Our advisors are doing a wonderful job of staying connected with NIU College of Education students during this difficult time.
David Snow, director of Student Services, reports that Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education academic advisor Joe Curran “created his own Teams guide for students early on because a lot of the information on the NIU website was, at least initially, geared toward faculty and staff.”
Christy Schweitzer, academic advisor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, tapped into her own resources to adapt to shelter-in-place orders.
“You can see from the purple mobile cart in the background that I’ve had to pull out some of my old Elementary Ed classroom materials to advise our ELED majors from home,” Schweitzer says.
“I am holding remote video appointments. I offer email appointments as well, and that’s what most students have requested. In lieu of the professional semester group advising meetings that were canceled, I created digital documents instead that require an electronic response in lieu of signature,” she adds. “My four professional semesters each need testing information, etc., so it’s important that they get a digital meeting to gain that same information at once.”
Danae Miesbauer, academic counselor in the Department of Counseling and Higher Education, supplied a picture of her taken during the virtual Welcome Session for the Graduate Student Assistantship and Recruitment Program (GSARP), held virtually March 19 and 20.
“I co-chair the GSARP event and we changed it from a two-day in person event to a virtual event which still allowed over 50 participants to participate in virtual interviews for graduate assistantship positions for 2020-21 academic year,” Miesbauer says.
“We also held a few virtual sessions including Teams troubleshooting sessions, Welcome session, a current student panel and a student affairs professional panel to try our best to recreate this GA recruitment event,” she adds. “As far as advising goes, I am holding phone appointments and virtual meetings through Teams and Zoom as we get ready for registration.”
Click on the photos below for larger views of Jorie O’Brien’s home office, Judy Puskar and Miesbauer’s stuffed colleagues, who help to remind her that “Huskies Never Quit” and to stay #HuskieStrong!
