PARENTS’ LEAGUE NEWSLETTER SPRING 2019
WHAT IS ADVISING? Nathan Vickers Academic Advising Coordinator, Department of Government The College of Liberal Arts employs nearly 45 professional academic advisors and dozens of peer advisors across our departments. And it is these staff and students that will be some of the first people your freshman meets at new student orientation. That’s a lot of people to help your incoming student! But you might ask yourself: What is academic advising these days and how does it work? Academic Advising is collaboration between a student and his/her advisor. In this partnership, advisors present students with university resources for academic, personal, and social development. Students will have the opportunity to realize their academic and personal goals as they share their ambitions and aspirations with their academic advisors. Unlike high school guidance counselors, academic advisors require students take the lead – in both seeking help and making decisions. Acting more as guides than pilots, academic advisors help students make sense of the university and opportunities around them, but don’t plot the course or write the prescription. Student Responsibilities Students are responsible for knowing their degree requirements, relevant policies and deadlines, and consulting with their advisors and the degree audit system. Students should • Be open to developing and clarifying personal values and goals. • Research department and college programs as well as courses. • Utilize campus resources to enhance academic experience and develop professional and personal goals. • Be respectful of others’ time: be on time, be prepared, and treat your advisor and other students the way you would wish to be treated. Advisor Responsibilities Academic advisors have a responsibility to uphold the integrity and value of the College’s degrees by maintaining the standards and policies of the University. This makes them one of the first people your students should turn to with questions or concerns about nearly any aspect of their University experience. Advisors will • Listen carefully and respect your students’ questions, concerns, and problems. • Collaborate with your students to develop their academic and personal goals and interests. • Assist your student in making academic decisions consistent with their interests, abilities, and goals. • Provide referrals and resources when appropriate. • Communicate core, college, major, minor, and overall degree requirements. In short, academic advisors work with your students to connect the dots of their education, make sense of expansive degree requirements, and help them realize the invaluable skills they are gaining with a Liberal Arts education.
SPEAKING THE SAME LANGUAGE Emily Nielsen Liberal Arts Public Affairs Jonathan Kaplan, an assistant professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, noticed an influx of Afghan refugees at his daughter’s elementary school, which inspired him to create the Refugee Student Mentor Program (RSMP) in December 2014.
In addition to having in-school volunteers, program director Katie Aslan says the RSMP also holds teacher training sessions on campus to help extend its reach into surrounding communities including in Pflugerville, where a large part of the refugee community has settled.
The RSMP is a partnership between UT Austin’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Austin Independent School District (AISD), providing K-12 students who are refugees from the Middle East and Central Asia with mentors while supplementing the AISD’s English as a second language (ESL) programs. The volunteers are graduate and undergraduate students of varying fluency who have taken language courses in Arabic, Persian, or have experience with Pashto or Dari.
Last year, the RSMP raised more than $10,000 on Hornraiser for transportation costs, which allowed the organization to serve more high-need Austin schools that aren’t accessible by bus, something crucial to many of the student mentors who often rely on public transit.
“This program has already evolved so much,”Aslan says.“I don’t think any of us imagined that a small program in one school would expand to so many schools in just three years. We have The mentors are proving to be valuable for refugee students been able to help so many more refugee students than we ever adjusting to new schools and a new country. Each week they imagined because of the enthusiasm of our students and a spend up to five hours with small groups of students, acting as great partnership with the school district. The flow of refugees tutors, translators, and social support, helping students with in the Austin area fluctuates so much, and we will continue to schoolwork, talking to them about their lives, and sometimes adapt to all of these changes in order to reach the students who eating lunch with them. need us the most.” Beginning with just 15 student volunteers, the program now has more than 50 and serves 21 AISD schools. Rama Hamarneh, a doctoral candidate in the Program for Comparative Literature, has been a coordinator for the RSMP since 2016 and has watched it flourish. “There are so many reasons the program is important, but I really appreciate the way that it links our volunteers to the Austin community,” Hamarneh says. “It is really easy to live in a bubble when you’re in school, whether you’re a graduate or undergraduate student, and the RSMP really allows UT students to volunteer and give back to their community, while also bettering their language skills.” Volunteers are immersed in the language they’re studying and learn dialects to which they wouldn't typically be exposed. Studying abroad can be difficult for students learning languages and dialects spoken in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, says Kaplan. Being able to interact weekly with refugees from those countries and being exposed to the varied vocabulary of younger speakers is extremely beneficial to the fluency of student mentors.
TIPS FOR NEW UT AUSTIN LIBERAL ARTS PARENTS Rachel Schermerhorn Administrative Associate, Student Division
Welcome to The University of Texas at Austin and the College of Liberal Arts! The strong foundation you have created these past 18 years will now accompany your student through a new journey. During this time of transition, many are focused on the student, but we want to acknowledge that while it’s a time of great excitement, there can also be some confusion and worry for many parents. Here are some tips, reminders, and fast facts to help you adjust! It’s tough, but it’s time to let go. You’ve worked hard for this moment! And as you know, college students are expected to manage their time and responsibilities independently. Students’ educational records are protected by The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), so unless you’re specifically granted access, their information is kept private. Encourage your students to stay in close contact with their advisors, but allow your students to take the reins and trust them to communicate necessary information with you. There are numerous resources available on campus to provide support to our students (advising, first-year programs, academic enrichment programs, health services) to give them the help they need to ensure they can succeed at UT! There are many opportunities and resources within Liberal Arts. As the largest community on campus (over 10,000 students!), Liberal Arts offers a wide variety of services to our students. For our freshmen, we offer courses specifically for first-year students to help them in their transition from a high schooler to a university student, and we have Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs) where students take several courses together with a cohort of 15-20 fellow freshmen. Students can also take part in mentorship programs, where a peer mentor and staff advisor help them navigate and connect with their new community. Liberal Arts students also have access to Liberal Arts Career Services, which provides a full range of career coaching, recruiting, and career education services. Explore these opportunities further at: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/student-affairs/ Liberal Arts offers a variety of scholarships. The search for scholarship opportunities doesn’t stop once you’ve been admitted! There are a variety of scholarships available specifically for Liberal Arts students, including those based on merit, need, research
opportunities, and more. This also goes for study abroad opportunities! Study abroad is a unique opportunity for students, and it’s easy to overlook scholarships while maneuvering the logistics of international study. Find more at: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/student-affairs/Scholarships-and-Awards/ Important dates and deadlines. While the responsibility is on your student to ensure they know important dates and deadlines, the academic calendar at UT is posted publicly every year. This allows you to have expectations for when your student will have breaks, finals, and other important dates to look out for. Here’s a preview for the upcoming fall 2019 semester: Aug 23 University residence halls open
Oct 28 – Nov 8 Registration for spring 2020 semester
Aug 28 First day of classes
Nov 27 – 30 Thanksgiving holiday break
Sep 4 Last day to add a class without dean’s office approval
Dec 9 Last class day
Sep 13 Last day to drop a class for a possible refund
Dec 12 – 14, 16 – 18 Final examinations
Oct 31 Last day a student may withdraw or drop a class. Last day a class may be changed to/from pass/fail.
Dec 19 University residency halls close at 9 a.m.
Details for next year’s schedule is at: https://registrar.utexas.edu/calendars/19-20
MEET ANN HUFF STEVENS: A Q&A WITH OUR NEXT DEAN
Ann Huff Stevens will begin as dean of the College of Liberal Arts on July 15, 2019. Stevens comes from the University of California, Davis, and is a Texas native with roots in Corpus Christi. She is a professor of economics who has served in a variety of leadership roles, including chair of the Department of Economics, chair of the Economics Graduate Program, interim dean of the Graduate School of Management, and founding director of the Center for Poverty Research. She earned an undergraduate degree from American University and a doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan. Prior to her work at UC Davis, she served as a faculty member at Rutgers University and Yale University. The value of a liberal arts education is often questioned in our society. How do you respond to skeptics? First, for individuals educated at a top university like UT, there’s abundant evidence that liberal arts graduates are successful in the labor market, despite what some skeptics claim. Second, beyond the narrow economic benefits to individuals, liberal arts education exposes students to a wide variety of literature, history, culture and types of analysis. At its best, it exposes students to a variety of ways of thinking and learning that help them understand and contribute to society. What do you hope liberal arts students get out of their education, and how can the liberal arts also benefit non-majors? I really want students to be comfortable with complexity, with having to ponder different approaches to solving problems, and with taking on new types of issues and challenges. For non-majors, the liberal arts can help broaden their education and let them think about new problems, or about old problems in new ways. This makes for graduates and citizens who can adapt to new challenges not just at work, but in their communities and in the world. Why are the liberal arts important to Texas communities and to the lives of Texans? Texas is a diverse state with a growing, dynamic economy and a rich history. Liberal arts scholarship and education prepares students to understand and learn from history and from a variety of cultures, and prepares them to be flexible thinkers. A strong
future for the state requires creative, flexible citizens and workers, and a vibrant set of liberal arts programs at UT has to be part of that future. How did growing up a Texan inform your life? Texans have always had their own unique ways and identity. When I first left Texas to attend college on the East Coast, to my surprise, as a Texan I was suddenly a bit exotic! That experience reminds me that family and geography and culture can affect us in ways we don’t really realize until we step away. How did you first become interested in researching the connections between poverty and health? Microeconomists spend a lot of time trying to disentangle cause and effect. The relationship between poverty and health is a really challenging example of a case where cause and effect are difficult to separately identify. Poverty and related conditions can cause poor health, but poor health also reduces earnings opportunities. So, this area is both extremely important to policy discussions and a classic, and challenging, problem in economics. What is your proudest accomplishment? Conceiving of and launching the Center for Poverty Research at UC Davis. It taught me how to really learn from other disciplines and work across different fields. That exposure made my own research better and, I think, offered the same advantage to lots of my colleagues and students. The community of faculty and students at the center will, I know, continue to produce great research and mentoring in years to come. What are the essentials for a dean to be successful? That’s probably a pretty long list! I’d start, though, with a combination of passion for thinking about the big picture to advance the college’s mission, and an ability to attend to the details of advancing that mission every day. It’s also essential for a dean to really enjoy interacting with all parts of the college community — faculty, staff, alumni and students. How do you relax? I love to cook, and it’s relaxing because there’s a clear process with a definite outcome at the end — that doesn’t happen every day as a researcher. And, then I get to enjoy the food with family and friends. I also love reading about, and talking, and debating about politics and policy. I joke that one day I’d like to have a reality show where I cook a meal, and as I do it I give my thoughts on the week’s politics. Not sure anyone would want to watch, but I’d have a great time filming it.
“I am incredibly excited about coming to UT Austin and back to my home state of Texas. After working at some great institutions of higher education, it is truly an honor to join the College of Liberal Arts. I have always admired the breadth and depth of the scholarship and research in the liberal arts at UT, and the impact they have on students, the state and beyond." Ann Huff Stevens
CAREER SUPPORT: IN THE FIRST YEAR AND BEYOND GRADUATION Robert Vega Director, Liberal Arts Career Services New Liberal Arts Longhorns Your student is heading off to college, which might leave you wondering how they’ll spend their time in and out of the classroom. One thing is certain: they’ll be busy. Liberal Arts majors are highly engaged in student activities and leadership during their four years on campus: they join and lead student groups, mentor other students, work on campus, participate in community service, and conduct research. All while taking a full course load and exploring their intellectual interests. However, there are a few areas where they might need encouraging words and guidance from you: professional development, experiential learning, and career exploration. Our students’ passion for learning and experiences can often lead them to focus solely on their academics and student life, leaving a gap in career preparedness. To that end, many Liberal Arts students reach their senior year with fewer internships and job-related skills than many of their peers, making them less competitive in a highly selective job market. Below are a few ideas to help you help your student close that gap. • During the first year at UT, encourage them to register with Liberal Arts Career Services and visit a career coach for help converting their high school resume to a college resume. They can use their updated resume for student leadership, oncampus employment. and internship opportunities. They can register with career services here. (http://goo.gl/cUXwWu) • Review our four-year professional development timeline to help them consider goals and ideas for the first year through to their senior year here. (http://goo.gl/irfjea) • Learn about the value of a liberal arts education for careers, including the potential strengths and employment marketability your student can achieve, here. (http://goo.gl/2R17hP) • Encourage them to participate in internships (more than one). Liberal Arts Career Services can help strategize the types of internships that allow exploration of their career interests so that each experience is valuable and targeted. By participating in a number of internships, your student will have a clearer career goal, have an extensive professional skillset, be more job competitive, and have a larger professional network. • You may want to ask the “What are you going to do with your major?” question to learn about their post-graduation plans. Consider reframing the question to help your student respond in a more holistic way. The question might be better asked as: “What are you interested in, and what experiences do you need to help you get there?” This will empower your student to continue following their academic interests - which may or may not be directly related to a potential career outcome - while developing a professional portfolio of skills, experiences, and contacts. What does it mean when a career path is not direct? Unlike an accounting student who goes into accounting, you might have a philosophy student who goes into investment banking. The indirect career path is common and can be successful, as evidenced by the number of Fortune 500 business CEOs with a liberal arts background. • Is your student considering law school or graduate school? Liberal Arts Career Services also offers admissions coaching to help students consider their options, prepare application components, and develop an application timeline. Encourage your student to use these services as early as they identify an interest. Liberal Arts Career Services Regardless of where your student is in her academic career, from the new longhorn to the alum within one year of graduation, Liberal Arts Career Services is here to help. Explore our comprehensive services here. (http://goo.gl/bji7aV) And encourage your student to make a coaching appointment early – and often – here. (http://goo.gl/Lpzuwo)