there, please review the materials on the first page and select the acknowledgement box once you have done so. You can go to your program page on the graduate student site to review the program handbook, course sequence, and information on how to input your program coordinator.
Don’t worry! The iPOS isn’t etched in stone. While this does need to be submitted for approval, it is something that can be changed in the future. Don’t hesitate to work on your iPOS, nor hesitate to reach out to us if you want to make changes. Here is also where you will request a leave of absence on the “petitions” tab.
Finally, please note that you will likely receive some communication about completing this soon into your program, and you may receive a notice about this on your Priority Tasks. You can refer to the information here to help you accomplish this and reach out to your advisors with questions.
Your MyASU
Your MyASU
This is an important place for you to reference throughout your program. If you have any issues with logging in, our Enterprise Technology team is here to help. For more support you can click on the provided link. https://tech.asu.edu/services/ec
In the “My Classes” box, you can view your currently enrolled classes. Once your classes become available to access, the class listed on this page will become a hyperlink that you can click on to access. You can also navigate directly to Canvas to access your coursework. As a reminder, classes will typically not open until just before the session starts. If you have not enrolled in your classes yet, you can click on the “Registration” tab located in the bottom left corner of the “My Classes” box to add your classes. If you click on “View My Schedule,” you can view more information on your courses.
When you click on the “Books” link, it will open up your textbooks page. If it is close enough to when the semester starts, you will see any textbooks that are required. Some courses may have textbooks with a special negotiated rate that will be sent to you–this will be notated here. If you don’t see your textbooks right away, be patient, but if it gets close to when your classes start and you have questions, please reach out to your instructor directly to ask any questions about the course.
Going to “Calendar & Events” and clicking on “View Full Calendar” will open up the Academic Calendar.
If you look at your Priority Tasks, you will see things such as information about any potential holds on your account. You can click on the down arrows for more information. Some tasks are actual tasks that need to be completed, but some are just notices. They might not disappear for a while–this is normal. We recommend checking this regularly.
If you go to the top of your screen and click on the “Finances” link, that will take you to the Finances tab. This will display everything regarding your finances (this is why it is important to make sure you have access to your MyASU account). Here, you will view current and future charges, including tuition and fees. You can also pay your bill from this page. If you are applying for any type of financial aid, loans, or scholarships, you can track your application on this page. There is also a link on this page to submit the FAFSA, as well as track your FAFSA status. Please note, you will need to accept the financial aid offered–it will not automatically apply. Please note that at a graduate level, FAFSA awarding is predominantly loans. If you accept more financial aid than what your charges are, you may get a refund on your financial aid. You can set up a direct deposit on the side of this page, so the refund can go directly to your bank account. You will also see a separate tasks box on this page called “Financing Tasks”. Finally, you can click on the “Find scholarships” button. While there are limited scholarships available for graduate students, you can still search and see what is available. You can also select a payment plan option on this page if you are paying out of pocket.
Going to the Profile tab will allow you to make updates to your profile information. Please note that it is very important that you are regularly checking your ASU email. When emailing faculty and staff at ASU, please use your ASU email address. ASU also uses two-factor authentication, so please be aware you will need to use this to use ASU’s login. You can view this by clicking on the “Password and Security” box on this page.
Graduate Student Services Site
Graduate Student Services Site
If you’re accessing this orientation, you are already familiar with the graduate student site! Here you can find things such as resources, a program page for each program, the program handbook, course sequences, and other program-specific information.
The course sequence is a plan for classes to make sure you stay on track and fulfill the requirements of your program. These sequences take into account when courses are offered and any prerequisites that might be needed. Please reach out to your advisors to discuss if you need to deviate from the preplanned sequence for your program.
Resources
Resources
Finally here is a list of all of the resources available to you. Please note we may update the links from time to time:
Student Support Resources (including Canvas tutorial)
Counseling Services (campus immersion) & 360 Life Services (online)
Thank You!
Thank You!
Anything else? Ask your advisors! You can always reach out to us with questions by emailing us at: mlftcinnovate@asu.edu, scheduling an appointment with us at the following link: https://calendly.com/team-innovate, or calling us at 602-543-9419. We look forward to working with you on your academic journey!
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