Parents' Corner >> February 27, 2008 Newsletter
February 27, 2008 Newsletter
Dear All:
You may be aware that DGS organizes the campus wide Majors and Minors fair every fall. In Oct 2007 we hosted the sixth annual fair which was attended by over a thousand students and about 70 academic departments. This spring we are piloting a new initiative we are calling “Apply Yourself: A Major Declaration Conference.” The goal behind the Apply Yourself fair is to have students talk to representatives from departments and majors about what is expected in terms of transfer barriers. Many majors now require students to meet a series of barriers such a the taking of a number of specific courses, completing a certain amount of credit hours, attaining a specific GPA level, and/or the completion of an application. Understanding what is specifically required to transfer helps us as advisors and your students appropriately plan their course selections. Chris Maier (https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/cmmaier/www/) the chair of the Apply Yourself committee believes that, “Ours can be a complicated academic landscape. As students explore their potential majors, it’s important that they know what these majors will expect them to accomplish before they can transfer in.” Students will need to register to attend to ensure that each student can meet one-on-one with major representatives.
There are a couple of important deadlines approaching for our students.
March 7th is the last day to drop a semester long course. Students need to maintain at least 12 hours of credit as dropping below the 12 hour level slows progress towards graduation (remember tuition levels are guaranteed only for 8 full semesters,) can cause problems for financial aid, private health insurance, athletic eligibility, and interfere with visa status. Again, students need to discuss dropping classes with advisors. All advisors will be available on a “walk-in” basis on March 7th.
March 7th is also the last day of the semester to elect the Credit/NoCredit system for a semester long course. This is often a popular option for students not doing as well as they hoped in a particular course but it does have some important ramifications. Students can only elect this option after meeting with an advisor. More information is available at http://www.dgs.uiuc.edu/policies/credit.html
March 31st is the first day of registration for summer and fall semesters –students are, however, assigned specific registration times based on a sliding scale of priority. Most of our students will be registering somewhere in between April 7th through the 18th. The advisors here will on be on “walk-in” duty from the 7th through the 18th.
Students should be thinking about their next semester’s course selections, their academic progress, and their major plans NOW.
Another date you want to be aware of is March 17th – it’s the beginning of Spring Break!
Your student should be very much aware of these, and other, important dates – I’m sure the Spring Break dates are very familiar! This important information is readily available through a number of sources – but students do need to actively seek them out and engage with the institution through their professors, TAs, RAs, and, of course, their advisors. Each DGS student is assigned their own advisor. Each advisor contacts their students on a weekly basis often now through a mix of e-mails and web sites. Check out a web based newsletter from one of our advisors, Adva Steiner, at https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/steiner1/www/newsletter2spring08.html
As always, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.
Cheers now,
