The Undergraduate Advising System

The Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering Undergraduate Advising System consists of four essential elements:

• Academic Records
• Academic Advisors
• Advising Tools
• You

Academic records are kept at the Campus, College and Department levels. While the records maintained at each location share some things in common, they differ in detail, purpose, and use. Records are maintained in both hardcopy and computer-database form. The most common is one’s academic history. It is the basis for review and advice relating to curriculum and graduation requirements.

Advisors are another key component. Each student in IESE is paired with an academic advisor. A different advisor may be requested based on preference or if an advisor is no longer available. Advisors play a key role in offering advice on course selections, choice of Secondary Fields and electives, the honors program (if applicable), career choice, graduate school, and answering questions about these and other matters. In addition, interacting with your advisor in person and by email as time passes will set the stage for potential recommendations and letters of reference for awards, scholarships, internships, permanent jobs, and graduate school.

Significant advising tools complement the student-advisor relationship. Foremost of these is the Course-Planning Consultant (CPC), a web-based program developed for students in the GE undergraduate curriculum (to be developed for the IE curriculum in the near future). This planning tool evaluates next-term course selections for current prerequisite-course compliance and suggests courses that should be taken next in so-called critical paths in order to minimize or avoid graduation delays. The CPC is a virtually fail-safe way of insuring that no costly mistakes are made in planning future courses. In practice, it relieves students and advisors of the onus of interpreting sometimes difficult-to-digest information from various sources (occasionally, hardcopy information is outdated) and has been field-proven to have helped prevent costly delays. Because of the recognized value of the CPC, its use is expected of all GE students.

Other advising tools in the GE arsenal include the CPC’s Information Survey that collects and transfers Secondary Field declarations, intended graduation dates and grad-school plans to the College and Departmental databases; on-line and hardcopy petition and request forms; graduation-countdown spreadsheets; and a unique Departmental database that enables advisors and students to submit keyword searches that can produce valuable information such as students who have declared a specific Secondary Field of interest, the courses used in previously petitioned Customized Secondary Fields, and so on.

You, the student, are the critical element of the IESE Advising System. All of the above ingredients remain as dormant and untapped resources unless you act by being proactive in all these areas, by checking and verifying your records, by meeting with your advisor, by using the CPC and related tools. By not being proactive in all these areas, you risk being controlled by events rather than taking control of your destiny. It’s your choice ... make the wise one!