Colleagues,

I am happy to announce a “soft” rollout of Geneseo’s new Early Alert software, Navigate by EAB, this semester.  All faculty and some professional staff and support staff already have roles defined in the system, so I encourage you to explore the site.  Navigate uses Geneseo’s single sign-on (your email credentials), so you can connect here: http://geneseo.campus.eab.com.  You can add a Navigate icon to your MyGeneseo sites by clicking on the three dots in the site menu, clicking “add sites” and choosing EAB Navigate from the list at the bottom of the page.

What does this mean for you this semester?

  1. On February 17, we will be piloting “progress reports” for a small selection of students.  You may or may not have any students in this group.  You do not have to go into Navigate to complete the form; you will receive a link in an email.  It should take you approximately two minutes to fill out the report, including time for an optional brief comment.  Staff have already been assigned to follow up on concerns raised in these reports.
    When you complete a progress report, students are directly notified and given resources if you raise a concern about attendance or suggest tutoring; they will also receive a personalized email if you note that they are doing particularly well in a class.  I realize not everyone has graded assignments by this time; please complete these reports with the information you do have for your course.  They are due by February 24 (we can accept late submissions for a few days past this date).  We are not waiting until midterm – the point of “early alert” is to provide interventions for students as quickly as possible.
  2. Navigate has an appointment scheduling system that academic advisors will find is an extremely student-friendly and faculty-efficient way to arrange to meet students for advising sessions.  I want to invite all interested volunteers to try this out this semester.  Over the next two years, we will help everyone transition to this scheduling system as the single way to organize academic advising.
    Laurie Fox and I are offering trainings on “setting up appointment availability” on Monday, February 10 and Tuesday, February 11 from 12:00pm till 1:30pm (participants can come and go throughout the time block) in South 225.
    If you want to arrange a group training for your department, please let us know.  There will also soon be “Navigate office hours” for drop-in exploration with Laurie Fox in South 225.
  3. Here’s a quick guide to sign on and explore Navigate. Faculty members will see that you have two roles on your home page. The “staff” role shows a list of your advisees.  Switch to your “professor” role by clicking the triangle next to “staff home” or “professor home," and you will see a list of all of your students for this term.  The quick guide explains how to sign on, search for students, and set up appointments.  If you click through the home page tabs you will find academic information to help you guide a student who might be struggling or celebrate with students who have made a meaningful improvement in their academic work.  Don’t worry about getting lost: we’re starting a Wiki info page for NAVIGATE where we will build more guides and direction sheets. 

By mid-spring, EAB will have loaded historical Banner information that will help advisors and department chairs understand what students need to be successful in their chosen majors.  This guidance will also help students make earlier choices about exploring other degree options when they are not in the right major.

We hope you will share feedback about your first experiences using Navigate.  Please wait until you receive a feedback form so that we can keep all suggestions in one place.  This tool is an essential part of our efforts to intervene with resources when students are struggling and increase the number of students we will retain at the college.  The quality time you spend with students discussing your discipline, their goals, and advice for succeeding at Geneseo and beyond is the essence of developmental academic advising.  This – not “bean counting,” not “course selection”—is the core of our relationships with our advisees.

I look forward to working closely with you as we continue to commit to our system of outstanding faculty advising at Geneseo.

Sincerely,

Celia

Dr. Celia A. Easton
Dean of Academic Planning and Advising
Professor of English
SUNY Geneseo
106 Erwin Hall
1 College Circle
Geneseo, NY  14454
585 245-5541

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