Faculty Advising Resources

The following list links to important & relevant info for advising and registration in this handbook.

• Sample Plans of Study

• Clinical Health Requirements & COVID Vaccination Requirements

• Uniform Policy for Labs and Clinical

• All About Clinical

  • how placement surveys & placements work

  • student clinical paperwork & process obligations

  • clinical letters

  • what to expect in clinical

• About Community Nursing Partnerships

• General Registration Advice & How to Guides

  • identify your advisor

  • identify your enrollment date

  • searching for classes

  • how to register

  • what to do about registration errors

Students are assigned to faculty advisors at the start of the semester in which they take NUR 300.

Lindsay Larsen makes the assignments in consultation with the nursing Professional Advisor and Undergraduate Coordinator.   We work to keep the number of advisees carefully balanced so that faculty have an equal number of advisees.  The exceptions are Marcia Goldenberg who specifically advisees all the summer admit accelerated students, Leslie Larsen who advises all the fall admit accelerated students, and Kimberly Mantlow who advises all of the RN to BS students.  All other undergrads are distributed amongst the other undergraduate teaching faculty.

Sometimes a faculty member or a student may reach out to the Undergraduate Coordinator (Netty Provost) and request to have a particular student assigned as their advisee if they have developed a mentorship relationship informally and would like to continue as that student's official faculty advisor.

All students should meet with their faculty advisor at least once per semester, before course registration takes place.  

• When to Meet with Students:  Faculty should outreach to their list of advisees around the second week of October to arrange advising appointments for spring registration and around the second week of March for fall registration advising.

• Scheduling Suggestions: Some faculty use a sign up sheet on their office door to arrange appointments, others use the Google calendar Appointment Slots feature.  

  1. If you'd like to know more about how use this calendar feature reach out to Netty Provost and she can give you a tutorial.  Or access this how to guide:  https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/190998?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop#zippy=%2Chow-appointment-slots-relate-to-regular-events 

  2. This is an underutilized feature in our calendars and helpful anytime you want folks to be able to book time with you.

• What to discuss with students:  

  1. Check in with your advisee and see how their semester is going.  Are they having any successes to celebrate or challenges that you could provide mentorship/support for?

  2. Review their Wish List in Mainestreet and make sure they have the right classes planned for the upcoming semester's registration.

  3. Verify that they have completed their USM Core (general education) course requirements and if they have not strategize a plan for how they will do this.  Click here for a tutorial on how to view a student's Core requirements.

  4. Verify that they will have enough credits to graduate (click here for a video tutorial on how to do this).

  5. Check in with the student about plans post graduation.  Are they thinking about grad school?  Are they considering areas they want to apply for jobs in?  If they are within a year of graduating remind them of the info session series about New Grad Programs with Hospitals that happen every semester.  Also remind them about the Career Hub and resume resources.

• Always end the meeting by entering an ADVISING NOTE in the student's Mainestreet record.

  1. Write a summary of your meeting with the student and pay careful attention to noting any action steps you discussed with the student.  Ex. if you found they would need 3 credits of electives to graduate on time make sure to put that in the advising note.  Or if they planned to take a summer course note that down.  

  2. Do not include anything detailed about personal, medical, or mental health challenges the student may discuss with you.  Keep to generalities here such as "student disused some challenges they are facing this semester and we strategized support resources for them".

  3. Be mindful of student preferred names and pronouns in your notes.

Calculating whether an advisee will have enough credits to graduate

Video Tutorial Google Slide Overview

Understanding Core Curriculum (general education) Requirements for Nursing Majors

Written Tutorial

1. Look the student up in your Advisor Center.

2. Go to the student's Classic Mainestreet Student Center

3. On the right side of the page click on "Degree Progress Report".  It will take a minute or two to load the page.  Don't click again, just give it time.

4. A report will load.

5. Click on the green triangle next to "core curriculum requirements" and it will expand to show you a detailed view.

6. What you may see:

   1. • You may see a message that says "core waived previous degree".  In this case you're done!  The student doesn't have to do any additional core courses.

      • If you do not see the message about "course waived prior degree" then scroll through the Core requirements and look for "Cultural Interpretation", "Reading Writing and Inquiry II" and "Creative Expression".  If those are marked "not satisfied" then the student needs to plan when to take courses to meet those requirements.  They are not covered by overlap with the nursing curriculum.

        1. 1. • For some students, you may not see the Reading Writing and Inquiry II.  If so that's OK!  They're on an older catalog and this is not a requirement for them.

              • If you see Reading Writing and Inquiry III that will be satisfied by NUR 321 in the major. 

      • Any other requirements marked "not satisfied" such as EISCR, diversity, international, capstone etc. will be covered automatically by a mix of courses students take for nursing.  They do not need to take any additional non-nursing courses to meet these requirements.