Student
Volunteers for Conversations
with Professors
Volunteer for Conversations with Professors
CwP
Verification (only for students identified to assist with Conversations
with Professor by a participating faculty member)
About Conversations with Professors
This program, which debuted in 1997, is designed to promote a conversation
between a faculty member and a group of students in his or her college about
the roles of students and faculty in the university setting. It is an ideal
opportunity to help new students understand their roles as student learners
and to express faculty expectations for student engagement. Georgia
Southern does a great job moving students into the residence hall. We
need to help them move more smoothly into the classroom, to let them know
that Georgia Southern has expectations that all students should
meet in order to be successful.
Logistics
The main session of Conversations with Professors will take place on Sunday,
August 16, from 3:30 until 4:45 p.m. We will also hold smaller
sessions on June 21 and January 10 for new students starting in Term B and
Spring. Students will be assigned to a section and enrolled at summer
the SOAR session by their academic college. Faculty who volunteer to
assist will will be assigned to a section of students composed of students
in his or her college. Sections will cap at between 20-30.
Student "Conversations Assistants" (CAs)
Each Conversation has a student
"Conversations Assistant" (CA). CAs are integral parts of the
Conversations experience for several reasons. They can handle the
administrative tasks of taking roll, for instance. But more
substantively, their presence in the Conversation is meant to model the
types of productive relationships faculty and students should develop.
Faculty survey respondents from 2008 were overwhelmingly
positive about the experience of working with an assistant.
The exact nature of the relationship between the
faculty member and CA differs for each pairing. Communication is
essential to effective working relationships, and for this reason, FYE
encourages faculty and CAs to meet prior to the session to discuss roles and
responsibilities. Some faculty will identify their own CA; others have
the FYE assign a potential match.
Because of feedback from last year, this year, CAs will
begin Conversations stationed at the entrances of buildings, wearing
Conversations with Professors T-shirts (sponsored by the Phi Eta Sigma, the
first-year honor society) and directing students to rooms (each CA will have
a building roster).
Conversation Objectives
Because the Conversations are only 75 minutes long, the specific goals
are modest. When leaving their Conversations
with Professors session, students should:
-
Understand how to approach the first week of classes, such as the
importance of:
- The syllabus and knowing how to read one;
- Settling on a course schedule no later than the last day of drop/add
(August 20 this Fall semester) and preferably well before then;
- Appreciate some basic tenets of the student-faculty
relationship, such as:
-
Most faculty care deeply that students learn the material in their
classes and will go to great lengths to help them master the
material, provided that they demonstrate that they are willing to
apply themselves and work hard; and,
-
Like students, individual faculty members differ in
their rules and expectations. It's the student's responsibility to
know what each of their professors expects (see that syllabus!).
More important than these specific goals may be the
larger one of setting a strong academic tone early in the semester, and
there are many different ways to promote this tone. Because faculty
often indicated that student questions were the most important aspect to
their Conversations in 2008, we strongly encourage faculty to incorporate
opportunities for students to ask questions into their sessions.
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