Academic Advising | EP7

David Jones: Welcome and hello listeners, thanks for joining another episode of the podcast,  Minnesota state university, family orientation podcast. Appreciate everybody, uh, choosing to listen into us again here today. I probably say this every episode, I'm excited about the topic today, but that's definitely true yet again, as we talk about The more in-depth aspects of how we support students academically here during their time.

And it's obviously they're gonna learn some incredible things in the classroom. And today's guest is going to tell us a little bit more about the things they do outside the classroom to make sure that in the classroom experiences phenomenal. And so, I'm welcomed here today and I'm going to let you introduce Sarah, your whole title and everything, cause I will goof it up, I promise you. Sarah Granberg-Rademacker, here joining us for today's episode, Sarah, why don't you first welcome. Thanks for agreeing to do this.

Sara GR:  My pleasure! 

David Jones:  Share with our listeners who you are, what you do here at the university.

Sara GR:  Awesome. Yeah. Thank you, David. My name is Sara Granberg-Rademacker, my role is the director of our university advising department here on campus. And that means I have the great privilege of working with the professional advising community that helps our students as they're navigating their college experience all the way through to graduation. And it's, we have an awesome team that are here to support students along the way.

David Jones: Excellent. Excellent. So how long have you been at MSU now? 

Sara GR: Oh, goodness. I'm going to have to do some math. I think we I've been here about 16 years and have been serving in a variety of roles. Working with students who were majoring in the college of arts and humanities before then moving over to working with students who weren't sure what they wanted to major in to now serving in this role. As we continue to develop our advising resources for students. 

David Jones: Wow, you've had quite the journey and I could see why you'd be the expert on all things advising at this point here at the university. So over the 16 years, I'm sure you've had a lot of experiences worked with thousands and thousands of students.

What's your favorite part of working here at Minnesota state? 

Sara GR: Honestly, David, when I think about my favorite part, it comes down to the people and the possibilities. It's such a pleasure to work alongside people who are so committed to our students, their journeys, their success here and are looking for ways to help positively influence that.

Having worked with the undecided students, I will tell you, I think we are a great campus when you're not sure what you want to study, because we have a broad range of majors, we are not a school known for one thing or a school known for a little bit of everything. And similarly, we have brought opportunities outside of the classroom as well.

If that's things like study abroad, getting some leadership opportunities and registered student organizations, all of these things that really make. a college experience complete. The classroom piece is essential, but then those out of the classroom internship opportunities or opportunities to hear guest speakers who are experts in their own field is just, is phenomenal as well.

Like to think that, at Mankato, we're small enough that you can find your connections and find your circle of folks, but we're big enough where you can also Let yourself get a little intentionally lost in, in, in the fray and enjoy the experiences around you. 

David Jones: Wow. That's a great way to put it.

Yeah, we are that kind of special size and a lot of ways that you get to the exposure to things you may not come across day in and day out before your experience here, as well as during your time here. So that's great. Well, thanks for all  you do as well. I have the pleasure of seeing the, the success of your students, who you work with and your team works with. And so, that parts super fun, super fun to see that kind of thing. So, we're recording this. I always share the date today is June 8th, 2021. So as we reference COVID anything we share today is what we know as of today.

So, as with most things within the state of Minnesota, the governor and the Minnesota department of health may drop new news on us tomorrow, and so, something might be out of date, but what we shared today will be accurate as of today. So this whole past year, you know, Sarah has been clearly defined by the pandemic and the work that you've had to do and everything.

And I know last year we shifted a lot of it to virtual work or online orientations and things like that. As we're looking ahead to fall 2021, what is the classroom registration or course registration, and what are our new students experiencing? Getting ready for the fall? 

Sara GR: Absolutely. No, that's a great question.

We've done a lot of pivoting in the last year and we've learned a lot and the good news with that is We have evolved, and come to a process that I think is both welcoming for our new students and provides them with the support they need to come up with a good fall semester schedule so they can hit the ground running come fall.

Specifically we've learned to take advantage of some of our online tools through our learning management system and D2L as students get some background information, when they sign up for orientation, get to see some short videos that helpfully. Help lay-the-land in terms of the courses you need the tools that are available to you.

But at the same time, we place a premium on those connections with students. And so we're offering synchronous zoom sessions on most Mondays in, in the months of June and July and those synchronous zoom sessions involve just some basic general information from both the director of orientation and from me, but then we quickly try to get the students connected, to the areas where they plan on majoring or if they don't know what they want to major the undecided areas. And in those areas, they get more in-depth information just to give them some background and to help them feel more confident in the classes they'll be looking at during that in-depth session, they will also sign up for either individual or small group appointments.

One of the things, the pandemic. Helped move along for us was this idea that we can have individual experiences and a campus of our size, that's not always possible. And so we've had individuals, small group experiences over zoom where advisors are talking directly with the students and helping them make some good decisions about those first semester classes.

And so I'm very excited about. How the pandemic basically brought us to that, because that was something that we hadn't been able to do. Our scale across the university before. And I think it, it gives our students a strong sense of who are some of their advocates here before they actually come to campus.

And so hopefully they have a firmer sense of who those advocates are and some initial developing relationships with them during the course of their orientation, registration, and advising experience. 

David Jones: Wonderful. Wonderful. So is the students get did do some of the same activity last year. How did students...