Committee Members From This Past Year

• Jacquelyn Abeyta (Co-Chair)
• Gabriel Peña (Co-Chair)
• Amy Schuster (Member)
• Sonja Wall (Member)

Vacancies you will have in F23/W24:

2 Positions (1 Chair)

During the past year, how did the committee work positively impact your advising skills?

This year we started out thinking about the purpose of the technology committee and how we can be effective moving forward and added information to the Tech Committee page. Now that the website is created and requires minimal upkeep, we wanted to find next steps to improve advising at GVSU. Our conversations turned to the use of texting through EAB Navigate and finding ways to incorporate this. Throughout the year we connected with advising center directors, the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Navigate leadership to put together a policy about how we can effectively use texting to connect with students. We are excited to announce that the texting feature through Navigate will be operational for professional advisors this summer.

What accomplishments did your committee achieve during this past academic year? Projects and initiatives worked on?

Our biggest accomplishment is pushing forward the activation of texting as tool for advisors to use within Navigate. We believe this will create for a great new way for advisors to connect with students who they are unable to reach via email or phone calls. The creation of a texting policy was also a learning experience to really think about the different ways texting could be used but also consider the ways that it may cause problems. For instance, texting is a much more casual way of communication with a different expectation for how quickly responses should come, so this was something important to consider. We also wanted to make sure the policy reflected best practices so that texting wasn’t abused and ultimately because something else that students ignored.

What work will you carry over that was unfinished to the next academic year?

Carrying over into next year, there will be some continued work looking at the texting policy and how it is working and how it might be open to more advisors at GVSU. There has also been some discussion about other websites on campus (Transfer Equivalency) as well as other best practices for the current technology we have (Slate, Navigate) as well as other programs/software that might be helpful to advisors here.

What benefits would advisors gain by joining your committee for F23/W24

One of the primary benefits that advisors can look to gain is the ability to regularly connect with advisors from across the university. Being able to connect and share practices from different offices helps make sure that the recommendations we push forward are with all advisers in mind. Joining this committee will also give advisors the opportunity to expand and grow technology for advising at the university. We know best practices are always changing and new programs/software are plentiful, so how can they impact advising at GVSU? There is also a lot of experience to gain within CMS and website building as this committee will work to help the LAAN website become a resource for all advisors at GVSU.