Gator News

GatorCast Ep. 2: Academic Planning with Allison Warner

By College Relations, Media Services and the Office of the President, January 23, 2019

Episode Resources

Episode Transcript:

President Johnson: Welcome to Green River College's GatorCast, the official podcast at Green River College. This is Suzanne Johnson speaking to you today, president at the college, and today, before we jump into our podcast on academic planning, there is a special and important event coming up very soon at Green River College that every student at this college should have on their calendar, and it is called Advising Day. It is January 30th from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and I'm joined with Allison Warner, who's our director of advising and career center here at the college. She's our guest today on the podcast that you're about to listen to about academic planning. Allison, tell me about Advising Day. 

Allison Warner: Thank you, thank you so much. Yes, Advising Day is coming up in a couple weeks. This is a quarterly event for all students to attend. We have it fall, winter, and spring quarters. This is an opportunity for students to take a pause and have a chance to meet with their faculty or staff advisor, as well as to be connected to the resources on campus that can assist them in accomplishing their goals. Advising Day is, again, nine to six. From nine to three, it'll be in the student union building, and then from three to six, we're gonna be colocated together in the Career and Advising Center, which is in the student affairs building. 

President Johnson: So, what students should be planning to come? 

Allison Warner: I think every student should come... 

President Johnson: Every student should be coming! 

Allison Warner: Every student! There is something for everyone, even if you know what classes you're gonna take next quarter, this is an opportunity for you to meet with an advisor or faculty in an area of interest and learn either more about a program that you might be exploring, or sit down and write out your academic plan for your program. 

President Johnson:  So, now that we're on that, an academic plan, if you don't know what that means, stay tuned to the podcast, because we're gonna be talking about academic plans. But since you brought this up, in terms of advising, and you just mentioned even if you have your classes planned out for next term, let's talk a little bit about advising, because I've come to know that many students believe that advising is picking out what classes you should be taking the next term or next semester, or what classes they're taking for that year. Newsflash, out there! That's really not what advising is about. Yes, you can double check and make sure you've got the right classes or learn what courses you should take based on what you wanna study, but Allison, can you say a little bit about what advising is really about? 

Allison Warner: Yeah, it's a small part of it, is that registration piece. The big picture and the major resource that advising can provide for students is identifying what they wanna do, helping to identify what their academic and career goals are, and then helping them to map out a plan for how they're gonna get there. Advisors can be mentors, they can be sources of referrals to other services on campus. They can help to assist students with just daily navigation issues within and outside the classroom, like where to go for tutoring or academic assistance. But again, also big picture stuff, helping students to identify why they're here and where they're gonna go. 

President Johnson: Holy cow, so advising everybody is life planning. 

Allison Warner: It's life planning! 

President Johnson: And helps answer questions about who you are, where you wanna go, where you're going currently, and how are you gonna get there, so, listen up, Green River College students! Go, Gators! Advising Day, January 30th, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Student union from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and from three to six, in the first floor of student affairs at the career and advising center. January 30th, put it on your calendars. I'll be tweeting that out. You can follow me @GRCPresJohnson. Stay tuned for our podcast on academic planning. Have a great day. We're gonna start a whole series of podcasts all about student success and completion, retention. That's what these topics are all about, and I have with me today our director of advising here at Green River College, and that is Allison Warner. She's sitting across from me drinking her coffee, ready to have a conversation. We're gonna be talking about academic planning and ho, boy, that's a big title, big heading, so there's a lot to cover here. But Allison, welcome to the podcast. 

Allison Warner: Thank you, thank you for inviting me. 

President Johnson: Yeah, I'm so glad you were able to come. How about we start this conversation and tell everybody a little bit more about yourself. How long have you been at Green River, how'd you get here, what's your story? 

Allison Warner: Well, I've been at Green River, this'll be my 15th year, I'm proud to say, and from the moment I came to campus 15 years ago for an interview, I knew this was home. This was a place I wanted to work. 

President Johnson: What made it feel that way? 

Allison Warner: You know, honestly, it was the trees. It was environment, and then I got to know some of the people in my interview, and I just, it felt like this was where I wanted to be. I didn't originally plan to go into advising. I actually started off in a completely different academic area. 

President Johnson: Well, let's talk a little bit about that, 'cause we're gonna be talking about academic planning today. Tell me your story, what's your path to Green River? 

Allison Warner:  Well, when I started out in the University of Washington, I started off trying to go into primatology, and... 

President Johnson: Primatology? 

Allison Warner: Yes, I was interested in animal behavior. 

President Johnson: Any particular animals? 

Allison Warner: Primates. 

President Johnson: Primates, chimpanzees, gorilla?  

Allison Warner: Specifically lesser apes. I was into the siamangs. They are in the ape family, but more specifically, the lesser ape family. So, I pursued that academic pathway and. 

President Johnson: You were gonna study primatology. 

Allison Warner: Yeah, I took some classes, and I went to the zoo and worked at the zoo for a while, and worked at the... 

President Johnson: Which zoo? 

Allison Warner: The Woodland Park Zoo. 

President Johnson: Where is that? 

Allison Warner: That's in Seattle, so I got to work with the primates there. 

President Johnson: Sorry, everybody, you can tell I'm not originally from this area. I'm still learning my bearings, here. 

Allison Warner: And then, the University of Washington also has a primate lab, so I got to work with some of the monkeys there as well. 

President Johnson: Wow, wonderful, wonderful. And so, did you ultimately get a degree in primatology? 

Allison Warner: No, my degree was in psychology, but Udub has a primate, animal behavior pathway you can choose from. 

President Johnson: Similar background as I have. 

Allison Warner: Yeah. But going into that profession, I thought, you know, there's a lot of aspects of that that would not necessarily be applicable to my goals as wanting to have a nine-to-five job, but wanting to stay put and raise a family. I didn't really think going to Indonesia and living there for the next 10 years was going to allow me the kind of lifestyle I wanted, which was just to be local and stay local, and help people. 

President Johnson: Yeah, so, then what happened next? 

Allison Warner: I got a job at a college working in a temp agency and tried a lot of different things. I actually had four jobs before I one day decided I needed to go back to graduate school and pursue something in education. I knew I wanted to help people, and I think a lot of people feel that way. They know they have a desire to be in a profession that's in a helping profession, so I was lucky enough to find a program at Seattle University. I started off in special education. I wanted to go back and work in K-12. I worked in the Kent school district for a while as the school psych assistant, and I realized that my passion is helping students getting into college and pursuing college, and getting into a career that is fulfilling and provides them with the life that they desire to have. College became, higher education became my passion after that point. 

President Johnson: Thank you for sharing your story, because I think it's so important, especially for student listeners, I know we have lots of people listening to this podcast that are staff, faculty, people that are in our communities, they may or may not work at Green River College. But I know we also have a large number of student listeners, and I think many times student listeners think that, when they go into offices or they're in a classroom, that whoever they're looking at that works at a college, that that's what their job has always been. It's the job that they obviously planned to have, and they don't realize how many different careers people at a college might have had before they actually started working at a college, like you, or all the different things that they might have tried out before they had this particular job. So, for our student listeners out there who are wondering who you are, where you're going, where you wanna go, how you're gonna get there, life is an interesting journey, and it might take many, many different turns, none of them bad or negative. You might have several different careers in your life. And so, having the ability to be open to how you grow and develop and change as you get older is a really important part of living. You know, there actually have been a few students that have asked, I thought they were joking, but they actually were serious, and they said, "How do you become a college president?" That's a topic for a whole other podcast, I'm sure, but they were surprised to find out all the different things I had done before I was a college president, and the fact that I wasn't really aiming to be one was kind of a surprise. Things kind of happen to you in life, as well as you make them happen for yourself. Everybody, when you're in the career and advising offices, which are located where? 

Allison Warner: It's located in the student affairs building. We're on the first floor, right adjacent to the main lobby. 

President Johnson: We're here today to talk about academic planning. So, what is that? 

Allison Warner: Oh, it's such a big topic, but I think it's one of the most important actions a student can take upon starting college. Academic planning is the process of really creating a map, a pathway for getting from start to finish. It's the process of mapping out your classes, sequencing them in the order that they are required to be taken, but it's ultimately it's starting with what is the end goal, starting with what the end goal is, and working your way backwards. That makes sense. 

President Johnson: Sure, so an end goal might be transferring to another four-year college or university after completing an Associates degree, a two-year degree, or an end goal might be that they're taking, the student might be taking specific kinds of courses and then transferring before they complete a degree. Is that the kind of end goal that you're talking about? 

Allison Warner: Could be a degree, a certificate, going on, taking prerequisites for another college. When you are starting the academic planning process, it is important to think about what the end goal is for you. What is it you're trying to accomplish, here? 

President Johnson: Why are you here? 

Allison Warner: Why are you here. 

President Johnson: What's brought you to Green River? So, when do you start your academic planning? What's the right time to start? 

Allison Warner: From the very beginning, though it's gonna be after you probably register for your first quarter classes, around that time, and you can even start prior to that. We encourage students, and we invite them to come and meet with us during their first couple quarters at Green River. We encourage them to meet with their advisor either in the current advising office or their faculty advisor. Students that are exploratory, we want to sit down with you and help guide you towards the resources that can help you become more decided on your goals if you're undecided. Academic planning really starts with that goal, but it is a long-term process. You would sit down with your advisor and map out your classes, but just know that your plan changes and evolves, and so, even though you may start at the beginning, it's not the end after you leave that advising session. We encourage you to come back in throughout your journey and check on your plan, and make sure that you modify it as things change or life happens. 

President Johnson: Okay, so I've applied to college, and I've been admitted, means I've been accepted to come to Green River, and I come to, what do I do first? 

Allison Warner: For the onboarding process, when you first start at Green River, you get your first email from Green River inviting you and welcoming you to the college. In that email, you actually get a link in there to online orientation. That welcomes you to the different resources and services that are offered at Green River, and the process for becoming either more decided on your program or identifying your program and the requirements, but also... 

President Johnson: We've got at orientation, they would be talking with you or you'd be exploring different things in terms of what you might be studying or how to pick classes. 

Allison Warner: Yeah, the first step is the online orientation, and then after that, you finish that, you do your placement, and then you come in to meet with an advisor through the new student advising and registration process. 

President Johnson: Okay, so you do an online orientation, and then you come to campus and take placement tests? 

Allison Warner: Or you get your placement figured out by meeting with our Getting Started specialists. Not everyone has to take a placement test. Sometimes we can place off of transcripts, as well as other test scores from high school. 

President Johnson: And where our Getting Started people? 

Allison Warner: Thank you for asking. They are located also in the career and advising office in the first floor of the student affairs building. 

President Johnson: So I could, if I were a student, and for our listeners, if you're prospective Green River students, future Green River students, once you complete the orientation, you could pop up to campus, go into the career and advising center, and ask to meet with a Getting Started advisor. Is that the beginning of academic planning, at that meeting? 

Allison Warner: I would say yes. I would say, 'cause at that point, you're getting your foundation laid. So, depending on your placement, we'll determine where you start with your English and math classes, which is the start of the plan. Once you have that determined, then the rest of the classes can fall in place, 'cause really, the core of academic planning is mapping out your course sequence. What courses do you take and when, and how long is it gonna take you to finish whatever your goal is? 

President Johnson: Well, so, that becomes an interesting thing to explore. Academic planning is really about mapping out, making a schedule of the classes you're taking that term and all the terms to come. So, I guess, depending on whether you're here full-time or whether you're here part-time will determine how many terms you're going to have to be here to complete a degree or complete the courses you've come to take, or a certificate. Do all students who come to Green River, are they full-time students? 

Allison Warner: No, I mean, our students are full-time, they're part time. You take classes online, maybe take 'em in the evening, during the morning, perhaps some quarters you're gonna be part-time and some quarters you're gonna be full-time. That's important that when you're creating your academic plan, you're working this out with your advisor to determine what's the best schedule based on what you have going on in your life outside of the classroom. I often compare academic planning to going to the grocery store without a list. 

President Johnson: Well, that happens to me all the time.  

Allison Warner: I know, me too! 

President Johnson: I like to leave it on the counter after working on it for quite a long time, yeah. 

Allison Warner: So, you go there, and what happens to me is, my mind goes blank and I forget everything that I was supposed to purchase, and I end up purchasing half of what I thought I was supposed to get, and a whole bunch of what I didn't need. So, time and money, you spend a lot of time wandering the aisles buying things that you don't need, and you end up wasting a lot of money. 

President Johnson: 'Cause you buy things that you didn't need. 

Allison Warner: You didn't need, yeah, or things that looked good at the time, as one of my advisors call it, you shop with hungry eyes. You are going there, maybe impulsively buying things that you think you need at the moment. So, when you're creating an academic plan, there's a lot of similarities. You're making a plan so that you know what to buy. 

President Johnson: Because we offer hundreds of courses every term, so how do you know which ones to pick? 

Allison Warner: It can be kind of overwhelming, but the nice thing is that we do have so many choices, but knowing what choices to take for your goal is really important. We have a lot of courses that are sequential. They have to be taken in certain orders and creating your plan helps you...  

President Johnson: You need to take certain courses before others. 

Allison Warner: Prereqs before other courses. Some courses aren't offered every quarter, so knowing when they're offered and putting that into your plan so you know when to take it, and you take that opportunity when it's available, that's important as well. It really comes down to time and money. 

President Johnson: Well, okay. I like that analogy of the supermarket because there's so many things you can get at a grocery store, like being in a college campus. You look at our course offerings or course catalog each term, and it goes for pages and pages and pages. I think, when you said it can be overwhelming, absolutely is true. Sometimes when you have so many options, it can be overwhelming, and sometimes when people feel like making the choices are so hard, they might not make any choice. Right, so it sounds to me like academic planning is a key to a student's success, no matter whether you're a full-time student, part-time student, or even taking the occasional class. Let's talk about how academic planning can be helpful in your students' success. 

Allison Warner: Well, I think that, most importantly, it's time and money. You are able to map out your classes so you see how long it's gonna take and when you're gonna finish. Funding is wrapped around that because you need to be able to plan out how much you're funding, how much you get. If you're on financial aid, you get only so much funding allowance, nine full-time quarters. If you map out how many classes you need to take and how long that's gonna take you, it gives you an indication if you have enough funding that's gonna get you to the destination. 

President Johnson: We're gonna take a pause on that one. We are going to have a podcast on financial aid and funding, and there are many, many opportunities and options for students to help finance their education which allows for great flexibility in terms of how you can go about taking classes and how much time you have to complete classes. For any of you that just heard that whole funding topic, let's stay tuned, and upcoming podcasts in terms of financial aid and financial supports. But I'd like to circle back to this other question, right, because when you're thinking about planning classes, if I were a student out there, which I know so many of our students are thinking this, because I've heard students share this with me, They'll say, "I don't know what I wanna do. "If I don't know what I wanna do, "and if I haven't decided, "and I'm not able to make a decision right now "about what I wanna study, how do I plan?" 

Allison Warner: That's a great question. How do you plan when you don't know what the destination is yet? Well, certainly, you can't plan out your full degree, and we would want you to pause and take some time to explore career direction. We've got resources in the career and advising center to help you take some time to explore by taking some career assessments. We have a career advisor who is here to help interpret the career assessment, and we encourage that early on as well, and Josh will share that. The other thing I think is looking at another reason why academic planning is so critical is what we hate to hear in advising, but we do hear it, is students who come to us at the end, and they think they're done. They think they've finished with their entire program, their degree or certificate, and they're missing a class or two classes. They thought they had everything mapped out, they've been checking, and occasionally this happens. The student is not completed. Having a plan is a way to prevent that. It's a way to keep on track. We want students, again, to be progressing and being able to take the classes when they're offered in the sequence that they should be taken so that they don't miss anything. 

President Johnson: You know, I wanna emphasize what Allison has just shared out, that every term there are students that go to the advising center who believe that they are finished with their degree or they're about to finish up their degree, and they discover that they're missing something, or they took a course that might not have been the exact right course for what it was they were trying to accomplish, and they need to take an additional course. If there's a lesson to be learned today, everyone, every single student that is listening to this podcast, you have a faculty advisor. If you don't know who your faculty advisor is, Allison, how do students find out who their faculty advisor is? 

Allison Warner: Every student is assigned an advisor, and to look that information up, you go into the same webpage, you go into class registration. 

President Johnson: The class registration website, which is found at? 

Allison Warner: There's a quick links... 

President Johnson: On our greenriver.edu website, there's a quick links, top right corner. 

Allison Warner: You can pull that down and get into class registration, or, even more efficient. 

President Johnson: The class registration website, yeah. 

Allison Warner: At the bottom of the main page, there is another link at the very bottom in the green banner at the bottom. On there is a very helpful right column of several links that I'll reference later on, but My Advisor is the link that gets you to your assigned advisor. 

President Johnson: And of course, though, then there is the advising office, where every student can go as well, 'cause I know sometimes students will say, "Well, I know I have an advisor that's a faculty member, "but their office hours aren't at any times when I can meet, "they're not on campus when I'm on campus," and so on. So, what happens when that occurs? 

Allison Warner: We are available Monday through Friday. We do serve students when faculty aren't available, and we serve as partners in the faculty and professional advising. 

President Johnson: Advisors in our career advising center and the faculty at our college, they are partners in giving good advice and consistent information to all of you student listeners out there. So, the take away right now is, see an advisor. Let's back up in where we were. We were at the student is beginning, they're here now to register for their first term classes, and we have some students that know what they wanna study, but we have many other students that aren't sure what to study, and so, my question had been, I don't know what I wanna do yet, so how do I plan? Next to the career exploration and all of that, how does that student who's still not sure and they can do career exploration, how do you do your course planning, your academic planning, when you just wanna explore? 

Allison Warner: Well, I mean, certainly, we wanna give students the room and time to explore. That's part of the process, and we often tell students, if you can make a decision by the end of your first year, then you're probably, you're in a good place for being able to plan for either a university transfer, a transition into a career technical degree by your second year. If you need that time, three quarters typically is the max that you really should give yourself in choosing classes that are of interest to you. We typically do do first quarter, first year plans for students, for those that are exploratory, and those plans typically consist of finishing up your English and your math, which is usually a consistent requirement for most of our degrees. But also, taking classes that might be of interest to you. If you have funding, though, and you'll get more information in the funding podcast, but funding does determine what you can take, because you are limited to what is required for the degree that you select. Now, we typically do have, while we're working with students that are planning to transfer to a university, and they're in the exploratory process, they often choose the AA degrees, the degree in which they're gonna be working towards until they maybe change, if they do change, into science or business. They may end up finishing with AA degree, but the AA degree gives you the opportunity to explore.  

President Johnson: For students' funding that's being talked about, it's really referencing financial aid. The majority of our students who come to Green River have some degree of financial assistance, and the AA degree is an associate of arts degree that is what we call a general education degree. It has courses across a lot of different areas. Arts and humanities, and English, and math, and science, and social sciences, history, those areas of that sort. That's a degree that will transfer to all other universities and colleges in the state and out of this state. And so, one of the things that Allison's referencing in terms of funding centers on financial aid and how financial aid is applied to college courses. And so, for all of the students that are listening or people who know prospective students or current students that receive financial aid, check our greenriver.edu/gatorcast location on our website, and you will find the episode around financial aid 101 and financial literacy, and you'll get more details about that. An academic plan can be made whether a student knows what they wanna major in or study, or if they wanna remain an exploratory student while they're at Green River. They might decide what their major is once they get to their four-year school after Green River, if they're not here actually doing a four-year degree, 'cause we actually have four-year degrees here. 

Allison Warner: Yeah, we have four-year degrees, yes. 

President Johnson: We've been talking about the benefits of having a plan and how that helps for success. And of course, it helps with clarity and keeps us out of the grocery store buying things that we don't need or want, right, the time and money. But are there other benefits to having a plan in terms of success  

Allison Warner: Other than the logistical benefits of having the plan, having a roadmap, there's also motivational benefits as well.  

President Johnson: Tell me more about that. 

Allison Warner: Another analogy I would like to use is I often like to train for running races. 

President Johnson: A lesser-known fact, Allison Warner here is a marathon runner. 

Allison Warner: And so, when I am training, I have to create a plan for how much I'm gonna run and how many days. If I don't do that, I find two things happen. One, I cheat and I don't run. I procrastinate on my training, and two, I lose motivation. I find that I'm not excited about doing it. I not only skip my workouts, but I lose excitement.  

President Johnson: So, without an aim or a goal or a clear endpoint, you can lose motivation. 

Allison Warner: Yeah, and I see that with our students. We see our students that come in, they're in their second year, and if they're not quite sure why they're here, the second year, we see the burnout, and we wanna help students then get redirected to figuring out why they're here and why they are spending the time to pursue a higher education. And so, the earlier that you can be deliberate in taking the time to explore your direction, your career, and academic goals, the less likely you will lose motivation to continue and persist. 

President Johnson: Okay, so listen out there, all you students. Having clarity in terms of why you're here and what you wanna leave with is gonna help you with your motivation. We want you to stay until you complete. You've come here for a goal or a purpose. Help us help you meet that goal. Let's talk about, you know, what tools are available for students to create a plan. 

Allison Warner: The Ed Plan tool, which many of you may have already seen... 

President Johnson: Is it on our website? 

Allison Warner: It's on our website, and it is on the same location as where students can look up, again, their My Advisor and class registrations. 

President Johnson: On their class registration website

Allison Warner: There's a helpful, there's a... 

President Johnson: What's it called, ed planning? 

Allison Warner: It's called Ed Plan, Ed Plan, yeah. 

President Johnson: Click on that. 

Allison Warner: Click on that, and that gets you to an online tool that students have access to, as well as your faculty or staff advisors. The nice thing about using that tool is that is shared between you and your advisor.  

President Johnson: What is it, like, a chart that you fill out? 

Allison Warner: It's just basically a plan with multiple quarters, and you can select from classes that are gonna be offered that quarter. Fill that into your plan, and you can 

President Johnson: So you're creating your class schedule for that term, and then for a year, you can do this? 

Allison Warner: You can do this for multiple years. 

President Johnson: Oh, for the whole time you're here, you can do an Ed Plan. 

Allison Warner: From start to finish, yeah. And I can tell you, the students I work with when we do the plan, that has been one of the, I think, biggest, students seem to walk away with a lot of relief once they leave with that plan. We build that into all of our advising sessions, is that if you don't have a plan, you need to create it. But Ed Plan is the platform we use in order to be able to create that and share that across the other advising staff 

President Johnson: This is really great. And I love the word relief, because when any of us are faced with lots of choices, and we don't know what the right thing to do is, we don't know what the right choice is, we can feel stressed. We can have a lot of anxiety. What am I doing, and I doing the right thing? So, getting that Ed Plan, I'm gonna call it Ed as well, getting Ed all cleared up and straightened out probably is a very helpful tool. 

Allison Warner: Yeah, very helpful tool! You know, and before you get to Ed Plan, I wanna back up, because using the degree audit is really should be your first step. Ed Plan helps you put in the classes that you know you need to take. Well, how do you know what you need? Well, on the same website for class registration on that helpful tools column, there is another link called degree audit. Degree audit is a way to track your progress towards any of our degrees or certificates. 

President Johnson: These are college and university terminology concepts, here. Degree would be an AA or an AAS, right, two-year degrees. Then we have audit. 

Allison Warner: It's a way to check your progress. 

President Johnson: So, it's like a checklist? 

Allison Warner: It's a checklist, it plugs in classes you've either registered for or have already taken into the requirements for any of our degrees. 

President Johnson: Oh, so your Ed Plan is a part of your degree audit, so your Ed Plan for a term would fit into that degree audit, and your degree audit is what's monitoring what you've accomplished and what you've got scheduled to do next. 

Allison Warner: The Ed Plan is you mapping out the classes you know you need to take, which are visible on the degree audit tool. Once you complete the classes, you can see that the classes fitting into the requirement on the degree audit, and it checks off that you've completed it. 

President Johnson: So this is keeping track of what you've done, what you're doing right now, what you still need to get done, so that you can leave with what you wanna, with why you came here in the first place. 

Allison Warner: Right, stay on track. 

President Johnson: If there's a student out there listening right now and they say, "I don't have an Ed Plan," what do you have to say to them? 

Allison Warner: I would say come in and see us, or see your advisor. Find out who your advisor is, and if you don't have an advisor, if you haven't yet been assigned one, then come and see us in the career and advising center. We will meet with you and get you started.  

President Johnson: How do I make an appointment? 

Allison Warner: Oh, thank you, that's another good question. They can call us either at the mainline for the career and advising center. 

President Johnson: What's that number? 

Allison Warner: It is 253-833-9111, extension 2641. 

President Johnson: So they can call, can they contact you via email as well? 

Allison Warner: They do, we have an email address. It's called, it's a little bit harder, but it's beadvised, so, B-E-A-D-V-I-S-E-D, beadvised@greenriver.edu

 President Johnson: So they can go on to that email address and shoot an email over. Can you drop in 

Allison Warner: You can drop in. We have drop-in hours Monday and Tuesday evenings from four to six, but you can drop in at any time and make an appointment in person as well, and we do have, depending on availability, we may have some same-day appointments available for students as well. 

President Johnson: That's really helpful to know. Allison, if you had three pieces of advice to give to our listeners today, what three pieces of advice would you have for our Green River students who are listening, and anyone considering becoming part of our Green River College family 

Allison Warner: I would say the first piece of advice would be, to spend some time exploring what you wanna do. Even if you think you have a degree goal in mind, it's okay to pause and take advantage of some of the career assessments and career exploratory resources we have at Green River College. Taking that time will help you, then, to create an academic plan. Come and see your advisor is my second piece of advice. Meet with your advisor, create the academic plan, and check your degree audit every quarter before and after you register for your classes. Being aware of how much you have left to complete and staying on track is really important. I would say even after your first year, don't hesitate to come back in and see your advisor, even if you think you have everything figured out, 'cause things change, things happen, and your advisor's here to be a part of your journey and to help you out. 

President Johnson: Right, and in fact, in the first year, we've been focusing on what happens in the first term or first year in terms of academic planning and getting a plan. For all of our student listeners out there, we're gonna have an episode about transfer, and you're gonna hear from me and others that are being interviewed that are gonna tell you, once you have 45 credits, you need to be back in that advising center, because that's when you start talking about transfer. There's never going to be a term that you should not be coming to visit that career and advising center, or visiting your faculty advisor. Every term, there should be a conversation with somebody either in that advising center or your faculty advisor in terms of monitoring where you've been, where you are, and where you're going. So, with that, everybody, register, subscribe to these GatorCasts. Go to greenriver.edu/gatorcast. I wanna thank Allison Warner, our director of advising services here at Green River College for being with us today. Stay tuned to future podcasts, and again, you will be able to find additional resources for this episode called Academic Planning at our greenriver.edu/gatorcast. This is Suzanne Johnson. We'll catch you next time. 

Allison Warner:  Thank you. 

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