Practical Matters: Priority Registration

by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Program

There’s usually some form of “priority registration” at any college or university, so you may have had an idea of what your new colleagues were talking about when they brought up SCCC’s Priority Registration at your department meetings this semester. Just in case you’re still a little fuzzy, though, about what Priority Registration at SCCC encompasses – and what your role in Priority Registration is supposed to be– allow me this attempt to clarify.

Sure, it's darker earlier, but these autumn sunsets are gorgeous.

In recent years, particularly after the award of a Title III grant, the administration has spent a good deal of time attempting to clarify the role of advising faculty when it comes to registration. Teaching faculty are required (again, like most important tasks, contractually) to set aside eight hours per semester, in addition to their regular class time and office hours, for advising students. This doesn't mean you have to cram all eight hours into the next two weeks -- although the administration does encourage you to spend more time in November answering student questions about their schedules, helping them decipher their SAIN reports, and guiding them to take classes that will fulfill their program requirements AND requirements for graduation.

Great, you must be saying in response . . . so who am I advising?

Good question! Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, there is no formal assignment of students to faculty advisors for the majority of our students. (I know, I don’t think it’s the best beginning to advisement, either, but that’s a conversation for another time and another forum.) Some of our programs formally assign advisors, but most do not, and General Studies students are definitely left to fend for themselves. So, in order to make the most of your advisement hours, and in order to actually meet with and help students who would like to be advised, you have a few options.

The first option you have is to canvass the students in your classes. If you haven’t done so already, schedule some of your advising hours over the next two weeks (since Priority Registration officially began yesterday, November 2, and continues until Open Registration begins on November 11). Then make this into some sort of chart using Excel or the table function in Microsoft Word, or simply use the form you find here, http://depthome.sunysuffolk.edu/Liminis/Faculty/FacultyAdvisement/index.html,

the official, college-wide Faculty Advisement Resource for SCCC. (The link to the PDF form is the first link at the top of the page). Announce your availability to your classes, post the hours on your door, and if you're particularly ambitious, post them to your Blackboard course space.

Another option, which you may have discovered already, is to participate in your department’s efforts to hold department-specific advising sessions. Also, you can volunteer to spend some of your hours advising in the Academic Advising and Mentoring Center. (For example, I'm spending two hours in the Eastern campus center this Friday. Sometimes a change of scenery is nice.)

Keep in mind, too, that any hours you spent counseling or advising students before November (or after!) does count toward your advising commitment. We're not often required to turn in an official record of our time spent advising, but just in case the administration does ask for such a record, it's a good idea to keep notes about when and where and whom you advised.

Also, particularly because you’re new to the college or the full-time teaching faculty gig, you should read (or at the very last, scan) the Faculty Advising Handbook that’s available electronically at the link above. There are also videos available on this site that demonstrate useful information like “How to Read a Student’s SAIN report” and “Using Banner for Advising Purposes.”

So that’s my heads-up . . . and be prepared to receive a maelstrom of emails concerning Priority Registration at this time of year. As overwhelming as they may seem, you should pay attention to them, as they’ll help you fulfill your advising duties as a faculty member.