After several years of Student Engagement Roster (SER) outreach, the College Advising Leadership Team adjusted the parameters of this student success effort in August 2022. In consultation with other student-facing service offices in the College, the leadership currently recommends individual outreach to students with SER alerts. Mass email outreach is discouraged.
With this in mind, the expectations for advisors' outreach are revised and limited. The College Advising Leadership Team will manage outreach to students with Stopped and Never Attended SER feedback.
Open and review SER feedback, if any, during student appointments throughout the term. Discuss the feedback, as appropriate or necessary within the context of the appointment.
Check the “I have reviewed” checkbox when you have reviewed the feedback.
Monitor your email for notices that a student on your roster has SER feedback to “Consult with academic advisor.” If you would prefer not to monitor email for these notices, see alternative weekly approach below.
Contact students with the “Consult with academic advisor” (AdRx) recommendation individually. Record your contact in AdRx. NB: If multiple advisors are assigned, the minimum expectation is that one advisor reaches out; if an advisor has already reached out about a report, use your best judgement on reaching out in additional ways/from additional offices.
Best practices for email outreach: personalize, be specific about why you are writing, and keep it short. Here are some templates for ideas and starting points.
Check the “I have reviewed” checkbox when:
you have reviewed the SER and contacted the student in the case of “Consult with academic advisor” (AdRx) or “Meet with academic advisor” (Student Engagement Report);
you have reviewed the SER and made a choice not to take action (this situation may arise if you see that another advisor assigned to the student has contacted the student, and you determine you do not need to initiate further outreach (no AdRx note is necessary, e.g.).
Continue to respond to new email notifications that indicate “Consult with academic advisor” when received.
To help manage the flow of SER outreach better, advisors can check for students with the "Consult your advisor" SER once per week instead of monitoring email. If you adopt this approach, please set aside time to do SER each week, ideally on the same day. Under this approach, you would not have to track SER emails. Instead, you would use AdRx filters to find the intended students.
First you will want to identify your targeted caseload. Often you will use your individually assigned caseload as your base population. If you are helping to cover for an open advisor line, then you might consider doing something like the following as well to find the unassigned students whom you are covering:
Select for the assigned caseload (general, not individually) or select the appropriate “Areas of Study” entries
Filter for “Advising Office Assignment Only” under the “Advisor Assignment” field and then search for the students you are responsible for covering (if not all of them)
Once you have your base caseload selected, to find students with SER feedback for a given time period, please use the following filters under Advanced Search:
Scroll down on the lefthand column and find the “Student Engagement Roster” option and click to expand.
Select the “Custom Date Range” option and enter the desired dates (e.g., the preceding 7 days)
Open the neutral SERs field and select “Consult with Academic Advisor”
If you have marked some students’ SERs as reviewed while meeting with them, then you could also select, under “Show Only Students with Feedback That,” the “I have not reviewed” option
Using these filters should generate only your students with new SER feedback.
To avoid seeing SER email notices in your inboxes, please follow these instructions for setting up email rules in Outlook:
Include positive SER feedback, if available, when communicating about negative SER feedback.
Submit a CARE Report if a student is unresponsive to multiple notifications.
Loop other advisors assigned to the student into the outreach—use your best judgment on when to do this and how (copying the other advisor on an email, consulting one-on-one with that advisor, e.g.)
The Office of Undergraduate Retention and Student Support (OURSS) are closely monitoring and sending outreach about SER feedback for students with V57 (Alert) or V33 (monitoring) holds based on SER feedback: not attending, stopped attending, irregular attendance
OURSS will send outreach to new freshmen and transfer students based on SER feedback Weeks 3-14
What is the Student Engagement Roster (SER)?
A component of the FLAGS initiative (Fostering Learning, Achievement, and Graduation Success)
A tool allowing faculty to communicate with students on how they’re doing in a class and make recommendations
Learn how IUB is guiding faculty to use SER on the "For Faculty" page.
In answer to the question “what happens when you make an Observation or Recommendation about student performance?” this web resource states “the records of your observations and recommendations are visible by academic advisors, who can look for patterns across all of a student’s courses. This allows advisors to reach out to students in more targeted and supportive ways.”
How are IUB academic advisors using SER?
In Spring 2019, AVP Elizabeth Guertin called a campus-wide committee of advising leaders and advisors to prepare guidance for IUB’s academic advisors about how to respond to SER reports.
It is anticipated that most if not all units on campus will implement at least the minimum expectations of these guidelines in Spring 2020.
The College of Arts + Sciences