By Daisy Z. Dailey
Faculty Advisor, a program created by a partnership between Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) and Student and Academic Services, was introduced to the Cornell campus during fall semes ter 1995. It allows faculty members and others who advise graduate and undergraduate students or serve on graduate committees to see their advisees' grades, test scores, semester course schedule, current addresses and graduate student information on-line, via the World Wide Web. Faculty Advi sor can be particularly useful during pre-enrollment, when used in tandem with CoursEnroll, which all undergraduate and graduate Cornell students use to pre-enroll for classes.
What exactly does Faculty Advisor do for the advising process? Because it allows advisers to access their advisee's records on-line, it is convenient and saves time. Additionally, any changes to addresses, grades and course schedule are reflected immediately in Faculty Advisor, which should ensure that information looked up using Faculty Advisor is always current.
Mariana Wolfner, an associate professor of developmental biology, says, "Faculty Advisor is a big help, and not just for advising and during pre-registration. It is also great when writing letters of recommendation, to be able to so quickly access the latest information on my advisees' grades and schedule."
Faculty Advisor allows advisers to look at (but not make changes to) the course requests their advisees have selected through CoursEnroll, so that when the student and adviser meet, the adviser has already had time to think about which courses are the best choices for that particular student. Students must still meet with their advisers to get final approval to take the courses for which they pre-enroll. Instead of an adviser's written signature on a student's course requests, the adviser has an electronic signature called an "advisor key" for each student, made up of numbers and letters. Once an adviser approves a student's course requests, the key is entered by either the adviser through Faculty Advisor or by the student through CoursEnroll.
Says Stephen Bloom, a professor of avian and aquatic animal medicine, "It was certainly nice to be able to view the schedules for my advisees so easily. I look forward to using this system in the future."
Advisers are not required to use Faculty Advisor; the traditional method of accessing student advisee information will still work. If they don't have access to a networked computer, advisers can request that their advisees bring them a printed copy of their course requests. Then the advisers can give their advisees the "key" to enter into the "advisor key" field in CoursEnroll.
To use Faculty Advisor, the adviser must have access to a Macintosh, Windows, or Unix machine, with access to the Cornell campus network; he or she must have a Cornell Network Identity (Net ID); Macintosh and Windows computers should have the latest Bear Access Launch Pad installed, and Unix users will need the latest version of Netscape; and the individual must be a current adviser in the Student Information System. The adviser must also request access to Faculty Advisor from the University Registrar's Office. An adviser only has access to the records of the students he or she advises. Currently, 500 out of approximately 1,300 advisers are using Faculty Advisor.
Additional services are planned for the Faculty Service button on Bear Access. According to Janet Gray, assistant registrar for system development, after administrative databases have been remodeled it will be possible to submit grades and perform degree audits electronically. However, the current version of Faculty Advisor will remain largely unchanged until after Project 2000, the universityÕs plan to re-engineer its major administrative systems, has had its impact on the administrative databases. Limiting the number of new Faculty Advisor users may also be necessary so that staff resources can be focused on Project 2000.
For more information on Faculty Advisor, see the Computing at Cornell web page, http://www.cornell.edu/Computer.html, contact Janice Merrill in the University Registrar's Office, 255-3448, or send e-mail to Faculty_Advisor@cornell.edu. For information about CoursEnroll, contact Janet Gray, 255-9602, or send e-mail to coursenroll@cornell.edu. To obtain Bear Access software and documentation, contact the CIT Service HelpDesk, 124 CCC, 255-8990, or send e-mail to .helpdesk@cornell.edu.