Center for Student Excellence

Hi there, thank you for joining us for our virtual workshop on the academic advising and registration process. So some of this information is specific to transfer students but not all of it, so if you’re watching this and you’re not a transfer student, you should be able to still get some helpful tips and information about the process.

All right, here are some key points that we’re going to discuss — advising, registration, the core curriculum here at Avila, registration setbacks, placement exams, and then Q&A and resources. So we can’t have a full Q&A but if you do have questions feel free to leave them in the comments below.

Advising

Advising here at Avila is more than just someone helping you put your schedule together. Advisors can help you with planning your academic career at Avila, career planning for after you graduate, and then non-academic issues. So if you’re needing help with finding organizations on campus or other things going on on campus, they can help you with that information as well. They can also talk with you about internships or maybe some volunteer experiences that you may need for credits or things that are required for your degree. So not just a course scheduler, but more of a one-stop shop of resources could be your academic advisor.

There are two main steps for this process. So step one — meet with your academic advisor. And then step two — register online on MyAU on your registration date, which we will get to later. So two easy steps, that’s all you gotta do, and then you’re ready to go.

Course Catalog

But before you have your advising appointment, you want to come prepared. Don’t show up empty-handed with no idea what’s going on. So Avila does have the course catalog that you can find on the website that will provide you with information on what classes are required for you to take for all the majors and minors that are here on campus. And then your degree audit is more personalized for you — it shows exactly what classes you’ve taken for your degree and what classes you still have left to complete your degree for your major and for your minor.

Fall Registration Dates

All right, registration dates. So these are the fall registration dates to get registered for the spring 2022 semester. So first up we have the seniors — so if you have 85 or more credits you get to register on Monday, November 1st. Juniors register on Tuesday, November 2nd. Sophomores register on Wednesday, November 3rd. And then freshmen register on Thursday, November 4th. So by Friday everybody should be ready to go and be online to get registered and enrolled for their classes for the spring.

Important Questions

All right, important questions to ask yourself. Have you sent Avila all your college transcripts? So no matter what amount of schools that you’ve been to before you got here to Avila, please make sure we have all your college transcripts on file. And then did you have any dual credit, college credit, or AP/IB exam credit from high school? So AP is advanced credit and IB is International Baccalaureate — so you would know if you have any of those sorts of credits from high school. And please make sure that we have all your transcripts from any sort of credit that you’ve taken, so we have a more holistic view of all the classes you’ve taken so far and what classes you have left to take to complete your degree. And make sure you talk with your advisor if there’s anything that you recognize that you’ve already taken but maybe it’s not displayed on your transcript, because then there might be another conversation you need to have on making sure we have all the correct transcripts on file for you.

Degree Components

All right, the Avila degree components. So you need a minimum of 120 credit hours to complete a degree. The first part of that are your core classes — so these are most commonly known as your gen eds. So that can be between 38 and 44 credit hours depending on your transfer status and what’s required for you to take. The big large chunk in the middle is going to be your major and your concentration classes, so that can range between 58 and 64 credit hours, also depending on your transfer student status. And then the last part of your degree can be a minor or free electives. Most minors at Avila do require about 18 credit hours to complete, but if you didn’t want to do a minor then you would have about that same amount of hours to take a various amount of classes that interest you.

Credit Requirements

All right, so just a note or a fact to remember — at least 60 credit hours have to be from a four-year college. So if you are transferring in from a community college or any other sort of college, at least 60 of those credit hours have to be from a four-year. So that means if you did go to community college and let’s say you did 69 credit hours at a community college, only 60 of those credits would transfer here to Avila. Then the rest of your degree — so 60 and 60 — the rest of your degree to make up that 120 would have to be completed here at Avila. So that is just a good note to have if you are coming in with a lot of credits from a community college. And you just have to talk with your advisor about which one of those credits are going to be transferring in and which ones are not going to be transferring in.

Core Curriculum

All right, the Avila core curriculum is made up of three different areas. So we have our skills level courses which are about seven credit hours, our liberal arts level courses which is about 25 credit hours, and then the core designation courses which will range between 6 and 12 credit hours depending on your transfer student status.

Skills Level Courses

So first up the skills level courses. So there’s English Composition — you can take Composition 1 or Composition 2. There’s Communication — so everyone has to take Fundamentals of Communication. And then First Year Seminar is a one credit hour class and it is waived for transfer students, so you don’t have to take that as you’re coming into Avila for your first year.

Liberal Arts Level Courses

Next we have our liberal arts level courses. So these can be taken in a variety of different subjects — so there’s Arts, History, Literature and Rhetoric, Mathematics, Natural Science with the lab, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and then Social Sciences. So you can find in the Avila academic course catalog which classes underneath each of these sections that you would like to take, that way you can really kind of map out what your interests are within these areas.

Core Designation Courses

And then the core designation courses. There’s Interdisciplinary Studies which can be three to six credit hours, Global Studies three to six credit hours as well, and these can be mixed and matched with the CE courses which are right below — the Community Engagement — which are three to six credit hours and also can be mix and matched with the Global Studies courses.

So if you are transferring in with less than 29 credit hours, then you have to take six credit hours of the Interdisciplinary Studies courses and you can mix and match six credit hours of the Global Studies or Community Engagement courses. So if you want to do three credits of Global Studies and three credits of Community Engagement you can do that, or you can do two classes for Global Studies which is six credit hours, or two classes of Community Engagement within six credit hours. So you’re able to mix and match with that requirement.

If you are transferring in with more than 30 credit hours, then you only have to take three credit hours of Interdisciplinary courses and then three credit hours of a Global Studies course or a Community Engagement course. So that’s where it kind of depends on your transfer status and how many hours you are required to take.

And then some of these courses will overlap. So if the Community Engagement course also counts for one of the Interdisciplinary Studies requirements, then that could be a way where you’re killing two birds with one stone and you’re doing one thing that will account for two different requirements.

Undergraduate Academic Catalog

All right, and then all of these major and minor requirements can be found in the undergraduate academic catalog. So it has been recently updated to the 2021 and 2022 school year, so all the things we’ve been talking about for your major and minor requirements and then all the core curriculum requirements can be found right there in the catalog.

Registration Setbacks

All right, registration setbacks. So these are some things just to be aware of that could delay or stop you from being able to register for the spring semester.

So if you have an advisor hold on your account, that just means that you need to meet with your advisor before you can register for classes. So that step one — meet with your advisor — is actually a very important step. You can’t just skip to step two and go ahead and register online. You have to talk with your advisor first to approve your classes and talk about your schedule for your spring semester.

A business office hold — so if you do have a balance on your account that you have to pay, you have to get that balance down to a certain amount. I believe it’s $999 in order for you to be able to register for the next semester. So you would have to talk to the business office about a payment plan or however much you want to pay to get your balance down as much as you can so you can register for the next semester.

Prerequisites or placement exams — so a prerequisite is a class that you have to take before you can take the next level of that class. So let’s say just Math 101 — you have to take before you can get to Math 202. So there are some different classes that operate that way. You have to check with your advisor on which classes you need to take before you can take the next level for that area.

And placement exams are similar — so if you haven’t taken your English Composition class or your college algebra math class yet, and you don’t have your ACT scores on file for English and math, we would need you to take a placement exam to determine where you should be falling in terms of which class you should be getting placed in for math or for English. And we’ll talk more about that a little bit later.

The maximum number of credit hours you can enroll in online is 18. So if you’re wanting to take more than 18 credit hours, you would need to talk to someone in the registrar’s office to get approval for that.

And then if you have online issues — so if your MyAU is just acting weird on the day of your registration, which it could, because everyone’s going to be logging in on the same days — if you experience any online issues you would have to go to the registrar’s office and you can enroll in person. You would just have to fill out your registration forms on paper and give it to the registrar’s office for them to input it online.

And then last — maintaining a certain number of credit hours for financial aid and or athletic eligibility. So if you are an athlete or if you are receiving any sort of federal financial grants or loans, usually you have to be full time, which is 12 credit hours, to keep those things and maintain them throughout the school year. So that goes the same for scholarships as well. Some of you that have outside scholarships may have requirements that you have to be a full-time student in order to keep your scholarship. So those are just some things to know and be aware of and to kind of double check as you’re going through this process and getting registered for the spring semester.

Placement Exams

All right, placement exams. So for English there are three different classes you can get placed in. So English 095 which is Writing Strategies, and then there’s English 111 Composition 1, English 112 Composition 2.

Then over here on the math side we have MA092 which is Mathematical Literacy, MA115 with a lab — Applications of College Mathematics — and then MA120 with the lab which is College Algebra. And then if you would like to be placed in MA125 which is Precalculus or MA241 which is Calculus and Analytic Geometry, you will have to talk with the mathematics department and take a different kind of test to determine if you are prepared to take those classes.

The whole reason and purpose for these placement exams is to make sure that you are academically ready for these classes, because we wouldn’t want to put you in College Algebra if you’re not ready for College Algebra and then you end up failing that class and having to pay money to retake it and all those sorts of things, which can cause more problems later down the line. We would rather be proactive and take that precaution and have you start with a more foundational sort of class like Mathematical Literacy, so that way you can get that math foundation good and going and then once you get done with that class then you can register for the next level class up, which could be College Algebra or the MA115 Applications for College Mathematics.

So the placement exam is called the Accuplacer — so you may have heard that word before. And to schedule a time to take one or both of these Accuplacer placement exams, email Susan Winters at susan.winters@avila.edu. Her office is in Hodis if you need to also come by to talk with her about a time and date, and then you would be taking the actual test here in Hodis on campus as well.

Questions

All right, and then if you do have any questions feel free to put those in the comments below, or we will have our information at the end — you can send us an email if you have other follow-up questions.

Advising Resources

All right, so advising resources — so where to find these different things. So these are all active links. So MyAU, the academic catalog — there is a transfer students page within the catalog which has specific information that I just went over, but if you wanted to read it that’s where you can find it. Avila’s majors, the registrar’s office, business office, financial aid office, and then Navigate is a really great tool for scheduling meetings. So if you already need to schedule a meeting with your advisor or someone in financial aid or anyone else on campus, Navigate is a great tool to use. So these links are active so I will put these in the chat below so you all can find these links and click on them to get through this registration process.

Other Advising Resources

Other resources that are available to transfer students — so the Honors Program is open to anyone on campus. You need at least a 3.5 GPA and a couple other things that they’re looking for to apply for the Honors Program.

And then there are two transfer peer mentors on campus — Samuel Zlinski and Alyssa Rushing — are transfer peer mentors. You can check in with them anytime throughout the year if you’re just needing some guidance on where to go for different things or how to get involved on campus. They’re really great students.

Faculty mentors — we have seven faculty members that are part of our faculty mentoring program. All new transfer students on campus do have access to a faculty mentor. They might have been sending you some emails telling you to set up a meeting with them — please go ahead and answer those emails if you’re interested in the program.

We have a Transfers at Avila Discord server. So Discord is a really cool app — it’s kind of like a cool chat app where you can chat with other students on campus. So I would definitely say join that if you’re wanting to connect with other transfer students on campus.

And then last but not least, the TRIO program is open to all students on campus and it is also open to transfer students. And if you are a first generation student, that would be a great program to apply for and get involved in. And they accept applications on a rolling basis, so you can apply at any time throughout the school year for the TRIO program.

Student Success

All right, and then last slide. So we are the Office of Student Success. We’re located in Hodis Center. We are here usually Monday through Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can email us — so Maya Tillman or Paige Elam make up the Office of Student Success. And then if you want to connect with success, visit our Linktree and that’s where you can find a lot of information on our social medias, the offices that provide student success resources, and a lot of other cool things.

So that is it for me. Thanks so much for watching and if you have questions feel free to put them in the chat or reach out to us via email.