Despite the winter 2018 semester having only just began, Grand Valley State University officials insist that it is never too early to start thinking about 2018-19 academic registration, which begins the week of March 19.

With March approaching, the GVSU Dean of Students Office is collaborating with the Student Academic Success Center, GVSU Housing and Residence Life, and advisers from the different GVSU colleges to encourage students to begin to think about registration. During the months of January and February, advising sessions will be held in the Holton-Hooker Learning and Living Center Multipurpose Room for first-year and transfer students on registration basics, understanding myPath and other general advising information.

Liz Chase, special projects coordinator for student success and retention at the Dean of Students Office, believes that the advising sessions will be beneficial for any student who chooses to attend. She also added that the sessions are meant to be relaxed for anyone wishing to learn more about registration.

“They’re going to be really informal,” Chase said. “Students can just drop in whenever. We have times on (schedule), but really we’re going to be running our presentation on loop.”

Chase noted that the purpose behind the sessions is to have students start focusing on registration as well as their future.  

“Typically, students don’t think about what classes they’re going to take until registration opens,” she said. “That whole time (during registration week), they’re going to see their academic adviser, when in reality, they should be seeing their adviser now and talking about and thinking about that—those classes—now so they’re prepared when it opens. 

“This is sort of a way for us to encourage students to go see their adviser early and get those registration basics down so when they go to registration there’s no confusion.”

Each advising session will feature an adviser from a different GVSU college. An email containing the full schedule of dates and advisers will be sent out to GVSU students on Friday, Jan. 12. 

Chase encourages GVSU students to keep in touch with their personal advisers in addition to staying on top of registration.

“It’s very important,” she said. “Class sequences change, students change their mind about majors, so it’s always important to keep in touch with their academic adviser.”

Because of the volatility of graduation requirements, students are often left uninformed of impactful changes to their major. Staying in touch with an academic adviser can serve to counter that.

“Even if it’s just once a semester, just to check in and make sure they’re on the right path,” Chase said. “Another thing that students run in to, it comes to their senior year and they didn’t know about some sort of class that they were supposed to take, and so it’s going to extend their graduation rate. In order to avoid that, staying in touch with your adviser, making sure you’re getting all those gen eds out of the way and those specific program requirements out of the way so that you do graduate on time.”

Registration for the 2018-19 academic year opens on Monday, March 19. Students can begin registering for classes based on the number of credits they will have at the end of the winter 2018 semester.

The first advising session will take place Monday, Jan. 22, at 4 p.m. An adviser from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will be present. Those interested in learning more about the events can email Chase at [email protected].