Monday Roundup
Happy Monday, Deac families. Today’s Daily Deac is going to be like buckshot – a little bit of everything all over the place.
Weather: know that there are many parts of the country dealing with frigid weather – and Winston-Salem had been among them until today, when it is finally starting to be a little warmer. It had been in the teens and twenties here, but I am buoyed to know that it could reach the 50s midweek.
Sorority and Fraternity Recruitment: sorority recruitment for women begins on Thursday of this week; am working on updating my annual post about that process, so stay tuned. Men’s fraternity recruitment begins January 18. If you have a son going through recruitment, the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life now has a webinar about about the process on their web page (when you click the link, it takes you to a page where you need to click Playback to get it started). I encourage you to tune in to this webinar so you can hear from my colleague Betsy Adams, who is the Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life. Side note: I hear a lot from Daily Deacers with sons that they want a more detailed description of the fraternity process. The men’s process is a lot less structured than the women’s and the individual chapters are not obliged to talk about how they make decisions about who to take or not take, which makes it very hard to give the same kind of details on how the process unfolds. Please know Betsy A. and I work together very comprehensively to try and provide you with as much information as we can!
Schedule questions: we’ve been getting a fair number of questions from families who have students who want to make tweaks to their spring 2018 class schedules, or who are on wait lists and want to know how to get off those. The wait list is an automated process. Students on a wait list are assigned a number – the person with 1 is the first person on the wait list to be offered a seat if it opens. Wait listed students need to check their WFU email regularly for notice of being offered a seat – and if they are offered a seat, they have to act promptly. If your students have questions, they should see the Registration How To’s from the Registrar’s web site; if they still have questions after reviewing this info, students can contact the Registrar’s office. I tell my advisees what we used to do when I was in school, which was if they don’t get off the wait list, you can try to show up for the first day of class and see if the faculty member will offer them a seat. Not a guarantee that it will happen, but worth a try. Also note that there is a LOT of dropping and adding that happens the first few days of class. Many students make schedule changes. So your Deac can keep a close eye on WIN and class enrollments to see if seats come open in other classes (even if they are not on the wait list). The Office of Academic Advising also frequently runs an “Open Course Report” when classes begin, showing courses with seats available. Your Deacs can check the OAA website to see if they run one close to the start of classes (there is a mid-Dec version out there now).
Student Health Service: I have also been getting a few questions about how students can get in to see our excellent medical staff at the Student Health Service. The quick and easy way is for students to access the Student Health Portal and make an appointment online; see the top right of their web page. In the vein of Stop, Drop, and Roll, I would stress that it is best for students to make their own appointments.
Provocative read: in the Stop. Drop, and Roll vein, the New York Times The Sweet Spot advice column had a parent of grown children write in to say “I want to cut my kids off financially. Does that make me mean?” This article makes some of the same points we make with Stop, Drop, and Roll about how letting your kids struggle and figure things out on their own helps build the skills they need to be productive adults, and helps them build resilience.
Finally – pure, unadulterated joy: Our soccer standout Jon Bakero won the MAC Hermann Trophy this past Friday night as the nation’s best collegiate soccer player. This is huge deal, of course. And made even sweeter by the fact that a Deac has won the MAC Hermann two years in a row (Ian Harkes won last year). Congratulations to Jon, as well as the whole team and coaching staff, for continuing to make us all so proud.