Policy:

The patterns of academic advising information and administrative support programs provided to students are to be consistent across locations and among colleges and be clearly visible to and easily accessible for both students and advisers.  Regardless of location, colleges are responsible for providing advising information and assessing the effectiveness of advising programs provided to students enrolled in both the college pre-major and specific majors.  Similarly, regardless of college or major, locations are responsible for providing advising information and assessing effectiveness of advising services provided to students enrolled at their location.  All student actions regarding college of admission, college pre-major designation, location of enrollment, preferred major designation, course registrations, and actual major are recorded in LionPATH.

Access to advising information may be provided to students and advisers by campuses and colleges via advising centers and advising web pages.  College, campus, and university-wide administrative offices are responsible for identifying the persons whom students and advisers should contact if they wish to ask specific questions or if they want to implement academic actions regarding choice of major, course registrations, or change of location assignments.

Procedures:

The following procedures will guide the assignment of responsibilities among colleges, campuses, and administrative units for advising information and communications regarding admission to college and lower division location, entrance to major and upper division, and change of major.

1. All colleges are to appoint a College Contact Person (CCP) and to develop and disseminate advising information related to its majors and any requirements related to entering or changing majors or changing location assignment.  This information must be made available via the Web; the Web site must identify an office in the college that individual students or advisers at other locations may contact directly for clarifying information.  The CCP is to maintain a working relationship with the network of persons designated at campuses as the College Contact and Referral Representatives (CCRR) (see #2 below).  The University Park colleges should conduct at least one meeting per year for their CCRRs, with expenses shared by the college and locations.  The other colleges should collaborate in arranging at least one annual meeting.
2. Each campus is to identify a CCRR for each University Park-based college and one CCRR to represent all other colleges.  Among other responsibilities, the CCRR at the campus is to:  a) maintain contact with the CCP; b) keep abreast of college advising information; c) monitor the campus advising Web site to assure the college's advising information is available to local students; and d) be responsive to queries from local students about requirements for college majors and change of location assignments.
3. Advising Web sites should be developed in accordance with guidelines established by the University Advising Council.
4. Annually, each college and each campus is to assess the effectiveness of its advising information network across and among locations of the University and incorporate improvement steps in its advising plans.
5. All CCRRs and CCPs must have ready access to the Internet.
6. Academic administrative support offices, including Undergraduate Admissions and the University Registrar, are to maintain web-based systems to inform and guide students as they take academic actions relating to admission to their college and location, registration for courses, monitoring academic progress, and petitioning for entrance to a major or a change in location assignment.  All academic administrative support offices and colleges maintaining web-based information systems should provide a link to Starfish to take advantage of centrally supported advising information resources and procedures.