I'm feeling more nervous about this upcoming school year than my previous years. The university where I work at has decided to change a few things on us. First, students are able to make appointments to see advisors through a calendar system. However, this system was suppose to be up and running yesterday but instead they pushed it back to the first day of school. In the past we've done appointments by having students sign up on a sheet of paper. We've been told by leadership that we can't do any in-house marketing until it has been released. I'm nervous how this will affect things for me since we need to keep notes there and notes in our files. I feel like it's double the work.
Second, the FERPA process has changed. FERPA is a law (in a nutshell) where students have to give permission for a parent to call the university to find out any kind of information about the student. Previously, this permission was given on paper and we then sent the paperwork to the registrar's office and we could see in the system who was granted access. Since Linda could really be Jane, there's now a 4 digit code parents have to give to us to verify that she is indeed Linda and not Jane.
So all summer long parents kept calling us and we had to be very careful on how we disclosed information. Luckily for me, most of my students called me when they had a problem.
Third, this year we were asked to pre-register international students. I, unfortunately, had two transfer international students. You cannot imagine how much more difficult it is to build their schedule. I mean is biophysics our equivalent of Engineering Physics? Let me take a look at the course description...oh it's written in Spanish. *sigh* So needless to say, courses aren't getting articulated and classes are filling up.
We have huge enrollment numbers this year which is really a great thing but not enough seats. Chemistry Lab is completely filled. I have two students that need to get into a lab. There aren't enough Chemistry seats either so we're being allowed to just "push them in." Whether they get a seat in a chair is another story. I say let's just move Chemistry lecture to Chaifetz Arena (our university arena) or open up the Chemistry section for just chemistry majors to all students.
In other news, Ellie is now mobile. Well sort of. She does prefer to sit up but if she's on her tummy she will scoot around. I'm wondering when she'll get to crawling. We have to be super careful with her. All in one week she fell off our bed and while Eric was holding her, she decided to lean back and push away from Eric, startling him and he could not catch her in time. We started nicknaming her "Evel Kni-Ellie."
