Office of Student Transitions Caffeine Chat for Parents

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For any of my South Jersey people on too many buttons.

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OK, anything else 30 seconds.

Hi good morning everyone. Uhm, thank you so much for joining us for this office of student transitions. Caffeine chat for the parents of all of our admitted first year in transfer students for the fall 2020 year. My name is Lindsey Barnes. I am the director, student transitions here at the college and thank you so much for taking an hour out of your morning today to learn a little bit more about what the next couple of months are going to look like and some information just kind of coming down the stretch for your student should they decide that TCP is going to be the right fit for them.

In the fall, which we hope that they do so I would be remiss if I didn't start off with an enormous congratulations UM to your son and your daughter. I'm sure I'm not the first person. I hope that I have, not the last person, but it's just such an amazing accomplishment. And really, kudos to them and all of the hard work that they have been putting in the last few years to get to this position. And if they were accepted to TCNJI know that they were accepted to a host of other really great institution. So I hope that you. I'm sure that you're really proud of them. I have.

Two kids of my own at home and and even though they're a little bit younger than yours, I can imagine just a little bit to begin to imagine the pride that you have for them. So congratulations to them. Once again, we wanted to start off with just a quick overview of what we're going to tackle here for the next hour. Some housekeeping items right out of the gate and then just a really brief overview of who I am and what the office of student transitions is really all about and how we're going to support your student for the next couple of months talking a little bit about communication from my office to not only your student, but you.

In that time frame, little bit about orientation. Lots of questions came in already about course registration and how that works with schedules and things of that nature, so I'll touch on that for a little bit.

Not unexpected housing and roommate questions out the Wazoo, so we're going to. We're going to talk about that a little bit. Some helpful links for questions pertaining to things like tuition and billing parking. Some of those more nuts and bolts pieces I have a couple of top five tips that Roscoe put together for really your student, but I want to share them with you anyway, just to kind of put yourself in a position to best support your student. Is there navigating this big change to college and then I want to just kind of end with talking a little bit about some offerings and some things that we're going to be doing throughout the month of April to help.

Connect you with TCNJ. In all the ways that we can 'cause you know it was so unfortunate. This is accepted. Students day is one of my favorite days of the year and to have to have this conversation in this medium really stinks, but I know that TJ has just been committed to getting as much information out there so that you have all of your questions answered. To be able to be making this big decision on where your students going to go to school. So that's kind of what we're going to be tackling here. So along with some housekeeping items, first and foremost, I love using gifts in my presentations.

And I found out about 2 minutes before you logged on, um, that they were not coming in. So they're still's, uh, of some of my favorite moments of Seinfeld. So hopefully, uh, maybe or maybe not. That was to show that you watched I include one or two in my normal presentation anyway, but I'm a little sad. Every year the amount of students who don't laugh at that joke in person less and less, or get a reference to kind of who they are because it makes me feel like I'm getting old. But here we are on that.

Hum, so here. So so gesture not working, but we're all good. Other housekeeping items. Alot of you reached out already. Thank you for all of the questions that were submitted ahead of time I can talk for hours about the transition to TCNJ, but I really wanted to kind of get a pulse for what the big questions where that you had at this point. So that's what informed what we're going to be talking about today. But you do have the other option down in the lower left hand corner of your screen. There's a box for you to submit questions, so if you do have more as you come.

As you kind of get going here along the way, please feel free to to submit them as well. Can't guarantee we're going to. All of them were going to try to get to as many as possible. I have two amazing colleagues they're hiding behind the scenes this morning. Steven and Matt from admissions, so they're going to try to jump in and answer as many questions as possible while I am doing my presentation. And they're also going to be feeding me potentially questions that are coming up, so it's just me this morning. If you see me kind of jotting down notes or checking my phone, it's just to kind of see what questions you have that are coming in.

Because I I can't do both chat and you at the same time, so that's kind of how we're going to be fielding questions today and we're going to follow up. You know, these are going to be very general questions, and I understand that some of you might have really specific niche questions for your particular family. We're going to figure out a way to get ahold of you next week, and the week after to be able to handle those questions a little bit more. One on one, but will keep it pretty pretty general for the purposes of the next hour here.

And then I think that the last thing for housekeeping before I dive in was we did get a host of questions about.

The future of of what this summer looks like with the fall. Looks like we are in a historic, completely unprecedented time. And, you know, in the spirit of honesty and transparency, I don't know. Um, I can tell with you that I can share with you that the goal is that in the next couple of weeks, we're going to have a decision of what the summer is going to look like. We're really well prepared already to handle that in the event that were unable to do an on campus component. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about orientation in a few minutes in that regard.

But one of the things and you're not Privy as admitted parents are not Privy to kind of the information's been going up to current students. Unless you have a son or a daughter, an older child who goes here already. But I have been so impressed with how TJ has responded the last few weeks. With all of this they have been so thoughtful they're bringing the people to the table who need to be at the table to weigh in on the best decision for the students. Going forward with what that looks like. And you know, there were sometimes where the information is changing.

Hourly be going certainly daily but but also hourly because that was what the situation was warranting, right because we were getting information from the local governments and state government, federal government, you know that information was changing, so I've been really, uhm, I've been really impressed because throughout all of of it they have remained really. Our leadership has remained really rational and really just kind of, you know, honest. They have the information they have here. What's the best decision that we can make for the students and we're going to move that way and then if we need to adjust, we need to adjust it. Even taking a really practical approach to it.

And I really appreciate that. As a as a staff person here who obviously has a lot of you know I'm ramping up a lot of my colleagues had a lot of triage in the moment because we had current students and they work in those areas, but for me it was much more OK. You know, how can I support getting information to these new students and families now? And what does that look like as we're guiding them through the next couple of months so I don't have a crystal ball? I know that we're going to hopefully have an answer from an orientation perspective within the next couple of weeks, but with regards to the fall, you know that's kind of where we are.

And I feel really confident that our leadership is just going to take the information they have available and act accordingly base with the student in mind and just do a really kind of practical approach to that. So I know that's probably not the answer that some of you wanted to hear, but that's kind of just an overview of where we are as an institution right now, at least in my perspective. So I think that's it for the housekeeping items I want to jump right in and just do a very brief overview of my office and what we're kind of here to do, so we're kind of like the relay person. What typically happens is.

That around May 1st, which is that national deposit deadline and we did have a few questions about that as of late. Last night when I checked, we are still holding to that May 1st deadline to make a decision on where you want to go. I know that some institutions doing this or not, but for right now we're sticking to May 1st. So you will have about a month from this point out to make that decision. and I don't envy you 'cause I know that that's going to be difficult as you're kind of comparing your schools and that they were in your students admitted to and all that good stuff. But hopefully this presentation and all the things that we have coming down the Pike. You're going to help give you a sense of TCNJ.

In that time, but you'll have until May 1st and then what happens typically on my first is admissions is like, hey Lindsey, here you go write a man they kind of handle it on over to me and their mind all summer long so I'm kind of this person that gets you know up until now you've been only interacting mostly with admissions office. I'm my office is here to dedicate your student, you know dedicated 100% to helping your student kind of navigate those four months. Get them here for the first day of class and then really support them throughout the course of the first semester in into their first years. If they're getting off on the right foot.

So that means that I coordinate the majority of the marketing and communications to all of our new students. It's not all of it, but I would say probably 85 to 90% of the communications they're going to get our streamlined from all of the offices are streamlined through my office and the other thing that we do is that we get to plan and execute all of our orientation annear programs as well as our welcome week program. So all of your on campus opportunities, which I am.

Cautiously optimistic. We're still going to be able to do I also oversee a student staff of between 70 and 75 in any given year, so our TCNJ orientation leaders are mentors and work primarily with our incoming first year students and our TMD Griffins work primarily with our incoming transfer students and they're all previous transfer students themselves over lends itself to really nice opportunity for mentoring and things of that nature. So that's a little bit about about my area and we're going to be trying to accomplish here in the next couple of months.

I also thought it would be really nice to talk a little bit about what communication looks like and now more than ever. It's something that I've always been very focused on, but this year in particular we want to make sure that we're we're on top of so a couple of things right now throughout the month of April, it's still going to be pretty quiet from me because we have students that are still deciding ultimately anywhere they want to go, so the next couple of weeks we're finalizing the class, and we're buttoning all of those pieces up, and then that May 1 national deadline is on Friday, so we'll have our class in theory, mostly by that point.

So that following week, the week of May 4th we a couple of big things are going to happen. The first is it that's when your student gets there. TCNJ email address. The students in my web and are with them last week were asking about that and it's coming. It's going to come that first week in May. Will get instructions to their TC and Giardia email accounts that they used on their application and they'll have the TCNJ instructions to set up the TC account at that point. And the other thing that's going to happen that week is that we're going to Mail home what I call the roar booklet, so this is your one in person.

Stop emailing a metsa booklet that's about 26 to 30 pages. An it kind of consolidates information from all of the other offices with what you need to know for this summer. So information from financial aid, student accounts, residential education and housing are division of Health and Wellness with Herb Portfolio, Health and Wellness in student affairs. A summer timeline. Information about course registration, everything you could think of, and one pretty convenient spot. I joke that I wrote it for the parents.

Because I think that you know the hope is the students are going to read it too. But that's a really nice booklet that you're going to get hard copy. The PDF will be available online and it's going to help you kind of navigate and get an idea of what the next couple of months are going to like for your son or daughter. Also that week. And this is something that continues all summer long I send out a BI Weekly E newsletter. It starts that week. I think. I've been typically doing it on Wednesdays and it's called the transition times and the nice thing about it twofold one.

This is a lot, um, and when I started in this role a couple years ago in the office was brand new. One of the first things I did was OK. How do we make this process seem overwhelming? Because at the time all the offices were communicating to the students individually and that can it's a lot going on. They've got a lot of deadlines. They've got a lot of things that they need to do, and it's a really bad time because a lot of those big deadlines happened while they're also simultaneously trying to graduate from high school or for my transfer students, wrapping up their semesters at their previous institution. So what we did was.

This newsletter goes out every two weeks on Wednesday and we kind of just break it down. I focused them on OK. These are the things that we want you to focus on in these two weeks. The next one comes out two weeks later. OK, let's switch gears. These are the things we really need you to focus on doing in these two weeks and it really kind of just helps guide them through the summer and makes all of these deadlines and things like more manageable. The other awesome thing about the transition times is that you can opt in to receive it to him directly to your inbox, and I think that that's just a really nice tool for parents to be able to then just check in with your student to say, Hey, you know.

Lindsey said that the the first master worksheet was due on Monday. Where are you with that right? Not necessarily doing, but just to kind of reinforce that, especially when there are so many other factors and things that are going on in their lives. And really in the world these days. So I included the link on this presentation will be available later. I will make sure to get that out to you, but that link on my website on my parents page can get you to opt into the newsletter so that you start to receive those as well. And we have a decent amount of parents who choose to do that. Lastly, I am.

Barely on social media, but I do have one kind of area and that's it's a gram. So I was telling the students to follow along. But if you like to as well, I think the really cool thing about that is that I really tried to get a lot of opportunity to have the students see what life at TCNJ is like. By using my students to post things on there and just kind of get an idea. What are some normal obviously normal events and things that are going on so it's another opportunity to connect with my office, but just know that we really view and I really view you as.

A partner for your student in this process and I don't want you to feel left out of the dark. Of all the things that are happening over the next couple of months.

OK.

So orientation we're going to move to next. We always had a two part orientation which benefited us. I think quite a bit this year, given everything that's been going on. So the first part one is an on line orientation component. So a few things about that. First, it's hosted in canvas, some of you already may be familiar with canvas. If your student weather in high school Oregon college is using that platform for their course management system, others might have using other platforms. But that is where our.

Our students are going to interact with their faculty during the regular semesters, so it's a nice opportunity to introduce those who may not be familiar with canvas. But it's a course that hosted in there that is essentially your catch all right. So the reason that this came about a couple years ago, we wanted to create it was because we recognize that we certainly didn't want out of state students, international students, or students who couldn't make on campus orientation to be at a disadvantage for missing that. So we kind of consolidated all of the to do's.

If you will like a summer To Do List into an on line orientation platform a couple years ago, so things like placement testing and links to the booklet where they're going to go through to apply for housing, submitting their pre entrance health requirements, those health forms submitting their photo for their TCNJ ID card. A lot of those kind of nuts and bolts pieces are facilitated through our online orientation. Additionally, separate for the transcript for the first year students 'cause I know I have parents in both groups on the call today.

Uhm, the first semester worksheet, which we're going to talk about in a minute, the link and to fill that out is through online orientation as well as information about their summer reading assignment. So it's a really nice kind of catch all for the student to be able to log in at any point they're going to move through the modules, and they're going to be able to get these these action items and deadlines taken care of and done throughout the course of this summer. So in the event that we do have to move to an on line or in person, component orientation is taken away this year due to the coronavirus.

We're going to be in pretty good shape because so much of what they're already needing to do is already facilitated through online orientation, and my office is looking into how to supplement the on campus components that they would be missing in a virtual space to get them really connected with their peers in those types of things in that nature. So TCNJ today is if you just go today.tcu.edu, there's a whole list of icons and that's kind of where all of our students live when they want to get to the various platforms that we have here in canvas is the third one on there, and that's how they're going to access that.

It will launch the Tuesday after Memorial Day.

So Tuesday, May 26th is an on line orientation opens, and then they'll be able to move through the modules and they will be guided. At that time. The second component to orientation, and this is a big hopeful is our on campus component. You know, I if so, cognizant that this is not ideal for you as families in a host of different ways. So I know that if there is any way that I can, if we are able to have them here safely and obviously that's.

The first concern first and foremost, but if there's a way that we can have young campus to connect we're going to do that.

If we can, and if we can't, we're going to have a really good option to put been putting all that information on line for you over the summer, but that's the plan, so I'm going to live in that space for a minute when I talk about this and we're gonna say yes, we can do it. So transfer orientation is going to take place on Tuesday, June 23rd, and then we bring all of our first year students on campus. One day throughout the week of July 20th. So all of our first year students are assigned in orientation date based on their major. So I've gone ahead on the slide below and just listed out which schools are coming on which days, and a couple of quick things about that. So you're going to notice that the school of education is.

On there three times, their faculty are amazing and they they have to be here for three of the four days instead of just one. And the reason is that all of our education majors are dual majors at the college, so when they come for an on campus orientation component, there actually sitting in on two different Department sessions there going to start with their Department session for their school major for their education component, and then they're going to send around one for their content area. So examples I could share with you on that. If your student is a math secondary education.

Major, they're going to come on Tuesday, which is the school of July 21st 'cause the School of science is where the math Department is housed, and they're going to meet with both the Secondary Education Department in math. If you have an elementary education and psychology major student, that's what your students majoring in that are going to come on Wednesday the 22nd with the school of Humanities and social Sciences, because that's where the psychology program is housed. So if you have questions about kind of those dates, I can will be more than happy to answer those via email at the end or in the coming week or so. A couple of other things of speech pathology majors. And if you're in.

Undeclared student in the school of Education. You're going to come on Monday, and my undeclared general students that are coming in this year you're going to join us on Thursday, so that kind of covers, I think almost everybody. But again, if you have questions about which day your student would be a sign.

To come, you can let us know our parents able to come. Oh my gosh, yes, I hope so. Please come, you know, we don't do any parent programming during welcome week, so this is really your opportunity to connect with resources with student support offices on campus and really kind of just maybe ease up any anxieties you might have about your son or daughter coming here to the college. So it's a really nice day and I'm cautiously optimistic that we're going to be able to still have it.

I lost my train of thought with something about that. Oh alternate date. OK so I'm gonna get a host of questions I'm sure and emails to my general inbox about. Well, we're on vacation or they can't come this day, but can they come another day? So yes, if you you know if you're unwell twofold, one if you're on vacation at whole week.

Take a deep breath. It's totally OK. Please don't cancel your vacation. Hopefully it's not cancelled already to begin with because of coronavirus, but the beauty of the online orientation is that no students going to be behind if they missed that on campus component. So I always say don't change your plans and you know you're going to be able to be on campus for welcome week when they come for the start of the semester. And there it's not going to be super detrimental that you missed that one day program and we're going to talk about the two big things that we usually accomplish and how will help tackle those the alternate date. So sometimes students are kind of coming.

Back from vacation or they had a conflict for the day that they were assigned, but they can come on another day. Absolutely, we want you to be able to connect with TCNJ at any point that week. If your schedules allowing it to be only guarantee that we can't make, is that your specific academic school will have somebody available to talk to you. If you come on an alternate day, each school is all hands on deck that day and each Department does like a welcome for the students that are there. So if I have let's say a finance major who can't come on Thursday.

But they can come on Tuesday. They're going to be able to get 90% of everything else that we were offering in terms of programming and those types of pieces, but I can't guarantee at this point that he or she would be able to sit down and get a full in depth welcome from the finance Department. That said, I always take the list of students who RSVP that they're coming on an alternate date, and I give those to the academic side of the house a week before, and if their schedules can permit it, and they're here and they have the time, they'll usually reach out to the student or try to make themselves available for the alternate date students to.

Make that connection as well. So really the two big things that happen on campus orientation for the students is that they kind of get that schedule finalized, and I'm going to move into course registration next in a minute, but then they get to make a friend, and those are the two components that I've been thinking about. OK, how do we? How do we get that component? Those components on line? If we have two? So again, just know that I have been thinking about this non stop the last couple weeks and we're going to do our best to just create recreate that experience in on line if we have to get to it at that point and we should know in the next couple of weeks on them.

So that's kind of your on campus. Some you know you're online and you're on campus orientation components. I did have a host of questions that came through yesterday and this morning regarding how classes work and course registration, so I'm going to spend a couple minutes next talking about that and keep the questions coming. I'm just going to take a peek down and it looks like all of you all good morning from Arizona. I didn't even see that part, so I am horrible. I had this cute idea. I said We're going to sit down. We're going to get a cup of coffee. It'll be nine o'clock in the morning. It'll be great, or at least for me. So 6:00 AM for you, wow.

Thank you for joining us and then I realized I don't have a TCJ mug.

I was mortified. This was two days ago. I can't go to the bookstore to get one now. I was like what am I going to do so I got the most New Jersey mug that I have just in the spirit of state pride here. So it's Ocean City, NJ for any of my South Jersey fans on here tonight, or anybody who's in general fan of the Jersey Shore. But I dug all through my kitchen and I do have a water bottle that the MBA program graciously gave me In addition to being a staff member here, I'm actually also a graduate student, so I have that lens which.

Has that really enhanced? how I can I can better support students in the role so will take a little coffee break here, but?

How's everybody doing? No way for me to tell, but I'm just going to keep going from there. Alright, um, OK, so thank you. So keep bringing those questions and these are looking great. So course registration. I'm going to start with my first year students 'cause the parents of my first year students because the process is a bit different for the transfer students. But I'm going to cover both. So the first semester worksheet we love acronyms Here at TCNJ, but the first semester worksheet are the FSW as we call it is going to be the most important thing.

Maybe that your son or daughter does well definitely when it comes to, of course is the most important action item that your student needs to do in that late May early June time frame and what the work she does is this we have. Oh I don't even know. 1700 plus first year students, hopefully joining us in the fall and we don't have the manpower in the capacity in the time to sit down and have a one on one with every single student say OK, what AP exams? Or did you plan on taking? Or did you take last year? And what are you interested in studying? And do you have a second? You know you're a major requires a second language so.

What are you interested in doing there? Have you taken a language in high school? Kind of all of those questions that we would be trying to get a sense of the bigger picture of academically where the student is aside from obviously the transcript, which is just one piece to it. We have this awesome on line comprehensive guide that is going to walk your student through what that conversation would look like so it is personalized for every major. If you're a student is coming in as a nursing major here at the college when they log in with their username and password, they're going to get the.

First semester worksheet that has been specifically made for nursing majors and it is going to walk them through step by step. All of the information that we need to collect to build the fall schedule for your student. We do pre registration. For every new student that comes in over the course of the summer, but that worksheet is huge in giving us the information that we need to be starting to place those students in classes. It's do they have about 2 weeks so that online orientation date of Tuesday May 26th?

Uh, that will the first Mr worksheet opens that day as well, and you have about 2 1/2 weeks to get that into us. It's going to ask all of those questions and then some. It's not the end all be all. Don't worry, you know there's an opportunity at orientation, whether that's online or in person to be able to validate that schedule and to make sure that that student feels comfortable with it. But that's how we're collecting this information and it is a huge tool, so that's going to be coming kind of 1st. The other thing that I was getting some questions about is placement testing and assessment.

So the office of records and registration puts together a really nice booklet E booklet that walks through. First of all, there's an awesome grid that says here's your major, and then this is if you need calculus, or if you need a second language. So first steps first. Our students read through that to get an idea of what their requirements are based on their major coming in, and then the rest of the information. It has information just about how you have to take. If you have to take the assessment. So criteria for those pieces, how you do so over the course of the summer. If you need too, it's really helpful tool.

Online orientation links them to it, but the office of records and registration will lay that out for the students and that will be available again in late May.

Some questions about AP scores, so I Google last night I said, are they doing AP because no, can't assume anything in this day and age right now and there was an article in the Washington Post last night that they are moving forward. I guess with APS not with IB testing, but with the APS in a very modified way. So I guess we'll see how that plays out, but if so long as they continue to do that, and even if your student took AP courses in sat for exams in May 2019, 1/2 test scores for that.

The most important thing for your student to do is make sure that College Board knows to send them to us. We will typically get the AP scores right around July 4th, so depending on when the holiday falls, it sometimes either day or two before or a day or two after, and what happens is that we pre register students. The reason that worksheet kind of shifting gears to more of a chronological timeline. That worksheet is due in the beginning of June. Our department's work feverishly throughout the course of June to get students pre registered and then we get these AP.

Or escorts typically in the beginning of July, and then we take the next week or two before on campus orientation to adjust schedules if need be.

That's kind of how that timeline works with the Peace Corps, but you don't want your student to be they're not going to be behind but it's a lot easier. If we get those AP scores when we do. The initial load in the beginning of July versus if the College Board doesn't send us. The scores for another week, two weeks. Three weeks after that, so it's going to be an important thing just to kind of touch base with your student on to make sure that we get those. I covered a little bit about pre registration were fast and furious. It'll be a little quiet like mid June June. I always get some parents who are like let's go down like it just seems to Wyatt. That's a good thing. That means everybody's got their heads down and we're moving through trying to get all all 1700 plus if you pre registered for them.

And then like I said, so during on campus orientation in July is when those students they have a big Department welcome. But then they also get the chance to kind of ask questions about their schedule if they have them. We don't have that many students who are making major changes to schedules at on campus orientation, but so if that's a situation where we can't meet on line, I imagine or in person I'm imagining that will just facilitate some of those conversations on line and that some stuff that we have to figure out on our end. If that's the case. But that's really kind of what we use is.

That final piece when I talk about building in a couple of minutes, we do orientation week of the 20th and then that last week in July is when that fall. Bill comes out and that's because the schedules were wrapped up at that point.

I'm just going to kind of scroll real quick. I do. I saw a question.

About um AP exam scores and what we accept or not. There is a beautiful legend on the records and registration website. If you actually just go to thetcnj.edu general search box and type in AP legend, it'll let you know which subject we need and what score that we will take over and let that credit would be for.

Let me just take a quick scroll and see if there's anything else pertaining to course registration. I can always come back.

Something it looks OK for right now. Alright, I'm switching gears real quick for our transfer students. Just a couple key things about that. Yes, we still pre register you the timelines slightly different and the process is slightly different because you're coming in with college credit. The most important thing you can do is have your official transcript sent to us ASAP soon as those fog spring grades come in from your previous institution to getting us a copy of that. The Office of records and registration. In addition to that placement booklet I referenced also puts down puts together a really nice.

The transfer ebook that walks you through slightly different process for how we're going to do course registration for you. So that's something that I find a lot of people glass over, and maybe you shouldn't, because it's really helpful information that probably answers about 80% of the questions your students going to have about that, so I would encourage them to keep an eye out for that and how their credits were evaluated. So if your transfer student has questions specifically about how their credits were transferred in yx came over is YY, this course may or may have not counted.

Those questions should go to their academic evaluate are so in our office of records and registration we have three amazing ladies who are split up. They split up all of the majors and those are the academic evaluators in that link that I have left that I put there in the slide is a link to be able to look that up. So if you're a business major finance major you can you know whoever that is, I think it's I think it's Esther. She would be your academic evaluator for that student and then others based on that so you can look them up and questions really with nuts and bolts of how your credits came over.

Transfer orientation in June or the communication that leads up to that. That's going to answer more of the questions about. I want to take this. do I have to take that more of the actual physical classes that your student would be taking in the fall semester and answering more of those pieces? So that's how it's a little bit different for the transfer side of things, but we're still doing most of the pre registration. And just to keep an eye ball out for your students, will get those types of things that are going to be coming from the office of records administration in May.

So a couple of things that are pseudo related to course registration, but I get these questions a lot over the summer and I just thought I would. Gosh what's the phrase and if the.

Nail on the head or something of that nature. Uh, I obviously need more caffeine. Um, to talk about just to kind of get them on your radar in to chat for a minute. And the first is advisors boodles of questions already about, well, who's my son or daughter's advisor? And how does that work. So we have a faculty based advising model here at the college. So every student is an assigned an advisor who is a faculty member in their Department that poses a bit of a challenge on the front end in the summer because our faculty, your 10 month employees, and they're not here on campus in July and August, which is.

The time when everybody has all the questions. So what will happen over the summer in your students transition is that typically it's going to be a Department chair or one of our 12 month employees in the Department who is helping your student navigate answering questions and navigating that process for questions they might have about their fall schedule. That person is probably not going to be their advisor in for the next four years, So what will happen? Or two or three years for my transfer students? 'cause the same applies for you so.

Typically the academic advisors, the faculty advisors will get assigned around the first week of class may be slightly before that, but over the summer it's typically the Department chair and some other of the 12 month employees who are helping out with it comes to get course registration information up and running.

That's a little bit about what you can expect about the advisor peace and your student will learn way more about that outside my purview of my kind of general baseline knowledge, but they'll start to learn a lot more about that when they get here and get up and running. The other thing I want to mention is the only nine seminars. This is mostly 099, my engineering families. It might be 095. I know some some schools get a little changing with the numbers, but every student who comes in in the fall semester is going to have some type of 09 related seminar that is going to cover more of the.

Bigger picture topics. I always have to chuckle a little bit at the student who reaches out now and says hey, I definitely want to double major next. How do I go about doing that now? And I'm always like.

Take a bathroom in it like you're not even here yet. So if you have a student who is anxious and knows they gotta plan, they want to double major. They want to pick up a minor here. They want to add this concentration, whatever that looks like. That information is coming. It's just going to be facilitated. Oftentimes through this 099 seminar in the fall semester, because it's a little bit more of the big picture stuff. They have enough that we have to have them to. Do, you know, in the next couple of months over the summer leading up to getting here that that's one of the things that we say it's coming. Just take a deep breath and you're going to get a lot more information about that in the fall.

Another thing is a multi year planning so the two 3 four year planning with things like study abroad, right? We encourage tons of students again. Hopefully that's still going to be a thing to take study abroad experiences or they know that they want to do internships or potentially a coop. All my education students that you know have student teaching is a component. There's a lot of questions about. Well, how does that all fit into kind of My 4 year plan or my two year plan in my 3 year plan, so that's a lot of some other information that gets really gets communicated through this 099 course in the fall semester that your students are going to be taking.

They also cover, you know, nuts and bolts, stuff that we don't want to bombard them with in in June and July. So Department policies and procedures, academic integrity modules they have to complete so kind of just all of those. It's like round two of the academic stuff that gets them here in kind of acclimated to the collagen in their transitions. So just know that those things are coming, but if your student has questions about any of those were not forgetting about it, it's just kind of there in that space to be covered by the 09 courses. They'll also do sometimes some of them.

Very so sometimes it's schoolwide, sometimes it's a Department wide and you know the content in those those owners will kind of shift a little bit too depending on the needs for that particular Department to communicate information too. So we just kind of some of the not necessarily related to how the fall classes are going to work, but more bigger. Picture as we get here into that first semester.

OK.

Are we doing on time? Not bad, the big one. So many questions about housing, so I spoke to my my colleague Tina. I don't know if I actually gave her like she was going to hopefully have on the call just to listen today um to get a sense of the questions and things, but I called her last night and I said that hey, they're asking tons of questions about housing and it's not new, right? We always get housing question. So what we decided to do? What was I'm going to talk a little bit about? Nuts and bolts, housing and how that works. And then the goal and I'll talk a little bit about this at the end with what we're offering it.

People there is going to be a residential education, housing specific web and R in mid to late April. We're still finalizing the date on that and the time that's going to bring on. Maybe some of our residents, directors, some of our community advisors. Those are equivalent to it like Erazor called with other institutions to give much more of an in depth look at what actually living on campus is like so you can get really excited and that will be open for parents and students. I think anybody can sit on that, so that's coming, but in the mean time I wanted to get you some nuts and bolts information to answer some of your preliminary questions. So our residence halls.

Those are links to all of them. We house by cohort where cohort model here at the college job all the first year students live together. All the sophomore students live together and then the juniors and seniors. That ought to live on campus live together as well in our upper class experience and all of our curriculum. An R programming and our support for the students on the floor is based around that and tweaked appropriately. As you move through the ranks, there those are all list of all of the residence halls and that link will get you to some of the room diagrams and the virtual tours in those types of things. I know that this is a big sticking point.

We're getting a lot of feedback on is that unfortunately you're not going to be able to get into see them one more time before, if we're able to still do an on campus orientation in July in residence Hall. Tours are a part of that, so fingers crossed it will be able to make that happen, but that will give you at least some information about how residential housing, residential education, housing on our campus works. I can confirm I don't know if we got any questions about this. I've been kind of chatting or kind of glancing, but our honors cohort this year for the first year students, they will be housed in Norsworthy this year, so.

That was similar to last year. Sometimes it alternates between Centennial and Norsworthy, but the honors cohort. If your student is an honor student coming in, they will be housed in Norsworthy this year, so I can confirm that.

That Jeff two was really funny. 'cause Newman was like trying to like squeeze. It just made me laugh when I was looking it up last night. So sad alright the application process so this is again very different depending on the cohort. For our first year students it opens with on line orientation that Tuesday May 26th and you have about 3 weeks to get that application in some things about the application you need your TCNJ email address to do that. And when you go through your not selecting a building a specific building but you are there is a a questionnaire on there from a roommate perspective.

We asked about I. I think it's four or five questions we. This is not a 500 question quiz to try to find your perfect best friend forever in the residence Hall. There's a lot of data out there that just says that that doesn't work, so we ask a couple of basic questions so that we're trying not to pair totally opposite's, right? So one of them I.

Are you guys? Are you a morning person or a night person? I am morning person. My roommate freshman year was a night person so that was fun but we made it work. You know, are you a clean person? Or maybe not so clean person. You know the coding pile grabs on the floor or whatever. You know those pieces. Are you allowed person? Do you like a lot of noise or are you more of a quiet person and you need that space? So a couple of very basic personality things so that we can have that to kind of guide how we assign roommates and that will be a part of the application process. So you have to apply for housing if you want to live on campus by.

June 16th, about 90 to 95%. Think it's a little bit closer to 95% of our first year students live on campus, so we are, uh, mainly residential campus and most students are living on the roommate situation how we were requesting roommates this year is different because of some changes that we have on campus. So what will happen with the roommates? You still have to get your housing application in by the 16th of June, but you have an additional four to five weeks to submit a request for specific rooms.

So that roommate request doesn't come until deadline is Sunday, July 26, so they have a little over a month if they want to wait.

Big *** trick with this big caveats I I go back and forth, uhm?

If they know somebody and they're really good friends with them and tell them not to live with that person freshman year, they still want to be friends with that person. If they are thinking, oh, I have to like find a roommate. You don't go Rando and then there on social media, and they're making snap judgments about people based on photos that they do. The whole is not a good situation, and most I don't have the data, but I know that there's a lot of expectation. If you think you're going to be coming in with somebody specifically and not having that happen and having more problems than if you just came in kind of random so.

I always encourage students to just roll the dice. Maybe it's going to end up being your best friend and even know it, but if they have somebody that they are very specifically, hell bent on rooming with, they have an option to request that roommate and our housing Department is going to do the very best job. And you know, as hard as possible to make sure that those roommates are, roommate requests are granted. I don't know that they can 100% guarantee it all the time, but they're going to do the very best. So the roommate situation is a little bit different with the request piece, you have an additional couple of weeks.

There's a chance that if we have on campus orientation and you know your student, find somebody else that they kind of hit it off with or they've been talking too and they get to know and they think they would prefer to do that over a random roommate you know they're going to have. Sometimes. Do that after orientation so that happens on Tuesday, the 20th July 26th at Sunday. Excuse me and then they get notified of their assignment, and there remain on Thursday the 30th, just a couple days later. So that whole week, that last week in July we are busy getting everybody placed in doing them, and then the application link.

Is on your online orientation, so that's a little bit about how the first year process is going to go for roommates. The transfer students is very different, so you are going to come as soon as you have your TCNJ email address. Whenever that day is your kind of flipped in, matriculate eed in our system and that generates you're teasing Gmail address. But every day that is that week of May 4th, as soon as you have that 24 hours later, you can apply for housing through the housing website and you're actually going to get that link in some information specifically from the housing Department, because that will happen before your online orientation launch.

Is so general rule of thumb the earlier you apply the increasing your chances of getting policed on housing transfer. Students are not guaranteed housing, and I know that's a huge sticking point for some of them it came up a whole bunch in my web and are with them on Tuesday. A whole lot of questions about that, so the earlier that they apply, the better their chances and they will be notified on a rolling basis. Starting on Tuesday, May 27th, so that will go throughout the course of the summer, but their timeline is a little bit ahead of the first year students, so just keep in mind on that and I'll take a look at here in a few minutes and see if we have any more specific questions about how the room.

GPS works I can share with you and this will be more information that that webinars going to be really helpful for a couple weeks because again, I kind of top line general information for everybody, but they're going to be able to get much more into the detail.

Every roommate they have, they work on a roommate agreement that they complete the first couple of weeks of the semester. That really kind of outlines expectations for their relationship being roommates, and they can talk a bit more in that you know our residents, directors for the first year areas will be on that call as well as some of our community advisors and they can talk a bit more in depth about the experience of living on campus. I will share with you parents little tidbit that we don't charge for laundry, so if they tell you.

Your student tells you off man. I ran out of money. I can't do wonder after being at home.

They lie and you can do it anyway if you want that little fun joke there.

OK.

Oh no, OK. This cutoff a little bit, but it will be included in the slide, uhm, and of course I had to add a little little Kramer when it comes to the questions about the tuition. The billing in the parking, so couple things to know about that you can find not only the current costs for the 1920 academic year, but also our costs over the past couple of years. In that archive link. That's all in our student accounts website. We don't set tuition and fee rates for the following upcoming academic year.

Until the board of Trustees meeting in July, that happens in the beginning of July, and then they set the rate and then three weeks later that end of July is when the Bills are going to go out to the students, so it's hard to predict what that's going to look like. But there is data on the website to kind of give you an idea. Generally of the increase, at least over the last couple of years. I know that we try to keep that is obviously as low as possible, just recognizing that it's higher education in general is an investment. I think that you know. Usually I would guess, eyeballing or somewhere between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2%, but that'll at least give you some.

Information to try to plan 'cause I did get a handful of questions from parents that they would you know they were really just trying to get a sense of cost for that. Also, the billing calendar. There's a couple different ways to pay the bill and there's different deadlines so that link under billing calendar will give you a link to what that look like for this year. Again, just to give you an idea of what you can anticipate for the 2021 academic year, the Office of student accounts also does a session at on campus orientation in July that we would replicate on line.

If we had to move to that format so there's more information at July. That's one of the most popular sessions. We get almost all the parents who come to orientation or sitting in on that one just to kind of get a sense of what's coming down in terms of those pieces from a financial standpoint. Lastly, I'm pretty sure I gave the link. I can't see it, but Oh yes, I can. I'm the link to parking so we did get some questions about parking, especially from our commuter families where their students are commuting to campus in this would be applicable to our first year commuter students but also any transfer families that are on the call this morning that.

That would be that would be commuting, so parking services they can apply for a parking decal through their website. It's typically available in the beginning of August, so again, not something you can do now, but a little bit of time and we'll get to that towards the later part of the summer. First, your students are not residential students or not, unfortunately, not allowed to have cars on campus, so that's not an option for them. They do have, uh, oh gosh, some type of like one time thing like they can.

Have it for a week or two weeks a semester for like an emergency or if they need it for a couple days they can have it here for one off things, but for the entire academic year. Unfortunately, our first year students, residential students or not, first your computer students yes and then transfer students commuting or transfer students that are upperclassmen living on campus. You can apply and you can have. You can get that decal in the rates and more information about that process is coming but can also be found on that parking services website.

OK, Um Oh Alright, so let's get to the top five tips. I love this thing I was putting it together last night and I just um. I think there's a helpful well. Hopefully you can. Tell me later. So the first it was first I tell I talk about this all the time to new students. If I say anything. This is the thing that's on repeat over and over and over again, you have to check your TC to email address daily and this is a hard thing for them to get a grasp oven, especially when they have all these other components of their lives there going on.

But they will miss stuff if they don't check it everyday. Like I said in the beginning, I know that about 80 to 90% of the information I know of that that goes to the students weather through me or through my colleagues and other offices. But there is in especially on the academic side of the house, I don't know which Department is going to email your student X or Y. And you know, not Privy to every single communication they're going to get. And that's really important. It's really important for the first year students in case.

I'll give you a perfect example. I don't maybe not perfect. I don't remember which Department in the school of science I want to say chemistry, but don't hold me on that one of the department's over there.

When we get the AP scores in July, they need student feedback on what they would like to do with the credit that might. There might be a scenario for a particular student where they would like some information from the student before automatically moving them into X or keeping them and why they're going to email that student. and I I'm not Privy to that, but if your students not checking their email every day and they missed that, that's where you get into a little bit of an issue. I always get a student who calls on like June 28th and they're like what? Let's orientation. What have I been doing?

All of the communication from the college goes to their TCNJ email address. Your email address used on your application. Maybe admissions will still email you there, but everybody else is going through the TCNJ email and they will miss stuff and I don't want that to happen. So to the extent that you can be like a check for TCNJ email today, it's going to go a long way to helping them be less overwhelmed. During this process, two memorize that pause ID number. That is their best friend forever now, so make sure they get that six digit one lock down because they're going to need it first. So much stuff going forward just to have it now.

Instead later three, uhm. Your journey is your journey and I should have said your students journey as your students journey. But this is it's so fascinating. Hopefully one of the reasons that, uhm, that people choose TCNJ and I hear this all the time and I hope that it's still true and it will be for some of you out there that are listening in your, hopefully picking us in part because we offer a personalized collaborative and rigorous education, right? Your student is going to have the opportunity to craft a specific and unique.

Really awesome for two 3 four year experience depending on which way they go that has opportunities to them that may not exist at other larger schools. And part of that starts now, right? So a lot of times it will happen in June is I get to students in the same major and I have one student who reaches out and says well that persons in this class and this schedule and they've got this going on and XY and Z and why am I not seeing that two were the same?

You're not the same. Your journey is your journey, so take a deep breath and just know that you're you have so much support here at the college bird, the experience that you want to have and your process your students process through the summer is not going to look the same and they shouldn't. If you're picking a school like us that really focuses on crafting the best schedule in the best experience in giving each student the opportunity to do some really amazing things here, so keep that in mind. If your student starts to get antsy as the summer goes on for.

Managing those summer expectations, so hopefully and I always make this statement then I hope it's still true. Uhm, for some of us this summer have planned vacations and stuff, or people too. We go on vacation. We, you know our faculty, they do statical the research in their leading study abroad trips normally and they do with lots of academic related things in the summer when they're kind of off from the academic year. There's so much cool things that people are doing and I think what happens is that in this age and it's actually maybe now where you're expecting an immediate response or.

Email back in an hour, and XY and Z. That kind of gets lost, so think this plug is just manage the expectations of maybe you, but also your student an hey like it might be a couple days till you get an email back from us. That doesn't mean that we forgot. You certainly doesn't mean we forgot you. It's just that there's other things that we have going on in our lives as well. The other thing is that we're closed on Fridays all summer long, so if you send an email on Thursday night

Probably not going to hear back until at least Monday or Tuesday at the earliest as well. So we're in Monday to Thursday operation in terms of our energy savings plan in that way. So just some things to keep in mind as we as we navigate, and we're doing it. You know, these email communications and especially true. Again, if we're moving to all online, which we'll see how that goes and then the last one, just from a tip is I wrote down, embrace all the fields.

It it's a roller coaster and everybody is going. You know every student is going hopefully just to be so excited for this next chapter. Weather again your incoming first year student or a transfer student. Everybody is also going to be really nervous at some point in the process and that's all OK. And the thing that always breaks my heart a little bit about students coming in is that they think they're the only person who is going through it. And they're not. They're not even close, and we do so much training with my staff. My orientation leaders in my Griffins.

Just reminding students that it looks different for every student, but they're going to go through a roller coaster of emotions this next couple of months. It is made heightened and in some ways worse just because of the situation that we have right now with coronavirus and kind of the uncertainty of the world right now. In addition to kind of the uncertainty of this huge change. So just to kind of embrace it to sit in this space and just to kind of navigate in and overarching Leno.

Like an and this is if you take away anything from our little chat this morning, which was not really a chat because it was only one way. Although you guys have been sending great questions, you all have been sending great questions is just to know how much support your student has. I have two boys. Jamison's birthday is actually today. He will be 7. He's a first grader so becoming a first grade teacher has been super fun this week too and I have my son Kelly is 18 months old and when I talk to parents.

They just always say, Oh my gosh, she just goes so fast and I know like I'm just sitting here today thinking he's 7 like weird that's close to 10, right? and I know I'm going to blink and I'm going to be exactly in your shoes and when I get to that point I'm going to just want to make sure that the institution that they go to is one that they're going to. They're going to lookout for him away that I would hope so, right? That they're going to be people who are going to support him who are going to check in on him and who were going to who are going to make sure that, you know?

They can get their kind of supporting that environment for him to do all this growing in these next couple of years. That college is all about and I want you to know that there are my colleagues and the reason so many of us stay at TCNJ for so long. It's just because that's that's the feel, and it's a hard thing I know to do over on line, but I'm so proud to be an employee who works there and who gets to help students in the day today. But there that echoing that sentiment just lives and breathes in every corner of campus from.

The pricing and all the way down, and so I hope that you take away knowing that as well. So this was the part. Oh yes April happenings. Alright, so some things there's a lot more coming. So when we got into this boat we said OK and I they they kind of offered me. I kind of offered myself I said I'll be the Guinea pig so I will go first. So I did three webinars. This is my third one and we kind of got some of the kinks out technically and how that kind of works and a whole bunch of my colleagues are sending it on these webinars to get a feel for what they look like. So high to all of my TNT.

College there that are on the call this morning and there's a few out there, so hopefully the thought is Alright. They've seen this done and how does that look like within their Department and what they're a or our office and what they're able to do over the course of the next couple of weeks. 'cause we have lots of information to share, so more is coming. I can confirm a few things. One, there is going to be a virtual accepted students day website, so the call went out like hey, if you've got what's the normal content that you would try to be communicating to students in your presentations during accepted students day and let's collect all that and put that in a spot.

Where all of the students in the families can access that. So that is coming. I believe it's tentatively scheduled for like next Saturday, but this coming up coming week we're going to be pulling all that information together. They also really important thing about that pertaining to my area is that I I snuck back to campus and recorded right before they gotta be closed down an I stood in front of about 320 seat Mayo concert Hall. Not a single seat in the house was taken. It was completely empty and I did my.

Presentation that I would normally give you for accepted students day there were some of this information. I covered was here was in there, but then there was other information as well so that video will be included and a couple of other departments in schools were able to get in, but not everybody was able to again because the situation was changing drastically so frequently so videos will be on their info. Graphics any type of literature that we can kind of throw in PowerPoint presentation. So we're in the process of collecting all of that to create this kind of virtual accepted students day so keep an eye ball.

Out for for that announcement that is going to include I get a lot of questions about our my student or am I going to be able to connect with the academic side of the house? The goal is I don't think every single department's going to do it, but the goal is that they're working through right now. What that could look like to connect is that look like a video. Does that look like a zoom session? Does that look like a webinar or emails? I don't know, but every Department academic Department is right now is trying to figure out what's the best way to do that so that we can get you our families. The information that you need to be making that decision or to be confirming that this is.

She just write that freedom and then a couple of other things pertaining to like other offices across campus student affairs. I was just gonna call the other day and I said OK, what else could we be doing? So I've done these webinars. I am going to run the first to your student panel again so I did that one a week and a half ago. We had over 300 students login to watch that one and it was basically just my orientation leaders chatting about their TC experience. We're going to run that again with four different TCNJ students on my staff.

And that will be Tuesday, April 21st, starting at 8:00 o'clock, but the other two pieces and I referenced this before the residential education in housing Department is going to do some type of webinars session that's going to get into a little bit more of the experiences. And really, the benefits of that residential curriculum and experience. The other one that we're going to try to push forward, and I have to connect with some of my colleagues on this next week to firm up a date and a time is at our thrive at. This should be an at threat at TCNJ panel. We do this during on Campus Orientation. An essentially it's really addressing health and Wellness. That's the focus. We have an entire portfolio of.

Offices that support your student in a host of different ways. So having our our AVP for Health and Wellness on there are Dean of students on their Susie whose are apparent family coordinator. Person will be on their talk a little bit about family and parents support, so we're going to pull together a couple of.

Those colleagues to do an informational panel that's going to address some of those components to the transition. 'cause we recognize that you know. I mean again, big change, but even bigger change this year with everything going on. So keep an eye out. Keep an eye out for those were going to be communicating as those opportunities become available and just know that again, we're on. I think every institutions in the same boat we're just trying to move through and find the best way to get you information so that you're armed with making a good decision. You're the best decision for your family, your culture with that choice.

This is the part, if any. Do you have any Seinfeld fans out there where the he was driving through the fire flames were going up and I was like hey how's everybody doing? Typically when I'm when I'm doing this in person and I look around the room, I get a lot of faces that are like.

Um, hopefully I didn't leave you too overwhelmed and more so that we were able to get some of those broader questions answered for you. Let me just kind of chat back and see if there were any essential ones that were coming up again only an hour, so there was only so much that we could that we could cover in this timeframe. Oh, I will say too. So questions about so? My contact information is here.

I'm going to get huge bombardment of emails, so thank you in advance for your patience and Grace as we move through them next week. But if you, that's my website and the email for just student transitions at tcnj.edu. So if you have more specific questions today pertaining to your your situation to answer, I'm more than happy to respond back to those. I will say save yourself some time if their questions are pertaining to.

Merit scholarship or scholarship in general, if they're pertaining to honors program deadlines, those are all admissions questions, so you're going to want to email, add miss at Tcnj.edu Admi S at the same data ado questions about financial aid Wolf. I have a lot of information about TCNJ and I know a lot, but that that's an area that I have very top line info and it's typically one that you have very specific questions about. Their website is OSA, so office of student financial assistance to sfa@tcnj.edu.

All of your financial aid questions can go directly to them. Housing questions can go to housing@tcnj.edu, but again, if you don't really know where to go for some of those pieces, you can use me as as a catchall for that may be more than happy to connect you with a colleague who can help get that answer.

Yeah, I think, Oh Gosh, it's 1001 my goodness. Oh I went so fast. Alright um so I guess I'll just say uh to to closeout one I I live in a big space of gratitude. Thank you so much for taking an hour this morning to join us and to listen to me and hopefully you got, you know some of your questions answered or maybe feel a little bit better but the process. But you know again, the goal. There's a lot more to come. We want to help you just make the best decision for your family and we really hope that for that decision is that your TCNJ. We think we could be a good fit for a lot of the students that were admitted so.

Thank you again for joining us, and if there's anything that my office can do to support, please don't hesitate to reach out. Alright, thank you. Have a great rest of your day.