Mid-Year Academy: Video Transcripts

Watch part 3 on YouTube; captions available.

Transcript:

Hi, I'm Samm Jusino. I'm the director of undergraduate advising, and I am here to walk you through the third and final video about academic notice called “What can I expect?” So if you haven't already I would encourage you to watch “How Did I Get Here?” and “How Do I Get Out of Here?” first, because this one is really summing up some of the things you're going to need to think about over the course of the next semester or so and the skills that you're going to build that you need to use for the rest of your academic career. So, how do I stay out of academic notice and future probation? It's a sad fact that we do have some students who fall on academic probation multiple times. That's an unfortunate reality, and it is sometimes because of circumstances outside of their control. For example, they may have a personal trauma or an illness that, slides their GPA back down, but oftentimes it's really more to do with the fact that they haven't embraced some of the strategies that they learned on academic notice, and they don't continue to apply them.

And so that really is the key to staying out of academic probation. I would encourage you again to really trust your academic adviser. This is a great opportunity for you to build a really good relationship with that person and for you to develop that kind of professional working relationship that you're going to need to utilize throughout the course of your entire college career. This is a really good way to learn how to network with somebody, and it's going to hold you in good stead not only to get out of academic probation but also to ask for things like letters of reference or connections for other people, to introductions to different sorts of programs, so that they can help you in ways that go beyond just scheduling your courses and helping you figure out how to get on track academically.

 [text onscreen: Major Decision. Do I like my current major?]

You also have a decision to make, right, and that has to do with your major.

 

[text onscreen: Do I like my classes?] 

And sometimes students find themselves on academic probation solely because they picked something they thought they were going to like, and then once they got into it they realized they didn't like it as much as they thought they did, and they had a really hard time keeping that motivation up to stick with it. So something to think about right off the bat: do you like what you're doing now? Do you like the classes? Do you like a lab, do you like the kinds of lectures that you have, do you like the content, right? So, are you enjoying what you're doing?

 

[text onscreen: Can I picture myself doing more of this?]

And can you picture yourself doing more of it, right? Often times in the beginning stages of a major, students will have to do more of it for a couple of years before they get to the upper division classes that sound so exciting. So, is it something that you can say, okay, yeah, I can knuckle down and do this for a little while longer until I can get to the quote-unquote good stuff, or am I just so tired of this particular subject that I cannot see myself doing more of it?

 

[text onscreen: Is it too hard, too easy, different than what I imagined?]

What was it really like? When you imagined what it was going to be like, did it end up being too easy? Did it end up being too hard? Was it very different from what you imagined?

 

[text onscreen: No immediate decision needed.]

And you don't have to make an immediate decision on this. You can't take forever, of course, to make this decision, but truthfully you can make this decision throughout the coming semester and have plenty of time to still stay on track with a four-year graduation. The one thing I would ask is that you if you're having some hesitation with your major choice, talk about that with your adviser so that they can help you decide if there are elective classes you might need to add to your schedule to help you make a bigger decision down the road. But you don't have to make an immediate decision before classes start back in January.

 

[text onscreen: General Arts and Sciences major] 

Many of you will end up placed in something called General Arts and Sciences, and the reason for that is most majors have a benchmark standard with a GPA of a 2.0. sometimes it's a little higher in order to remain in the major. And so if your GPA is below a 2.0 often they will remove you from the major, and so we have a sort of a general major called General Arts and Sciences, and that may be where many of you are placed while you're remedying your GPA. And sometimes students are in this major because they're switching from, they already know, “I don't want to stay in this particular major, I want to go to something else,” but they don't have the classes completed that they need to have in order to move straight into that major. And so they may spend a semester in General Arts and Sciences while they meet those benchmarks as well. So the place to start would be to think about your major: do you like it, do you want to keep doing more of it, are you ready for a switch, or even if you have no idea if you're ready for a switch but you know you don't want to stay in your current major, that's all good information for your adviser to have.

 [text onscreen: The Contract.]

[image of a sample probation contract]

You're going to end up signing a probation contract. It's going to look something like this, and you can see that we've got some individualized information that we will help you fill out, such as what your GPA needs to be for your major; what your financial aid scholarships may be, what GPA you might need for that; your schedule for academic probation; and some other you know things like your meetings, the number of D/Ff repeats that you may be taking, so things that are all very individualized to you. You will sign with your academic notice contract with your adviser at your very first appointment when you're talking about what your plans are for the semester and for your major.

[text onscreen: Three Concerns.

1. Overall GPA: financial aid; scholarships; three probations = suspension
2. Earned Credits: progress toward degree; scholarships
3. Completion Rate: financial aid]

There are three concerns that you need to be thinking about over the course of this next semester. The first, of course, is your overall GPA. There are many reasons for thinking about this, but the primary ones have to do with keeping your financial aid. Remember to work with Financial ad to know what your aid package looks like and what your renewal criteria is. Your overall GPA is critical for those things. You also need to think about your overall GPA in terms of academic suspension, right? So the suspension and probation program here at WVU means that you get three academic probations before you become suspendable. So at the end of the spring semester you're not going to be suspended if you still haven't been able to pull your GPA up, but if you spend a third semester on probation and you're not able to get your grades up, then you may be looking at having a year suspension, and we don't want you to get to that stage. So the goals of our program are really to help educate you in your own personal learning style and your academic needs in order to keep you away from that scenario. 

You also need to think about your earned credits, which means classes that you have completed and actually gotten credit for, because that keeps you moving toward your degree. If you're failing classes or withdrawing from classes or you don't get the right grade to move on to the next, like for example if you earn a D in a prerequisite and the prerequisite says you need a C minus or better in order to take the next class, all of those things really are just slowing you down toward earning your degree, and that can mean you have to go in the summertime or maybe you end up extending your time in college by a full year, and we don't want that for you. We want to make sure that you keep making steady progress towards your degree and that you're not having to really burden yourself with semesters of huge numbers of credits that you're taking to keep up. Earned credits are also really important toward your scholarships. Most scholarships require you to have 30 credits earned in an academic year, which means the fall semester, the spring semester and that summer. So you have a full academic year to get them and it's very important that you understand what your scholarship requirements are. 

That's a bit different from your completion rate, which is what financial aid requires you to have. So for all undergraduate students who get any sort of financial aid, and this would be like your federal student loans, for example, your Perkins loans, that sort of thing, students are required to complete 67 percent of everything they attempt. So if you had classes this past semester and you dropped one, you got a W, that goes against your completion rate because you didn't complete that class. If you earned an F in a class then you didn't technically complete that class – a D by the way most of the time actually is positive for your completion rate. It's not great for your GPA, but you are still getting hours toward your degree, so sometimes a D will do. And your adviser will look at your particular situation and help you determine whether or not you're doing just fine with that.

 

[text onscreen: My Spring Schedule. Total possible credits of 12-15: ARSC 189 (3 credits), 9-12 additional degree pursuant credits (no fluff, no “GPA boosters”)]

With your spring schedule you're going to have a total possible credit load of 12 to 15 credits, so three of those credits are a class that we'll talk about in just a second, but that's basically four major and degree pursuant classes and then the academic probation class as well. We really don't encourage an overload of more than 15 credits when a student is attempting to get footing under them and get their academic standing back. This will include 9-12 additional courses that are actually moving you toward your degree. We don't encourage or support or sign off on students who want to load up on what they think are easy classes, that kind of GPA booster you will hear students call it a GPA booster sometimes. We don't encourage you to do that because, on the one hand, you know you might have fluffed up your GPA a little bit, but technically you may be still a full semester or more behind because you're not doing anything that actually moves you in the direction of your major and completing your major requirements. We want to make sure that your schedule is strong and we don't want to overload you.

 

[text onscreen: Other Terms: Academic Coaching Meetings with an Eberly Academic Affairs Adviser – 2 per semester]

There are a few other terms you're going to have some coaching meetings with a probationary advisor. These are academic specialists. They work with lots of academic students on academic notice. They have a very high success rate in terms of connecting with students, bringing course material to students and helping students walk through their own individual situations. You will have approximately two of these meetings per semester with your adviser, although you can request more if you feel like you need to have more. And that's always that's always allowed.

 

 

[text onscreen: Permission needed to drop or add a course *advising holds will be applied]

You will need to get permission to add or drop classes after your schedule has been adjusted. So once you've adjusted your schedule through Mid Year Academy, an advising hold will be put back on your account and it will be just a basic advising hold. If something happens and you end up having to drop a class or you want to add a class, you need to work with your adviser first. And that's to keep students from making mistakes on their own that they cannot then fix. Once you've dropped a class, it's dropped, there's really not anything that can be done about that and you may have dropped a really critical one. And that's not to say that you can't ever drop a class or that we won't allow certain things ever, but we certainly need to have a very good reason and we need to talk through the ramifications for you, particularly if you're already on shaky footing with your financial aid. So you'll need to make sure to speak with us first.

 

[text onscreen: Earn minimum GPA (TBD at first Academic Coaching Meeting)] 

You're going to need to earn a minimum GPA, and that's going to be based on your individual needs. We will help you to determine what your term GPA should be so that you can get back into good academic standing in 1 academic term and we will work with you to determine this during your first coaching meeting.

[text onscreen: Successful completion of ARSC 189] 

You will need to complete successfully Arts and Sciences 189. This is a class that you're going to add that will run across the semester, and it's a course designed to help you have an academic reset. It's a course that is going to help you explore how you learn individually, best, what your academic goals are, how to tie those academic goals and plans to a future career, how to explore the kinds of things that you need to explore in order to be successful going forward with your classes. We want to see you but we don't want you to keep coming back on probation, right, and the tools that you'll get in this class if you engage with this class will really help you understand yourself better and build your academic toolbox. It'll help you hone in on the things that you really want to do, and more importantly it will help you establish some tools to get you there. I want you to just really think about taking advantage of the connections that you're going to make in this class. We hear from students who've gone through this class years after they have completed the academic probation process, because we make long and good connections with students. We really want to see you succeed. We're very invested in you and, you know, we really like students. We like working with students and we love to see you be successful, so I would encourage you to take advantage of that once you get started.

 

[text onscreen: Advocate for yourself]

You're going to need to get used to assessing your own personal situation and asking for what you need. I think one of the things I see our students doing quite often is thinking, like, “Okay I’ve done this once, I’ve got it all figured out, and this is the way it's going to be for the rest of my life now.” And as many of us know that's not the case. Life is going to continue to throw challenges at you that you're going to have to continue to rise up and meet, and some of those challenges will make you change the way that you look at the world and the way you look at what you want to get out of a certain academic situation or professional situation. So you should always be assessing the current situation and advocate for what you need to be successful.

 [text onscreen: Coming to terms with the situation: It matters what you do now, not what happened.]

You're going to learn to do that through this process. It starts with essentially coming to terms with what's happening right now. It doesn't matter what happened, and students are often still very stuck on how I got this way, this is what really happened. What matters is what you do now, right? It doesn't matter what happened before. It matters how we handle it now. So coming to terms with the situation is the first piece.

 

[text onscreen: Discuss major change]

You're going to want to talk about your major with your adviser. You may want to stay with your major. You may have a way to rectify the situation and you realize what went wrong and you really do love the material and you want to stay in the major, but you may also be ready for a major change.

[text onscreen: Discuss D/F repeat]

You're also going to want to talk about the possibility of doing a D/F repeat with your adviser. Students who have attempted a course once are eligible for D/F repeats if they want to take that course again. The way it works is when you take the class for the second time, if you, whatever grade you earn the second time is the grade that quote-unquote sticks, right? So the original D or F is pulled out of your GPA calculation, and the second grade is the only grade that's calculated in your GPA. This can have a very dramatic effect on a student's GPA sometimes, and so sometimes it's a really good strategy to deploy if you need to raise your GPA and save a scholarship, for example. On the other hand, sometimes it doesn't make sense to D/F repeat a certain class. If you really struggled with that class and you are not confident that you can earn a better grade the second time around, and if that class is not in your major and you're not going to use it for a general education elective or something like that, it can be a real waste of time and energy to try to do it again, especially if you're not confident about the results. Your adviser is going to work with you through the various scenarios that affect you individually and help you make the best decision.

[text onscreen: Discuss plan of study]

You're going to talk about a plan of study for the coming semester, something that's going to help you keep on track and graduate on time. You need to know whether or not you're considering any kind of summer work, whether that's on the table because it has to be because you're trying again to save a scholarship, or whether you can take a certain number of credits this semester and things will be fine. Be sure that you work with financial aid to determine your specific renewal criteria. Planning things out is a really critical way of staying on track because it can show you where the difficult parts are going to be coming up. It can show you, do you have an opportunity here to slide in some study abroad or an internship or other kinds of experiential education that make a big difference to your future career for example. So it's not just a plan for the coming semester and how to do better. It's a way of thinking forward that helps you make a plan and stick with a plan and see good results from that plan for all of your college career.

  

[text onscreen: Looking Beyond This Term: Good standing; Probation; Suspension]

Beyond this term we're hoping to get you into good standing at the end of the coming semester. So good standing at a minimum is a 2.0 at the University. Good standing in your major might be a little bit higher than that, it just depends on what you're trying to do. But we will also talk about the possibility of going back on academic probation again if your grades were to slip, and suspension. So for students who've had three semesters of probation they're looking at a term of suspension and that term is one year. And that's not really something that we hope to see students go through. We hope to avoid a year's worth of suspension. For some students the time away is extremely helpful in terms of resetting their expectations and thinking about what they would really like to do in college, but if we can help you figure that out before you get to that point that is always our goal.

[text onscreen: Minimum performance]

Remember your Cumulative GPA needs to be a 2.0 and your term GPA will be determined by your academic advisor. This is the GPA that you will need to get to get back into good standing in one term. To remain aid eligible for aid, you need a 67% completion rate in your courses. To calculate this, you take the number of credits that you earned divided by the number of credits that you have attempted multiplied by 100. This completion rate is why we stress to not withdraw from a class without speaking with your advisor first.

[text onscreen: Before class starts]

So, after you've reviewed the presentations, if you're going to change your major, we would like for you to give us a call and let us know that information. The number that is listed here is 304-293-7476 and we can help you make a major change. You may end up having to be in the Integrated Studies program as a major if your new major requires you to complete certain classes with a certain grade before you're allowed to move in, but we can certainly walk you through that information.

 

[text onscreen: Schedule an appointment with your academic notice advisor click you navigate scheduling link in your MIX account.]

After that you're going to watch your mix email and you're going to look for a scheduling link to set up an appointment to complete your probation contract and talk about your scholarship and other things that might be weighing on your mind. The email for scheduling an appointment to complete your contract is going to come out around the beginning of January. It won't come out before then, so don't worry. The more important thing right now is that we help adjust your spring schedule so that you're ready to go when classes start, and then we will handle the rest of that information going forward. So those are some of the things that you can do today in order to get yourself on track. Look for those appointments, make those appointments, and think about whether you want to change your major.

 [text onscreen: When the Semester Begins: Go to every class. Set up a personal study schedule]

When the semester begins, I think it's important to note that you should go to every class. And if that means you're going some virtually and some in-person classes, you need to make sure you're on top of that schedule. Attendance is a really big indicator of success. Showing up quite literally means that you're winning at least half the battle, so please try to make every effort to go to every single class. And once you go to those classes, and you get those syllabi and you see just what is involved, you're going to want to set up a personal study schedule right from the start. Don't let this be something you try to do halfway through once you get a feel for things – block your time as soon as you can during that first week and think about what times work best for you to get work done. And remember, studying can be everything from reading the material, reviewing the lecture notes, practicing your homework problems, working on assignments, all of that counts as studying. Set up your own personal study schedule in that first week. A good rule to follow is that for every hour you spend inside of a class, you should be spending two hours outside of class studying. If you have a typical freshman schedule, which is a 15-credit schedule, that 15 credits represent 15 contact hours in class every week, that's basically what it stands for, right? If you have those 15 contact hours in class that means you should be spending 30 hours outside of class studying in some form or capacity. If you think about the amount of time that is, that's 45 hours, that is a full-time job, and that's what college is really supposed to be like. I encourage you to think about how you're getting your personal study schedule set up. If it feels a little light to you, ask yourself, you know, am I really kind of hitting that two hours of study for every hour of class in the week goal?

 [text onscreen: Take advantage of the support services]

Take advantage of all the support services. We have so much here at WVU. We have tutoring for virtually every single subject. There are additional resources that your professors may have, which include their office hours, and that's a great way to get to know them as people and ask them very specific questions and have them get to know you and have them see how hard you're working on things. So do take advantage of the support services that we offer – and that's not just academic. That's also Carruth Center, if you think that you would like some individual counseling. That can be a variety of services that we have here that are dedicated to your health and to your wellness. There's a lot of support here at the University, and it's all paid for by your fees so you might as well take advantage of it.

 [text onscreen: Contact your ARSC 189 instructor if you have questions or concerns]

Make sure you ask your Arts and Sciences 189 instructor if you have any questions or concerns. Typically, your instructor will also be your academic notice adviser, and they can help you with a wide range of things. So if you have questions about your other classes or questions you want to ask about an academic approach in those particular classes, you can certainly ask them as well.

[text onscreen: Thank you!!]

Thank you so much for your attention. Again, if you have not seen the first two videos, I would really encourage you to look at those. They have more information on how you can be successful. But I really appreciate your time and attention, and we look forward to working with you over the course of this next semester. And best of luck to you. Please ask if you have any questions.

 

End Video 3