The National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) selected Penn State's MajorQuest as the 2016 Advising Technology Innovation Award winner for creative and unique use of technology in support of academic advising. The Division of Undergraduate Studies developed and maintains MajorQuest as an electronic tool to help students find and explore majors that match their interests. Students use MajorQuest not only to discover viable majors but also to inform richer conversations with academic advisers who can guide them in connecting choices to personal interests, life goals, and academic opportunities. ​NACADA’s Annual Awards Program promotes recognition of outstanding advising programs and professionals within higher education with the goal of improving advising resources for students.

The 15th annual Professional Development Conference on Academic Advising will take place Friday, Sept. 30, at The Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center. This year’s theme will focus on "Transitions: Energizing Advising and Student Communities for Change” and will feature presentations, workshops, and panel discussions that highlight relevant research and best practices in the advising community. 

As academic advisers, faculty members, and support professionals learn to work with the new Starfish suite of advising tools, the Starfish for Student Success information website serves as a helpful resource, now including responses to Frequently Asked Questions, images of Student Views of Starfish screens, and a link to log in to the Starfish platform.    

The Penn State Division of Undergraduate Studies is accepting proposals through Friday, April 29, for the 15th annual Professional Development Conference on Academic Advising. This year’s conference will take place on Friday, Sept. 30, at The Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center, and the theme will be "Transitions: Energizing Advising and Student Communities for Change.” 

A new version of MajorQuest, released in March 2016, introduces a contemporary, accessible design plus additional filters that not only allow students to narrow Penn State's 160-plus majors by defined interest area(s) and choice of campus but further narrows the list of potential majors to meet other parameters, such as entrance requirements and math, science, and language preferences. Each major in the list of results also includes hyperlinks to important resources to help students learn more about these programs of study, the colleges/departments that offer them, related clubs or listservs, and advising points of contact.

As the Starfish implementation team continues to configure the new academic advising system to initially provide advising notes, early progress reports, and a student appointment system, key demonstrations across colleges and campuses are preparing users and providing valuable feedback. For regular updates on Starfish features and progress, see https://sites.psu.edu/starfishinfo/2016/03/31/starfish-demos.  

As Penn State transitions from eLion to LionPATH as its new student information system, Penn State Today created a special issue to help students, faculty, and staff through this period of change.

Starfish for Student Success at http://sites.psu.edu/starfishinfo is a new web resource to help the Penn State community learn more about the Starfish Enterprise Success Platform that will integrate with LionPATH to provide academic advising tools in time for New Student Orientation 2016.

Sponsored by the Division of Undergraduate Studies, the Academic Advising Noon Seminar series serves as a forum for the discussion of academic advising issues. These events are open to all interested Penn State faculty and staff. The February session offers limited seating and is also available via Adobe Connect:

College Student Mental Health: Equipping Advisers to Refer and Care for Students
Noon to 1 p.m. Friday, Feb. 12
C-9 Atherton Hall, University Park
Hosted by Schreyer Honors College

Prerequisites for calculus-sequence math courses will be enforced at the time of registration for students scheduling fall 2016 courses. Students must either have earned credit for the prerequisite course or have a qualifying ALEKS score in order to schedule MATH 004, 021, 022, 026, 040, 041, 110, 140, or 141. Students who are currently enrolled in the prerequisite course may conditionally enroll in the next level, but will be disenrolled if they fail or drop the prerequisite course.

New students admitted for summer and fall 2016 will access ALEKS via LionPATH and must complete an ALEKS assessment before receiving a date to attend New Student Orientation. Students can continue to use ALEKS to review their math skills and complete up to two additional assessments until the end of the drop/add period of fall 2016. At that point, ALEKS math assessment is no longer available and students will need to abide by their ALEKS placement in scheduling calculus-sequence math courses.

Members of the LionPATH project team will be holding several regional events throughout the Commonwealth this spring to provide project updates, show a demo of the new system, and give the Penn State community an opportunity to ask questions about the project. These events are open to all staff and faculty.

This issue of LionPATH Email Updates announces the formation of a specific advising team within the LionPATH project and gives tips and tutorials to help the advising community prepare for the mid-February release of the Advisor Center. Also in this issue are links to two blog posts of particular importance: New Enrollment Process Replaces SCHED to REG and Looking Toward Academic Advising Go-Live. 

To see current and archived LionPATH advising updates and/or to join the advising listserv, visit LionPATH Email Updates.

Following collaboration between the University Faculty Senate and the Division of Undergraduate Studies, Policies and Rules for Undergraduate Students and the Undergraduate Advising Handbook now have notations alerting readers to policy changes that are pending implementation. A red asterisk in the handbook index indicates a pending change. The corresponding handbook section includes the Faculty Senate policy number and a link to the current policy, which leads to the legislative report showing the policy revision. For example, in the handbook index entry for Class Attendance, readers will see a red asterisk in the margin and the following statement in the related handbook section:

Current policy reflected below. Changes to Faculty Senate Policy 42-27 (Class Attendance) pending implementation.

By instituting this alert system, the handbook can continue to reflect current academic information and at the same time help the advising community prepare for upcoming changes to policies. As procedural changes are implemented, the handbook will be updated accordingly.

Marc Lowenstein’s guest remarks during Penn State’s Sept. 2015 academic advising conference focused on “Predicting and Envisioning the Future of Academic Advising” and encouraged the advising community to contribute directly to the teaching and learning mission of higher education. In a recent article published in The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal, Dr. Ilya Winham of the University of Georgia offers an enlightening report and commentary on Lowenstein’s keynote address.  

In remarks to University administrators on Oct. 21, Executive Vice President and Provost Nicholas P. Jones introduced the Starfish Enterprise Success Platform, a Hobson, Inc., suite of academic advising tools selected by Penn State to integrate with LionPATH and replace current ISIS and eLion advising features that deliver advising notes, early progress reports and online scheduling of advising appointments.

A mid-February LionPATH release will introduce several key advising features, including Class Search (will allow users to search for classes within a specific term), Schedule Builder (an interactive way for students and advisers to compare possible scheduling combinations), and the Advisor Center (will include academic, biographical, and demographic student-level information; a Catalog Search; and Faculty Search). Though not all advising functions will be available with this roll out, future releases will provide more. To see current and archived LionPATH advising updates and/or to join the advising listserv, visit LionPATH Email Updates.