Welcome to INSIGHTS

August 28, 2017 

Dear Barnard College faculty:

Welcome to the fall semester! As part of our work this summer to improve the advising and registration processes we rolled out last year, we've also created INSIGHTS, a new email series for Barnard faculty to provide student services-focused information to support your teaching and advising efforts.

We hope this new email series will not only help communicate the changes and improvements we've made to the advising and registration process, but also help improve the coordination and communications among faculty members and our student services-focused departments, enabling us to better work together to assist students in all areas of their Barnard experience.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this new communications tool - you can email us at insights@barnard.edu. Thanks and have a great semester.

~Avis Hinkson, Natalie Friedman and Jennifer Simmons

Where to find your Advisees' Folders

You should have received an email from Taanisha Rodgers with a subject line "invitation to collaborate" and the names of each of your advisees.  If you search your email or Google drive for the name of one of your new advisees, you should be able to find the email.  If you have trouble, please contact Taanisha at 4-2024 or email her at first-year@barnard.edu. Remember these folders can only be opened using your gBear account (Barnard email address). 

Each folder contains the following three items:

From the student's application for admission:
1. Contact info & application essay
2. Barnard Supplement to Common Application

Completed by the student over the summer:
3. Advising Questionnaire

Advising and registration improvements

After the feedback we received from you last spring after the rollout of the new advising and registration system, we have been busy making a number of requested changes to the advising workflow and student planning functionality. These changes are available now.

Here are the highlights:

• More user-friendly advisee list in WebAdvisor
  • Advisees are now sorted in sub-groups of MAJOR, PREMJ, and CHAIR, according to your advising relationship with them.  Your major advisees will appear first, then PREMJ (pre-major), then chair.
  • Send email to a group of advisees (e.g. all of your major advisees) by checking one box. 
• More control over students’ course selection
  • Approve a student’s initial registration by checking the "Grant Permission to Register" box.
  • Give final sign-off by marking a student's record with "Review Complete."  Students will be required to get this final approval from you by the add deadline (Sept. 15 in Fall 2017).
  • Archive the final schedule you approve for later reference.
• More training and support resources
  • A full reference manual describing the advising and registration workflow with supporting screenshots.  You can find it here: Instruction Manual for Advising & Registration Systems. 
  • A dedicated area in myBarnard that houses all the advising and registration resources. These include the 2017-2018 Advising Guide, the instruction manual mentioned above, FAQs, a suggestion box, and a link to the INSIGHTS archive. Check the top right corner of myBarnard to see your Advising & Registration Resources.
• More communication and feedback channels going forward  
  • In addition to this new email series, we also have a few ideas for ways to provide periodic updates and requests for feedback, but we'd like your guidance as to what seems best.  In a few weeks we'll be sending an email asking you for your communications preferences, such as: should we schedule town hall-style meetings for advisers, should we request agenda time during existing faculty committee meetings, or do you prefer another format? Besides in-person communication, what are the most effective ways to share information with faculty advisers?