Advisors Academy
UNC Greensboro is committed to the professional development of advisors across campus. The role of faculty advisors and professional advisors is critical to the success of our students. The Advisors’ Academy is designed to provide a variety of onboarding, professional development opportunities, and tools to support the members of our advising community.
For questions or suggestions about the Advisors’ Academy, please email Dana Saunders, Assistant Dean for Advising and Student Success, at dfsaunde@uncg.edu
COMING SOON! These online modules will introduce newly hired employees with advising responsibilities to the technology, resources, and policies advisors need to know in order to best support their students. Modules will be accessible via Canvas, UNCG’s learning management platform, and will be accessible at any time for a refresher as needed.
The Students First Office, UNCG’s one-stop-shop for advising support, maintains helpful advising resources to assist advisors and students at various stages of the advising and course registration process.
The University Registrar’s Office (URO) publishes a number of resources each academic year that are essential for all academic advisors:
- UNCG Catalog
- Transfer Equivalency Course Search
- Registration Calendar, Timeline, and Windows
- URO Advisor Information
Below are quick links to the university policies most commonly referenced by academic advisors when working with students.
- FERPA at UNCG
- Financial Aid Policy
- Majors, Minors, Double Majors, and Simultaneous Degrees Policy
- Repeat Courses and Grade Replacement Policy
- Transfer Credit Policies
- Military Call-Up Policy
- Course Withdrawal Policy
- Academic Standing Policy
UNCG’s advising community relies on a number of technology tools and platforms in their daily work with students. In some cases, access to these platforms is automatically granted, while others may require a more formal request and/or training. Contact the director in your school or college advising center or the director of the Students First Office if you have questions about your access to the platforms below.
- Starfish is the preferred scheduling and notes management system for the majority of academic advisors and advising centers at UNCG. Starfish can also be used to monitor your assigned advisees’ academic performance based on the flags, kudos, and referrals raised by students’ course instructors. More information on Starfish for advisors can be found here.
- Degree Works is the technology platform that provides personalized degree evaluation check-lists for all undergraduate students. Advisors can access the Degree Works evaluations for their assigned students at any time via UNCGenie, and these are critical tools for ensuring accurate and efficient advising for course registration. Review the Degree Works instruction guides published by the University Registrar’s Office for more information.
- NEW! Schedule Hero is UNCG's scheduling platform that allows students to easily enter the courses they need, automatically generate schedule options that avoid time conflicts, and register for the upcoming term. Academic advisors can also request access to the Schedule Hero Administrative Dashboard, which includes additional tools that allow you to suggest or require specific courses, or register students for courses on their behalf.
- Banner Student is the information system that UNCG uses to track all student records that are FERPA-protected. This includes grades, academic history, and degree programs. Banner is regularly used by professional advisors, but less commonly for faculty advisors. Faculty and students more commonly access Banner Student information via UNCGenie.
- ARGOS is UNCG’s official institutional reporting tool. It is used by faculty, staff, and administrators in many advising centers and university departments to access and extract information from various databases in a report format. It is often used by advisors to access advising codes, course schedules, section enrollments, or student data summaries.
- UNCG’s GPA Calculator is a very helpful tool for advisors and students alike when they are trying to project or predict a GPA calculation before grades have been earned or an academic policy (like Grade Replacement) has been applied. This tool is particularly useful when working with students who are trying to achieve a specific GPA for academic recovery, secondary admission, or graduate school purposes.
These dialogues focus on topics relevant to advisors at UNCG. Facilitators from across campus share resources, tips, and information to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our work. The Coffee & Conversation series takes place September-May, from 8:30-10:00 am on their scheduled dates.
Check back soon for the complete Fall 2022 schedule and information on how to register for upcoming events.
The University offers other training opportunities through the Office of Human Resources and the Dean of Students Office. Specific training opportunities through the Office of Human Resources can be found here. The Dean of Students Office offers training such as:
NEW! Question. Persuade. Refer. (QPR): This 45 minute self-paced module training is designed to equip you with the ability to recognize suicidal thoughts and behaviors, help you develop strategies to intervene, and learn where to refer someone in crisis. This training is currently available thanks to a generous grant. Help UNCG reach our institutional goal of 2000 QPR trained Spartans!
Ask, Listen, Refer: This 20 minute, online suicide prevention tool is designed to train non-clinical personnel (faculty, staff, and students) on suicide risk detection, intervention, and referral. The tutorial offers suggested dialogues and focuses on these three critical steps; Ask, Listen, Refer.
UNCG Cares: This training, presented by the Dean of Students Office, teaches faculty and staff how to recognize and support students in distress. Participants will learn about how to recognize signs of distress, strategies for outreach to students, and how to make effective referrals to campus resources.
SafeZone: Facilitated by the Office of Intercultural Engagement, SafeZone training introduces participants to the unique challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ community and encourages active allyship in identifying ways to support the UNCG LGBTQ+ community on-campus.