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Advising Notes

calendar page on yellow marker

Effective advising notes provide a historical record of communication between a student and university personnel and the support provided throughout a student's academic career. It is important that these notes are kept online and can be accessible to personnel throughout the university.

The online applications SIS, U.Achieve, TerpEngage Advising, and Advise on the Web allow you to maintain an online record of advising notes for each of your advisees. You can store, retrieve and share advising notes. They may also be used by other faculty and staff with authorized "advisor" access to add advising-related comments. Within SIS you can access the Advising Notes screen by using the ERSR code. On U.Achieve, you must search for a student using their UID number and a link to "Notes" will appear on the top navigation bar. When you log into Advise on the Web, the link to "Notes" appears next to "Transcript". Within Advise on the Web, advisors can see all notes recorded in SIS, U.Achieve, and Advise on the Web. Click on the following links to view a screenshot of the notes pages within SIS, and Advise on the Web.

Guidelines for Advising Notes

Tawes Hall

Keep entries as brief and succinct as possible while providing enough information to aid future advising interactions.

Noting personal issues if a student raises a personal issue which is relevant to an advising matter under discussion, it may be appropriate to refer to such issues simply as "personal problems" in an entry rather than providing specific, detailed information. If it assists you in your advising role to keep more specific notes about a student's personal issues, you may keep private notes for your own use. As long as they are not shared with anyone else, or kept in the student's advising file, private advising notes are not considered part of the student's record, and neither the student nor others have a right to access them.

If you need to correct a comment after it has been entered, you may enter an additional comment referring to the previous comment and the correction.

Credit: Seattle University

Additional Resources

National Academic Advising Association (NACADA)

The national professional organization for academic advisors. NACADA promotes and supports quality academic advising in institutions of higher education to enhance the educational development of students.

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