Navigating the Academic Landscape: A Guide to UNCG's New Student Portal Features

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) is dedicated to ensuring student success by offering a range of programs and services designed to support both personal and academic growth. To facilitate this, UNCG provides a comprehensive suite of online tools and resources accessible through its student portal, aimed at streamlining administrative processes, enhancing communication, and fostering a supportive learning environment. This article explores the key features of the UNCG student portal, highlighting how they empower students to make the most of their educational journey.

Streamlining Student Business

UNC Greensboro is committed to making the "business of being a student" - registration, billing, scholarships, and other similar processes - easy for students and families to navigate. Tina McEntire, vice chancellor for enrollment management, emphasizes that these processes should not become obstacles that cause stress or hinder students' progress to graduation.

Centralized Hub for Student Business

Undergraduate students now have access to a new centralized hub where they can find up-to-date information on various aspects of student life. This includes:

Paying bills
Applying for and viewing financial aid
Registering for classes
Keeping records updated
Preparing for graduation

Innovative Registration Tool

UNCG offers a new, innovative registration tool designed to provide students with a faster and easier experience. This tool automatically generates the best possible schedule based on students’ desired classes and timing preferences. It considers not only the classes needed but also other obligations and time commitments, such as jobs and extracurricular activities.

Key features of the registration tool include:

Viewing all possible schedule options
Comparing different schedules to find the best choices
Sharing links to schedules with advisors
Saving favorite schedules to a shopping cart for easy registration later

Academic Advising and Support

UNCG provides a robust network of academic advising and support services to guide students throughout their academic careers. These services are designed to help students explore their interests, choose a major, and stay on track for graduation.

Comprehensive Advising Services

College of Arts and Sciences Advising Center (CASA): Advises all first-year majors in the College of Arts and Sciences. After earning at least 30 credit hours, CASA advisees are assigned to faculty advisors in their majors.
Lloyd International Honors College (LIHC): Advises incoming first-year students at SOAR and during a dedicated Honors College orientation. LIHC also provides advising for major national and international scholarships and fellowships.
Undergraduate Student Services Office: Coordinates advising for all business majors in the Bryan School.
School of Education’s Office of Student Success: Advises students majoring in IDEAS, elementary, middle grades, special education, and information science majors during SOAR.
School of Health and Human Sciences (HHS): A team of faculty members and professional advisors in HHS advise undergraduate students during SOAR.
College of Visual & Performing Arts: All first-year students are advised by the CVPA Student Success Team.
School of Nursing’s Office of Undergraduate Advising: Provides academic advising to all freshmen pre-nursing majors during the first year.
Students First Office (SFO): Provides academic advising for all Exploratory (Undecided) Majors until they have declared and been officially admitted to a major.

Students First Office (SFO)

The Students First Office (SFO) plays a crucial role in guiding students, particularly those who are undecided about their major. In SFO, academic advising is viewed as an educational partnership where students and advisors collaborate to achieve learning outcomes, promote academic success, and map out steps toward personal, educational, and career goals.

Students meet with their SFO advisor twice each semester:

Once during the first 6-8 weeks of the term
Again during the traditional advising & registration period

The SFO also coordinates intervention processes across various academic and administrative units to identify the best strategies for students facing academic, social, or financial challenges. It serves as a centralized "Academic One-Stop-Shop," assisting students with academic advising, appeals, course overload requests, and graduation plan completion.

First-Year Experience Courses

All first-year students are required to take a MAC Foundations course during their first 30 hours on campus. These courses are designed to help ensure a successful transition to UNCG by exposing new students to academic tools, campus resources, personal development opportunities, and avenues for campus and community involvement. Research indicates that UNCG students who take these courses achieve higher GPAs and are generally more successful than those who do not.

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Declaring a Major

Students are required to declare a major by the time they have earned 60 credit hours. However, they are strongly encouraged to make a selection by 45 credit hours, with 30 credit hours being the ideal benchmark. This timeline is intended to minimize delays in degree completion. Students who have not yet selected a major will work with an academic advisor in the Students First Office until a major is declared.

Support Services and Resources

UNCG offers a wide array of support services and resources to help students succeed academically, personally, and professionally.

Academic Achievement Center (AAC)

The Academic Achievement Center (AAC) provides a range of academic support services, including:

Tutoring in many 100- and 200-level courses (weekly appointments and drop-in basis)
Supplemental Instruction
Academic Skills Workshops

All of the academic support services through the AAC are included in the cost of tuition.

Office of Accessibility Resources and Services (OARS)

The Office of Accessibility Resources and Services (OARS) supports students with disabilities. Students with conditions that impact a major life activity and may need accommodations should contact OARS.

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Communication Lab

The Communication Lab focuses on both speaking and writing, offering communication support through one-on-one and group sessions that emphasize dialogic feedback. Consulting sessions involve conversations about writing and speaking processes, promoting a collaborative, non-hierarchical approach.

Career & Professional Development (CPD)

The Career & Professional Development (CPD) provides individual and group support to students at all levels in their career development process. Services include:

Career and self-exploration
Identifying and participating in experiential learning opportunities
Graduate school decision-making and application process
Developing and maintaining professional networks
Preparing for the professional employment process

The CPD equips students with the information and tools needed to make well-informed career decisions.

Orientation and Registration

Spartan Orientation Advising and Registration (SOAR)

SOAR is required for all new first-year students, and all components of the program are mandatory. First-year students attend a 1.5-day program, and participants should not plan for outside activities during the program. SOAR activities such as small groups and Academic Advising cannot be requested, switched, or rescheduled.

While SOAR is optional for parents/family/guests, all new parents and families are invited and strongly encouraged to attend. A concurrent Family & Supporter SOAR program provides guests with information from staff, university administrators, and deans about how to support students toward graduation.

SOAR Accommodation

First Year Students will stay in one of our Residence Halls during June SOAR. Residence hall accommodations are not provided during January and August Orientation. Linens are NOT provided in any student rooms. Rooms are double occupancy rooms; each room is air-conditioned and has two twin xl beds. Participants should bring their own blanket, bed linens, and towels. In a suite-style double room, the bathroom consists of one toilet, one shower and two sinks. Families should arrange off-campus accommodations. Roommates will be assigned prior to checking-in on site.

If a student or guest require accessibility services such as a sign language interpreter, dietary needs, housing accommodations, or additional resources please be sure to indicate the needs in the appropriate fields during their SOAR reservation application. Any accommodation requests for SOAR need to be included on SOAR Reservation submissions. Any additional requests after this must be communicated at least 15 business days prior to the session and cannot be guaranteed. Free parking will be provided to all SOAR participants. In case of a University delay or closure due to inclement weather, Spartan Orientation Advising and Registration (SOAR) will be moved to a virtual format. In place of in-person SOAR, we will host live information sessions via Teams.

Technology Updates and Resources

UNCG continuously updates its technology resources to provide students with the best possible learning environment.

TracCloud

All UNCG students can access TracCloud using their normal UNCG Single-Sign-On credentials, as long as they are enrolled in at least one course during the active semester. Any active UNCG faculty can access TracCloud using their UNCG credentials. Only staff who are affiliated with a program or service using TracCloud will be able to sign into and use TracCloud. Community members, students at other institutions (including high schools, etc.), i.e., those who do not have a UNCG SSO credential, will not be able to log into TracCloud.

Starfish

Starfish is UNCG’s Early Alert, student-success platform that helps students maintain good communication with their course instructors, advisors, and other faculty and staff to support their academic success. Instructors use Starfish to provide feedback about academic performance by raising flags, kudos, and referrals. These notifications are sent throughout the semester and do not indicate grades or permanent records. Students are encouraged to take action early and speak with the people in their success network if they receive a flag or referral. Many faculty and staff use Starfish for appointment scheduling.

Mobile App

With the UNCG Mobile app, students have a wealth of information and resources in the palm of their hand.

Recent Technology Updates

Over the past few months, technology vendors-like Canvas, Microsoft, and Adobe-have rolled out some great new features.

Reading just got a little easier! No more accidental quiz mishaps-this optional setting warns students if they try to open a quiz session in more than one window at the same time.
Bulk select files for download, move, or delete. Prefer the old view?
UNCG has moved to Microsoft’s OneDrive and Clipchamp for video storage, playback, and editing.

Ongoing Improvements and Initiatives

UNCG is committed to continuous improvement and has established several committees and initiatives focused on enhancing the student experience.

Student focus groups: Conduct usability testing to examine what information is harder to find and what sites are harder to navigate.
Student enrollment processes committee: Defines barriers to student progression and explores how to better communicate with students and enable technology to overcome those barriers.
New committees: Focused on the student experience of different populations across campus have also been established.

tags: #uncg #new #student #portal #features