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Commission Projects: Electronic Publication Awards 2003 Electronic Publication Award Nominations/Winners Listed below are the winners of the 2003 Electronic Publication Awards and Certificates of Merit, followed by a list of all other publications that were nominated for this year's award. Award-winning publications will be honored at the special Awards Presentation and Reception during the October 2003 National Academic Advising Association's national conference in Dallas, TX. Additional information about the Electronic Publication Awards can be found in the Commission Projects section of this Web site. The publication highlights listed below were provided by the nominators.  College of Arts & Sciences, Advising Center Home (University of Kentucky)Highlights: The Arts & Sciences Advising Center website at the University of Kentucky provides academic information for 4 main groups: current students, prospective students (freshman & transfer), returning students, and faculty, staff, and professional advisors. The site is intended to be a 1-stop launch point for the answers to every College academic question. We provide an overview of the advising process—logistics, responsibilities, benefits of academic advising, and an alphabetical listing of every A&S Advising Center service and procedure. All of the forms used by the A&S Advising Center are online—on one site—and many can be submitted on-line. There is a link to scholarship information, College opportunities, and special offerings. Students experiencing academic difficulties can follow a link to specific needs offices at UK. A critical element of the site is the opening page for the majors. Each major's front page has consistent information: a 4-year graduation plan, a major requirements checksheet, a major requirements plan, a link to current course descriptions offered by the major department, a link to the current UK Bulletin section for the major, requirements for the related minor, and a link to the major department or program website. This makes the information critical to undergraduates easy to find, and easy to compare. By far, the most widely appreciated feature of our site is the “Ask an Advisor” page. By following the “ask” link, the student (or advisor) is directed to a list of frequently asked questions—however, they are immediately given the option of 'asking' an advisor. The student completes a short on-line form and simply submits. The questions are then fielded by our Director of Advising. Roughly 1/3 of the questions come from our current students, 1/3 are from current students from other colleges on campus, and 1/3 of the questions originate from off campus—generally prospective and returning students. Finally, in an effort to provide 1-stop shopping, the site provides easy access to an inclusive site index and other campus resources from every page. Online Orientation (Georgia Perimeter College)ID/password: for admin pages: id=gpcguest password=gpcguest Highlights: Tracking capability on admin pages, instant email response to students, quizzes, college resource pages.  Academic Advising Council Website (University of Central Florida)Highlights: The University of Central Florida Academic Advising Council Website was established to assist faculty and professional advisors to have an easy assessable source of correct information consolidated in one location that can be updated quickly. The web site contains some very important documents such as:
Academics (Mississippi State University)Highlights: The web site contains general academic information, forms, scholarship and career opportunities specifically for College of Forest Resources students. To make it easier for students, information is sorted by current and prospective students. Links to MSU offices, faculty and alumni, and research opportunities make this a comprehensive site for the CFR. Students comment on being able to access local/state, and professional organizations. Advisement Services Center Web site (University at Albany)Highlights: We are most proud of our pre-health and pre-law links in our academic advisement web site. Here are the links to those sites: http://www.albany.edu/advisement/prehealth/prehealth.htm http://www.albany.edu/advisement/prelaw/prelaw.htm Interdisciplinary Studies: A Major as Unique as You Are (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)Highlights: This five minute video was created for introductory advising and features current Interdisciplinary Studies students sharing information about their self designed majors. Along with the website (www.umbc.edu/inds), it introduces students to the breadth of possibilities available at UMBC for creating unique majors through Interdisciplinary Studies. The video also serves as a peer advising tool. Other Nominations Academic Resource Guide (Emory University) (provided on disk) Advisement and First Year Programs Web Site (SUNY Cortland) Highlights: The page is grounded in the needs of our students and faculty and is regularly updated based on the needs of our audience. It is concretely organized and easy to navigate from from the first page. The breadth and depth of information is impressive, an example of this is found in the online advisor found at http://www.cortland.edu/advisement/. Advising and Transition Services Web Suite (Utah State University) Highlights: Transfer Guide (especially course by course); General Catalog; Answer Center Online; For Advisors; New Student Orientation The Career Corner Electronic Newsletter (Southeastern Louisiana University) Highlights: Southeastern Louisiana University's Junior Division is the academic home for entering students who are undecided about a major. The Department offers programs designed to enhance the academic success of all entering students and faculty work with the Career and Academic Planning Center and academic departments to promote a university-wide faculty advising program for all freshmen. Two of the courses offered for freshmen have advising components. Freshman Seminar 101 was designed to address transitional issues and to increase student success through involving students academically as well as socially. Selected students are trained as nationally-certified peer educators to assist students and faculty in this class. In addition, each year approximately 1250 students enroll in Career Planning 104, a three credit hour elective course designed for students who are uncertain about their majors. The course provides opportunities for students (1) to explore their abilities, goals, and values, (2) to research job trends, employer expectations, and opportunities and requirements of major occupations, and (3) and to acquire decision-making skills. Licensed career counselors teach the course and also serve as academic advisors to these students. Career Planning 104 exposes students to more than thirty academic and career interventions. One special publication for students in these classes is an electronic-newsletter, The Career Corner. The E-newsletter complements teaching units in the course. Periodically, faculty members ask students to read the related newsletter, note the “tip” for meeting with an advisor, and then explore the corresponding website. After doing so, they submit a journal entry describing their thoughts and their findings. The E-newsletters cover a range of topics such as choosing a major, career decision-making, discovering work values, employers' expectations, and goal setting—all designed to augment the career exploration process. The newsletters are brief and easy to understand. Students enjoy reading them because the information is pertinent to them personally and to what is being covered in class. Because the newsletters are available on-line, students can return to the site at a later date when the specific information is of immediate need. The brevity of the layout also makes writing future editions less challenging. This year, new topics will include: using the college catalog to evaluate majors, creating a strategic academic and career plan (SWOT analysis), and exploring the untapped job market. The Career Corner is located at http://www.selu.edu/jd. Under “Career Information” select “The Career Corner Electronic Newsletter.” Center Chatter (University of Delaware) College of Behavioral and Social Science Webvising (San Francisco State) ID/password: nacada@sfsu.edu/nacada11 Highlights: This site allows students through a private account to create a manage a degree requirement plan in addition to access academic advising information for their selected departments. Also, departments control all their own content through a custom content management system so information is fresh and from the source. Electronic Declaration of General Education Requirement (University of California, San Diego) ID/password: 4444C/1234 Highlights: UCSD has six undergraduate colleges, each having their own general education requirements and distinctive philosophy. Earl Warren College is one of the six colleges at UCSD. The Program of Concentration program is part of a triad of interlaced applications which initiate a student's intent to file for a degree and diploma. In order to complete the student's electronic Degree and Diploma Application it was necessary to design an application that met Warren College's unique general education requirements. The PofC Wizard dynamically allows the student to choose which Programs of Concentration/Area Studies/Minors they wish to apply toward graduation based on their major and applicant type. The program is table driven through a MySQL database back-end. There are several error checks built into the system (mostly javascript). Because the system is table driven, based on the student's major and applicant type, there is no way for a student to misfile their intended PofC/AS/Minor. Only those PofCs/Area Studies/Minors which are applicable to that student's General Education Requirements will be shown as options to the student. Due to the myriad of ways in which a student could complete their GE requirements this posed a level of complexity to the program that was not originally anticipated. Additional code (outside of the tables) had to be built into the program to compensate for the different pathways in which a student could complete his/her GE requirements. A staff administrative screen was also built into the system to allow a Warren College Advisor to review the intended declaration and approve or disapprove of the student's declaration. The student can then check back to the site (which displays the confirmation of their declaration) to view the status of their declaration. Since the student can sign in only with their PID and PAC numbers there is no insecure transfer of confidential data over the internet. No E-mail notice containing confidential information is ever generated from this system since the student is able to view their own information at any time by going to the website and viewing their confirmation. Since each PofC/AS/Minor Declaration is time stamped it was interesting to note that several of the applications that came in were between the hours of midnight and 6:00 A.M. (well outside of normal operating hours). With the tools of the web the ability for students to be able to complete administrative paperwork at a time that is convenient to them and the ability of the college staff to interface with that same system during normal working hours leads to huge benefits and advantages to both sides. Handbook for Advisors & Counselors (NHMCCD) “Is the B.U.S. degree right for you?” (University of New Mexico) (provided on CD) IUPUI University College Success Portfolio (Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis) Highlights: The Success Portfolio is a unique information piece for all incoming freshmen. The contents are meant to be read prior to attending an Orientation and many questions are answered beforehand. Incoming students are encouraged to share the information with their parents. Psychology News: Undergraduate Edition (University of Miami) Highlights: Research opportunities, research fairs, Just Desserts, Important Dates, Forum Mentors, Meet the Peer Advisors, etc. Registration: Step-by-Step (5-minute video) (North Harris College) (provided on CD) Highlights: One is given a choice of viewing the video, depending on whether or not one has 56K or high-speed line. Video is closed-captioned for hearing impaired. The SBA Advisor (Oakland University) Highlights: The SBA Advisor offers a wide variety of information, from advising tips, new course information, news about the school, student organizations, awards, etc. It really makes the students feel in touch with what's going on at the School of Business Administration. Student Handbook and Daily Planner 2002-2003 (Daytona Beach Community College) Highlights: The ease of navigation with bookmarks, comprehensive array of information for students (new and continuing) U of L Undergraduate Studies (University of Louisville) Highlights: New Learning Resource Center (LRC) opens, Survival skills seminars, Campus events, Staff highlights, People in the news UGS, Student success, announcements, events and more Undergraduate Academic Affairs Office (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) Highlights: Comprehensive compilation of information for students and advisors to ensure undergraduate academic success while being a user friendly tool. Best Feature: Simplicity of the design layout. Best Links: Links page and divisions according to Academics, Career, Personal, Multicultural and International, and Teacher Education. UPAS: Undergraduate Personal Academic Scheduler (University of Iowa) ID/password: Sample Profile/Gu3st Highlights: Currently academic advisors (faculty members and staff academic advisors) spend a great deal of time creating and maintaining the degree-major academic schedules for undergraduate students. This process is done from semester to semester and year to year, until the student graduates. The student and advisors both must learn what courses are taught when, what the co-requisites and pre-requisites are, what is the proper course load each semester, and any changes that have occurred that apply to students degree requirements. This process places the burden on the student and advisors, neither of whom may have the expertise for every major. We wanted to provide a computer program that would combine the expertise of a thoroughly knowledgeable undergraduate advisor with the information already available from the registrar's office. We also wanted to build a flexible program that could be adapted for use by all Departments at the University of Iowa. The Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Iowa therefore developed the idea of an interactive web-based advising tool (UPAS: Undergraduate Personal Academic Scheduler) that allows students to create one or more plans for taking the classes that meet major degree requirements. There are three main parts of the UPAS system: Original Profile, Schedule Builder and Intended Profile. The Original Profile is designed like an easy-to-read degree evaluation, providing students with information about requirements they have completed and those they still need. But, it also goes a step beyond by allowing students to see where they have been and how much is needed to complete any of the undergraduate majors that are programmed into UPAS. Thus allowing them to easily check what would be needed academically if they changed their degree from a BS to a BA or even from one major to another. The heart of UPAS is the Schedule Builder tool. It allows students to interactively build a course plan whether they are seniors or incoming freshmen. It works interactively by providing information that is extremely relevant to course planning, such as when a course is offered and pre- and co-requisites and identifying errors. It also provides the ability to build alternative course plans. The final unique feature of UPAS is the Profile with Intended Courses (Intended Profile), which provides a check and balance by helping students make sure they have covered all major requirements for their undergraduate degree. UPAS is set up in an interactive environment, to provide as much structure and accuracy as possible. It also relieves Faculty advisors and academic advisors from remembering and learning all of the changes that occur in a Departmental major, while also greatly reducing time spent during an advising session since the student must complete a UPAS schedule prior to visiting an advisor. Thus, advising sessions can then be more productive being spent on discussing career planning, course content and research opportunities. This system empowers undergraduates to be proactive in their education. It encourages them to think about a realistic graduation plan. UPAS is actively being used during advising appointments by the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Iowa and is being initiated in the English and the Environmental Science Departments at the University of Iowa. It will reach its full potential when it is put into operation college-wide. USP Resource Handbook (Purdue University) Highlights: Academics; Academic Policies and Procedures; University Tutors; Helpful Websites Revised June 17, 2004 |