Dear Colleagues,
As we enter the fifth week of the semester, most of our students are settled in their classes and demonstrating how well they can succeed. Some of your students may not be doing as well they could be, so I want to remind you that early intervention works!
To help such students, one of our departments recently asked its faculty to identify struggling students and report them to the central advising and undergraduate studies team of their department. This kind of early alert system has been shown to be very effective in providing students just-in-time academic and other support. Whether or not your department has a formal early-warning reporting system, please take the time to look at your roster and identify students who are not yet succeeding in your class. If you or your department advisors can reach out to that student and make a difference: wonderful. If the Academic Assistance Center, the Office of Student Life, or I can be of help, please let us know. If you have a question about how you can help a student, I am on the other end of an email or a phone call, or I will always be happy to meet with you.
I also want to call your attention to several new technology improvements. The first is the new and very improved transfer equivalency page: https://go.k-state.edu/transfer.php. Because it is designed for the primary user—students and advisors from transfer institution– K-State users have to choose a transfer institution and then “Select by K-State Number” to access the K-State equivalents. Community college and high school counselors have already reported that their students are better able to negotiate their entrance requirements by using this website.
Another innovation already in your iSIS is the new KSU Advisor Center. Click here for information about the many improvements to this resource. You will see that you are able to access student information in a more compressed way. The website advertises “easy access to detailed advisee information including academics, class schedule, bio/demo info, service indicators, transfer info, and much more.” Many of the improvements are intuitive to use, but I recommend that you attend one of the brief but very informative trainings to help you take advantage of all the new features of center. For more information, please see http://www.k-state.edu/isis/training/.
We hear a lot about the K-State family. One of the foundations of that family feeling is the personal connection we have with our students. I hear from so many students who say they are happy at K-State because of a meaningful relationship with a faculty member or advisor. So, thank you for all you do.
All my best,
Alison