A MONTHLY NEWSLETTER AS A SUPPLEMENTAL ADVISING TOOL FOR A LARGE DEPARTMENT

A monthly departmental newsletter with a mentoring focus can be an effective means to communicate information to students in a large department. An advising newsletter was begun in one of the biology departments at University of Colorado at Boulder, a department with approximately 800 majors. The newsletter was in a print format rather than sent to students via email. Students were voicing their frustration at the number of emails they were receiving from the university and admitted that they were not even reading the ones sent from faculty. With such large numbers of students and limited face-to-face contact with individuals, I decided to compile important department information, supplemented by campus and career information, in a monthly newsletter that was available for students to pick up.

The first column on the first page of each issue is titled “B³ – Beyond Biology at Boulder.” This column profiles a professional with an undergraduate degree in biology that has entered a field students may not be considering or have even heard about, such as aquatic forensic entomology or natural history filmmaking. Immediately the issue becomes a tool that gives students a way to explore major-related career fields. The remainder of each six-page issue is filled with seminar announcements, registration reminders, course information, employment/internship listings, and descriptions of sessions held through the career services office on campus.

A survey was completed at the end of the first semester of implementation. Despite a low number of students responding to the survey (~6%), all of the students wanted the print newsletter continued into the next semester. The majority of students found the newsletter a valuable addition to their advising, a “place for good information to be consolidated” and “fun to read.” Student suggestions included adding career profiles of department alumni and more employment information.

It is always a challenge to find the most effective method to communicate important and helpful information to students. The level of the challenge increases with an increasing number of students in a department. Student responses for this particular department indicated that email should not be the sole means of communication to students. The addition of a print departmental newsletter that contains a strong advising and career mentoring component can serve as a valuable supplement to faculty mentoring and can effectively circulate information to students.