Section 7A: Majors and Minors

You will get a good deal of traffic from majors seeking your advice or a signature. Being readily accessible is important, both via e-mail and in your office. Here are some of the types of interactions with majors that come with the territory. (See section on "Delegating" for suggestions on which of these tasks might most readily be delegated to others.)

First, you’ll need to be familiar with the services offered by the Advising and Academic Support Center (AASC), advising support that may be located within your college, and past practices within your department regarding student advising.

AASC MISSION

The mission of the Advising and Academic Support Center (AASC) is to promote students’ academic excellence with special emphases on:

general academic advising for first-year success
major exploration services for students who do not have a major or are considering a major change
intensive advising for students on academic probation or returning after dismissal
ACAD and Bronco Ready student-success courses
Learning Assistants in critical courses
academic success services (skill-building workshops, individual coaching)
tutoring resources

AASC general advising and academic support services are available to all students regardless of major status. AASC strives to achieve the following for all Boise State students:

Empowerment: We work to ensure that all students are empowered to make the best decisions possible while pursuing their academic goals.
Approachability: We are passionate about student success and do our utmost to help all students feel welcome and valued.
Knowledge: We strive to increase our students’ knowledge about opportunities at Boise State and then use that knowledge to make progress in their academic programs.

Signing up new majors; assigning advisors

Advise departmental colleagues who have heavier advising loads to decline new advisees, and to steer students toward faculty with lighter advising loads. The distribution of advisees in your department can be obtained from the AASC.

For faculty on short-term leaves, you may also need to get involved in lining up a substitute advisor, as faculty on leave are not responsible for advising. In the case of a semester or longer, the AASC or your departmental advisor will redistribute the faculty member's advisees. (Some faculty who will be on leave for only a term or two and who will be in town may say that they'll continue advising. Discourage them from doing so! Leave time is precious.) When the faculty member on leave returns, it is appropriate for former advisees to return, unless they are happier where they landed.

Substitutions and Transfer Equivalencies

Many requests will come to you for approval of substitutions of various sorts, that is, for something to count towards a major requirement other than the designated course. These requests often come because of scheduling problems but may also be to take advantage of a course that is a logical substitution just on its own merit (e.g., a special topics course newly offered). You have a large amount of discretion on this. If you're unsure about what you should allow, talk with others in the department; the previous chair may be of special help. Some departments have a written (or unwritten) policy that has been developed regarding substitutions of particular kinds of courses. Consult the Registrar’s Office for more information about the process and forms for doing substitutions and equivalencies.

In addition, you will sometimes receive notices from the Transfer Equivalency System, or TES, asking you to approve a transfer course. Ask your former chair for help or talk to the Registrar’s Office for more information.

Social occasions

Different departments have different customs for socializing with students. It's common to have one gathering a year to which all majors are invited, and perhaps also a reception for seniors or one for recently declared majors. If your department gathers with majors for other reasons (e.g., a regular colloquium), a special large-group gathering is less important. If you think your department might be able to do something a little more fun, a little less work, a little more productive of faculty-student interaction, or whatever, ask around for what other departments do. It's nice to have a gathering at a faculty home, but on-campus venues or off-campus establishments are also possible. If the gathering is at a home, give some forethought to the serving of alcohol. In any gathering of majors (except, perhaps, for graduating seniors), there will be some students who are not of legal drinking age. The safest approach is to serve no alcohol at all.

Department clubs

Some departments have lively, active clubs, while in other departments the club has been moribund for years. One needs interested and responsible majors in leadership roles for a club to thrive; it may take some searching on your part to identify and encourage such students. Funding for departmental clubs comes from the ASBSU. Why bother? If the club works out well, it helps build a sense of community among the majors (and minors) and provides them with some non-class related activities that are relevant to the discipline. There are all sorts of things that might be done, for example: field trips, outside speakers, tutoring, theme dinners, etc. You can get ideas from other chairs, and from noticing events publicized on flyers or over e-mail.

Career, internship, and graduate school information

Students have access to a wide range of resources on internships, careers, and graduate school through the Career Center. But the department should also be a resource for majors. You might have files or a shelf of materials passed on to you from the previous chair. If you're starting from scratch, or wanting to build up the base, you can find relevant material from the professional organization for your discipline (they might have a web-page devoted to information for undergraduate majors) and from the Career Center. You might want to make up a list of the professions that alumni/ae in your department have gone into. Consider having an annual session for majors early in the fall term, where you (and others in the department) talk about graduate school and careers-this will save you time spent on multiple individual conversations.

Contact with alumni/ae

It's great for majors to have a chance to listen to and talk with alumni/ae who have gone on and done interesting things. You might occasionally make an effort to bring back alumni/ae to talk with students. Or, if you know someone interesting is coming back for a visit, set up lunch or a session with students; sometimes Homecoming provides good opportunities for such a gathering, although fitting a gathering into the busy Homecoming schedule provided by the Advancement Office can be challenging.

Some departments do an annual or occasional newsletter, gathering information from alumni/ae and then sending out news of the department and its alumni/ae.Other departments keep up-to-date web pages on the activities of their alumni/ae. If you are comfortable with online social networking sites, departments and programs may consider a presence on Facebook or a similar site as a way to stay in touch with alumns.

Prizes

Most departments have prizes designated for majors (or for work done in the department). There are a variety of tasks involved in the awarding of prizes, depending on the criteria for the awards. If a prize is based on GPA in the department, you need to request that information from the Registrar with at least one week's lead time. (More would be appreciated!) If it's based on written work, you need to solicit entries and arrange for a judge.

Keeping track of student achievements

From time to time you will receive queries asking for lists or examples of student achievements in your department. Queries come from various sources: Admission, Communications and Marketing, Career Center, the Alumni and Friends Office, and the Office of the Provost. In order to have the information on hand for these requests, and also to inspire or encourage students and faculty within the department, it is a good idea to keep a running list of whatever you happen to find out, including information that comes from alumni/ae. You might want to have a Word document into which you type the information as it comes to you, or a file into which you put notes for later organizing.

Information to keep track of:

· honors projects (student name and title of project)

· notable internships (during college or post-grad)

· non-Boise State prizes

· graduate and/or professional school admissions (note multiple offers)

· graduate and/or professional school fellowships/assistantships

· 3rd party (e.g., NSF) graduate fellowships

· notable post-grad jobs