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Hello everybody. Good evening and welcome to Understanding Your Major's Requirement
webinar for the Bachelor of Science and Turfgrass Science Degree. My name is Richard Brungard
and I'm the Academic Support Resource Coordinator for Penn State World Campus and I'm here this
evening with Shawna Culp and Rachael Belinda who'll be presenting. So Shawna and Rachael,
would you like to introduce yourselves?
Sure! Good evening everybody. We're so happy to see you all here so we can talk to you
about the Turfgrass Degree and the specifics that we like to advise on our students on.
My name is Shawna Culp and I'm one of the Academic Advisors for the Turfgrass Program.
Yes, and hello everybody, it is so good to see you here. I see some familiar names so
I've talked to a few of you in the last few days, which is great, so I'm glad you're here.
My name is Rachael Belinda. I'm also an Academic Advisor for the Turfgrass Program.
So this webinar is designed to help you better understand the requirements for this degree.
Rachael will spend the majority of the time helping you understand how to run and read
the degree audit for this major and to help you understand the requirements for this degree.
Shawna will spend a few minutes in the beginning of the webinar to discuss some important support
resources that are available to you here at World Campus, but let's start off by taking
a quick poll. [Pause] Okay. So go ahead and click on your screen I'm a new student at
Penn State and have not scheduled courses, or, I've already scheduled courses for the
next semester, or, I'm already taking courses at Penn State. So how many of you are brand
spanking new haven't scheduled yet, or you have scheduled, or you've been here before.
Okay. So it looks like, it looks like everybody here is new, brand new hasn't, haven't scheduled
yet or is just scheduled for your, for your first semester here at Penn State so that'll
give Rachael and Shawna a little bit of a sense of, better sense of who you are and
what your needs are. So, I'm going to turn it over to Shawna so she can find out a little
bit more about you.
Yeah! We always like to know a little bit about the people who come to our, to our webinars.
So, down in the chat box, tell us where you're from and let us know if you're working in
the turfgrass industry right now or not.
[ Silence ]
Just to let everybody know, your microphone features are not enabled for this, so the
chat box is really where you can put things in to, to let us know something. Alright.
South Bend, Indiana, not currently in the turf industry. Okay. How about the rest of
you?
[ Silence ]
Orlando. Very nice. You're probably really, really hot right now [laughing]. Minnesota.
Okay. And Birmingham, Alabama. Okay. [Pause] Wonderful! Well thank you so much for letting
us all know that.
So we're going to go ahead and take another quick poll and the question is how confident
are you that you understand the requirements for this degree. So go ahead and click on
there if you're very confident or, or just feeling confident. Maybe somewhere in between,
not so confident or you're not confident at all about the requirements for this degree.
So just take a, a second there and, and answer those. We've got four people. We need one
more.
Wow! I like those results.
So it looks like we have a fairly confident group this evening.
Yeah!
So that's good. So hopefully maybe we can make a few of you feel very confident by the,
by the end of the presentation.
Let's hope so. Welcome to Lou [inaudible], just got here. Alright. So this is Shawna
again. Let me just kind of go over the agenda for this evening quickly. We're going to go
over some resources that we have for our students, such as the Advising Syllabus, the Academic
Calendar, resources available for World Campus students, and even how you can get involved
and stay connected as an online student, because that's an important thing. Definitely. It
makes you feel more grounded and, and a little more connected with, with the school. Then
Rachael is actually going to spend most of our time tonight showing you how to run your
degree audit and understand the requirements for your degree. And she's also going to talk
about certificate programs that you may find interesting, as well. And then, we're going
to turn it back over to me and I'm going to show how to use the Schedule of Courses. So,
as we go through the presentation tonight, the chat box might disappear. Go ahead and
save your questions and when we get to the very last slide, you'll be able to type them
in there and Rachael and I will go back and forth and answer any questions that you might
have. [Pause] Alright. So, the Advising Syllabus is actually a document that we send to all
of our new students. It does the list the role of your advisors so you know what that
is. And it actually lists what you are responsible for as a student, as well as learning outcomes,
you should be achieving. It even lists, has a list of commonly used student resources.
[Pause] It's always important every single semester to mark down important dates for
this semester, such as, of course, when classes begin and the ending date. You also want to
know the late drop date and withdrawal deadlines, because the university really doesn't allow
any flexibility when it comes to those two things. It's really important to know how
to access the academic calendar. [Pause] The World Campus Help Desk is your tech support
for any type of course-related technology issue that you might have. In addition, we
do have tutoring available for World Campus students in math and writing, and then we
also offer tutoring in a few other select courses that you can see there, like STAT
200 and Accounting 211, Economics and Finance. Penn State does also have one of the largest
libraries in the nation and we've worked hard over the years to make sure that all of their
resources are available to you as an online learner. And it's very easy to navigate. Lastly,
Career Services is not just for when you graduate at the, you know, not, it's not just to use
at the end of your program when you're job hunting. It can help at the beginning of your
program if you want to help, if you want to explore majors that'll help meet your career
goals or even talk about where you might want to do an internship if that is required for
your degree. Finally, we really encourage you to get involved and get connected. We
have a lot of opportunities for you to do just that. The Penn State Blue and White Society
is actually the current student-side of the Alumni Association. It's a great way to be
able to put your name on, into the Alumni Association. We do have a, a national honor
society called Alpha-Sigma-Lambda, and students with a high GPA will be asked to join that.
It is just for adult learners, so it's kind of a cool deal. Penn State will pay your Alpha-Sigma-Lambda
dues and it's something that will look great on your resume. So, if your GPA ends up high
enough to get an invite, that's a good thing to go ahead and do. Then we really want you
to get connected with, with what's going on at Penn State and World Campus and even other
students through our student blog, which is a wonderful thing, it's called the Corner
of College and Allen, it's on the World Campus website. It's very easy to get to. We also
have Facebook page, Twitter page, and LinkedIn page, so we do have a pretty large community
for our World Campus students. There's lots of ways to get connected and, and stay informed
about what's going on.
Okay. Now we're going to go ahead and we're going to take another quick poll. And so this
is asking how do you choose to stay connected to Penn State World Campus? Do you do that
through Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, or is there some other method you use? Maybe
MySpace, if that's still there, Google Plus, or, I don't stay connected with social media,
so, if you're not one of those online social media type persons. So go ahead and, and click
that. So it looks like we have a variety. Which is good, you know. And for those of
you who, if you're not into the social media, definitely, like Shawna, go and check the
Corner of College and Allen student blog. It's on the main page of the World Campus
page and it really does give you a lot of really great information about what's going
on here at Penn State, what you need to know as a student, important upcoming date, and
then it gets a little bit into Penn State traditional history and culture, which is
kind of nice and helps you feel connected to the university and we also have student
blog [inaudible] who blog as well, so you really get a sense of, you know, what it's
like through another student's perspective.
Yeah, and you know, a lot of people don't know what the Corner of College and Allen
is, but it's actually the hub. It's the meeting of the university and the community of downtown,
so, you can see a picture of it on the blog. It's, it's just really [pause] it's kind of
a cool place in town. So, it's, it's really a great place to go and stay connected online.
Now we're going to take a look at the World Campus website and Shawna's going to show
some of the things that she was just talking about. If, if on your screen if it's a little
small, at the top of the screen someplace there should be a button that says full screen
so you can view this full screen. So, I'll turn it over to you Shawna.
Okay. Thank you very much. So, what you're looking at is actually the current student
side of the, of our web page. And it really has a lot of information, I'd encourage everybody
to go and just spend some time going through all of the different things that we have on
here. Because there's so much to actually look at. [Pause] So if we go underneath the
Academic Advising [pause] part, you're going to see a lot. You're going to be able to see
[pause] pictures of the advisors, learning more about your advisors, and a lot of information
like, you know, how to read your degree audit, which we're going to talk about tonight. If
you go under Academic Support Resources.
[ Silence ]
You'll see that we do have a lot of resources listed here, that are things that you're going
to need to go back to throughout the time that you're, that you are, that, that you're
a student at World Campus. This is how you can, you know, get to library services, any
disability services if you want to check that out, software tutorials for how to use different
types of software that we, that we use at World Campus. If we go under New Student Orientation
[pause], you'll also see that there's a link to our new student orientation. Hopefully
most of you have been through that already and know exactly what it is that you're, you
know, that you're, is expected of you, basically. So, let's look at [pause] the.
[ Silence ]
Community Page here, that we were just on because I wanted to show you everything that
you can see on the Community Page. So, you can see what type of events. We do have events
throughout the year. One that we're wrapping up right now is that we are giving away tickets
to a Penn State football game for World Campus students. We do that every year, if we can.
It's called the All-University Day Game. The Blue and White Society, you can order World
Campus, which is a pretty cool thing. And there's information, we do have a YouTube
with some videos and a Flickr site with some pictures, as well, so, those are all really
good things to, to just take some time to actually look through. [Pause] Okay. I think,
let's see, I'm going to turn it over to Rachael and ask her to go through some eLion.
Sure. Thanks Shawna. So the first thing I want to go over with everybody is just run
through how you run your degree audit in eLion. So, this is an important skill that you'll
have and something that you'll do a lot at Penn State, as your degree audit is considered
the official document for the university for how you track your program, essentially. So,
that means tracking which courses you have taken and requirements you've fulfilled versus
what you still need to take. So, as you could understand, it's a great tool to have access
to. So I'm just going to use the eLion to show you this, because we can't show you for
a particular student. So we're on the eLion demo right now and what you will do is log
in using your User ID and Password. So I'm just going to go in as a student. This is
a little blurb about the eLion demo, so we're just going to continue. So whenever you log
into eLion, you see that there's a message center and then there are all of these different
options on the side toolbar for you. To run your degree audit, you're going to click on
Schedule. And several options will come up for you. You can choose Degree Audit [pause]
and to will bring you to this page right here. So, you will have a few options majors, minors,
we're just going to focus on how to run your major degree audit. Typically, what you will
do in eLion is you'll click on this little button next to Current to see your current
major degree audit. Because this is a demo and it doesn't run for a certain audit, we're
going have to just you with an alternative major, but it's the same process as we move
forward, so, I'm just going to click on Alternative. Typically you'll click Continue, but that
doesn't work here. Sorry if it's confusing, but you'll understand as you do it yourself.
[Pause] So here's the alternative. For the college, the College of Agricultural Sciences.
That's not supposed to happen.
It won't let you pick a college, it'll, it's kind of programmed to the Earth and Mineral
Science, so.
Oh, okay. I was trying that before and it worked if I backtracked, but let's just, we'll
just assume its all agricultural sciences, your major is Turfgrass, so turf BS and it
doesn't have any options so you won't need to worry about that. For you new students,
your program year is 2013. And you'll just submit your degree audit request. [Pause]
Once you submit your degree audit request, you'll get this green confirmation button,
or I'm sorry not button, message up at the top of the screen so you know that's it been
requested. And then you can view your audit request status. And the screen will come up,
the reason that there are a few options here, just you can run your degree audit a few different
times or for different alternative majors if you want. Click on, your name will be here.
And sometimes there's a status that says not ready. Sometimes you have to click on Recheck
Status until it does show as ready. And once your degree audit, you'll get the confirmation,
confirmation message again and you can view your audit. So that's what you need to do
to view your degree audit. I would definitely suggest practicing this in eLion and just
kind of getting the hang of it.
[ Silence ]
So next, what I want to go over for everybody is your specific degree audit in Turfgrass.
A lot of students can express confusion over the degree audit at first, so, you know, I'll
go over kind of a degree audit in general and how you read it, and then the specifics
of your program. So the first thing I really like to say about the degree audit is it's
really broken up into two main sections for the Turfgrass Degree. So you'll see, you know,
you have your current program information. Here's Shawna, you'll see your advisor. I'll
just try to [pause], oh, I didn't have control of the screen, I want to show you, there we
go. [Pause] You can see right here for the first section, and I'm considering sections
with the dotted lines. The first section is your major requirement section. So, these
are the courses that are really Turfgrass potent. So these are the courses that are
really related to your specific major, in Turfgrass Science. So as we continue down,
the second major section is the general education requirements section. So, I think it's easier
to break it up a little bit first to see, okay, these are your major requirements that
your program requires specifically and then the second section of general education requirements
are requirements that the university requires of all students who are seeking Bachelor's
Degrees. So we move down a little further, you can see the selective section. There's
some more information down here and I'll go over that when we get there. Such as, your
rating across the curriculum requirement and your United States and cultures and international
cultures requirements. These are requirements that are fulfilled by major requirements and
general education requirements, but you do have to keep your eye on them and make sure
that you fulfill them throughout your program. Some are written into the program and some
aren't, but I will go over that. So let's start with the major requirements. I want
to talk a little bit about the numbers that you see right here. I think the degree audit
can be a little confusing for students at first because numbers kind of suggest a, a
linear sequence when you don't always need to follow the degree audit sequentially like
that. You can think of each number as a sub-requirement. So, sub-requirement number one for your major
requirement section. Sub-requirement two and so on and so forth. You can see that there's
a little dash next to each sub-requirement. This is actually a minus sign, so it's showing
that, right here, these requirements have not been fulfilled. Whenever all of the requirements
for this sub-requirement are fulfilled, you'll see this turn into a plus sign whenever you
run your degree audit. Same with the No's that you see. Whenever all of the major requirements
are fulfilled, it will turn into an Okay. So, that's where your degree audit is really
helpful by running it live in eLion, you'll really see all these changes made so you can
track where you are and see exactly what you need to do. Let me point out one more thing
before I really get into major requirements. This [pause], this line right here is really
important. This is your registration date. So whenever you run your degree audit in eLion,
you'll be able to see your registration change each semester. We have a priority registration
schedule, so that means that the more credits you have, the sooner you can register for
the next semester. So typically, for example, for Fall 2013, you'll be able to schedule
for spring starting in, you know, the fall, so September, October, around that time you'll
want to check this area on your degree audit and it will give you the exact date of when
registration opens up for you. And then you'll know that you can really [pause] get on it
early and don't have to worry about courses or anything filling up at the last minute.
I know some of you have probably felt some stress with that at this point getting started,
because courses do fill up, so, I like to make students aware of that so that you know
when you can schedule and you have more control over getting into the courses of your choice
and, and, of course, what you need. So, so let's start with specific requirements in
your major requirements section then. [Pause] The way that our program works, you might
wonder about certain exceptions I talk about, we offer the Turfgrass Programs through the
University Park Campus. So our World Campus doesn't have all of the courses as shown on
the degree audit, so that can be a little confusing and that's why I want to walk through
all of it. This red note that's on this degree audit here is not on the degree audit that
you will run on eLion, so I just wanted to point that out. So let's start out with sub-requirement
number one for your major requirements section. [Pause] So, the sub-requirement will tell
you exactly what you need to do. You need to take all of the following here. You have
to have a grade of C or higher. So, let's see in Chem 202. And 9 credits here can apply
to general education. So in some areas, your courses will double count in your general
education area and, of course, I'll show you where that occurs in this degree. So the first
course, let's start off [laughing], start off with something we don't offer, Bio 127
is a course that World Campus does not offer, so we a different course that we can use to
substitute for that. Bio 127 is approved by bio, or excuse me, is approved to be substituted
by Bio 120A. Chem 202 is required in this course list. Computer Science 203. Computer
Science 203 is a course that can also be substituted by STAT 200 or Computer Science 101. I would
say many of our students take STAT 200 unless they have a specific interest in Computer
Science 101. We feel that this course is very, very challenging if you're not very interested
in computer science. So you have some flexibility there. Furthermore, Math 21 is a requirement
here, that's college algebra 1. So what I really want to point out here is that some
sub-requirements do have a course list. In this case, you do need to take all of the
courses on the course list. Once you do take all of these courses, this little minus will
turn into a plus sign. Let's move down to sub-requirement number two. Woops, that was
a little too far. Okay. So, sub0-requirement number two, you need to take 3 credits in
writing. These credits may also apply to your general education area and you can take either
English 202C or 202D. The difference between those course are that English 202C is a technical
writing course and English 202D is a business writing course. So, this is another area in
which you have a little bit of flexibility for preference and wherever you think would
benefit your career most. Sub-requirement number three, you need to take 3 credits in
chemistry. Sorry that this is split up in the page a bit. This won't happen in eLion.
The course list is Chem101 and 110, you only need to take 3 credits and World Campus only
offers Chem101, so that's the course that can fulfill this requirement. [Pause] For
sub-requirement number four, you must take all of the following. This area is a really
potent, rich Turfgrass area. So this is where a lot of your upper level turfgrass courses
are taken. You can see here for the, the audit that we're providing, as an example, this
is how courses will appear on your degree audit whenever you've taken them or transferred
them in in this instance. So, typically Turf 235, 425, and 230 are in this course list.
But as soon as you take the course, or schedule it, it will come out of the course list and,
and come, kind of, in between into this little bank, so you can track, you know, what you've
taken or what you've scheduled versus what you have left. So, for this particular student,
they've transferred in these courses and these are the other courses that they need to take
in order to fulfill sub-requirement number four. I do want to make a note of Turf 230.
Turf 230 is our Turfgrass Pesticides License Course. It's a one-credit course. If any of
you already have your valid pesticides license, you can send that into your advisor and we
can waive that one credit for you. [Pause] Okay. Sub-requirement number five. This is
showing as a prescribed course here, typically in our new program, the requirement listed
here is ASM 307. And what I want to point out about that is that World Campus does not
offer ASM 307, so, what we do is we can substitute this requirement with any course from the
professional ag-supporting course list. We're going to go over the supporting course list,
but, I just wanted to point out that this is an area in case you want to note it or
just remember ASM 307 in which you'll be able to choose something else, a professional ag-course
to support here. So, although I know it can get a little frustrating and confusing to
have all of these kind of exceptions and substitutions, we are flexible and we have, you know, ways
to fulfill those requirements for you. Okay. So, sub-requirement number six. You do have
a 3 credit internship in this program. It's [pause] something that you do preferably towards
the end of your program. A lot of questions that students often ask about the turf internship
is is how are they going to do it whenever they work full time or they're already working
at a golf course in the turf industry, that's totally fine. You can certainly do your internship
at your place of work, you just work with the internship coordinator and you essentially
just take the course work that you've learned and just apply it in the ways that you need
to for the internship. So, we have an internship packet on that, so if you ever have any questions,
I can certainly send that to you. Down here for sub-requirement number seven, you have
to take 4 credits on biology. So, this is another place where we have a little exception.
So you essentially only need to have 3 credits in biology, because we offer Bio 11, but we
don't have the Bio 12 lab. So what that means is whenever you take Bio 11, we can waive
this one-credit lab for you, and then Bio 11 will fulfill sub-requirement number seven
for you. Bio 110 is not offered often through the World Campus, so most of our students
just take Bio 11. For sub-requirement number eight, you need to take 3 credits in meteorology.
Their course list is Meteo 003 and Meteo 101. We received a lot of feedback that Meteo 101
is a really, really challenging course. And, again, that's kind of like computer science.
If you love computer science or if you love meteorology, you're completely welcome to
take those, but we usually suggest Meteo 003 for the purposes of the degree and, you know,
that's really up to individual student preference. So this is an area that I am glad we're getting
to because for professional agriculture and your professional management and economic
section, this is where we'll also refer to the supporting course list that I talked about
earlier. You know, as soon as we're done going through the degree audit, I'm going to show
what those look like and go over them with you, but these are two, I guess three areas,
in your degree audit, 9, 10, and 11, where you do have to fulfill some supporting courses.
Essentially, for professional agriculture, you need to fulfill 12 credits in this area.
So you can choose 12 credits from the supporting course list. Anything that looks interesting
to you. So it's nice that you can cater that also to your interests and your career goals,
and also anything that's just offered. Because, again, not all courses will be offered every
semester and some courses are not offered through the World Campus. So you just need
to use the Schedule of Courses with the Course List and kind of play around and see what's
available and, and see what you're interested in. So, again, professional agriculture's
pretty straightforward. You just need 12 credits here and here this audit's showing that, that
this particular student transferred in these credits. For number 10 and 11, you need first
9 credits in professional management and economics. And then, 6 additional credits in professional
management and economics. So you might be asking yourself why is that split up and,
and what is the purpose for that? The reasons for the split is because in sub-requirement
number 10, you need to take 9 credits of bolded courses. And what that means is on our supporting
course list, there are certain courses that are in a bolded font and then other courses
that are in a regular font. So, you'll need to choose 9 courses, again, you will see this
more clearly on the actual list, from the bolded and then the 6 credits that you take
here can be any course on that list. You just have to make sure the 9 are covered by bolded.
And so that sums up the major requirements section. Jot down any questions you have and
we can certainly answer them at the end. Now I'm going to move into the general education
section of your degree. A lot of your major requirements double count for some of these
general education requirements because, you know, such a, such a science-heavy degree,
like turfgrass, why make a student take, you know, an extra general science course when
you already have so many rich science courses. So, that's the reason you have the double
counting. English 15 is the course that all students need to take. It's composition and
rhetoric, it's our, it's our interpreting course. English 202 is a course that you,
if you recall, you take in your major requirements section, so English 202 that you take in the
major will also fulfill your general education requirement here. You need to take Speech
Communications, that's CAF 100. You can take CAF 100B or C, they're both speaking courses.
[Pause] In your quantitative area, for sub-requirements four and five, these requirements will be
fulfilled by major requirements also. So Math 21 will fulfill this area right here, sub-requirement
four. And then STAT 200 or Computer Science, whichever you choose to take, will fulfill
sub-requirement number five. Furthermore, as I was talking about the natural sciences
and how turf already has so many good science courses, your science courses will fulfill
your natural, your general, natural sciences requirements. So, Bio 11, Bio 120A, Meteo
10, or Meteo 003, and Chem 101, they will fulfill these 9 credits here, in any order,
essentially the order that you take them is how they'll show up. But you don't need to
worry about taking any extra science. You do need to take 6 credits in general arts.
You need to take 6 credits in general humanities. And also 6 credits in social and behavioral
sciences courses. You can take 3 credits in a health and physical activity course. So
that is your general education section and you can always take a look on the Schedule
of Courses to see what's available and, and this is really the area that [pause] you can
approach it however way you want to. I like to, to really think of it as a place that's
fun, so you get to choose courses really of your interest that you would just like to
explore. Or if you really want to cater to exactly what you're studying, you can choose
courses that relate more to your field. So you really have a lot of flexibility there
and it's nice. Again, this is your elective section. [Pause] So any courses that don't
count towards requirements or, for example, if you're a transfer student, which we do
get a lot of transfer students at World Campus. If, if you have courses that will not apply
to the degree, specifically, they will count for electives, and this is where they end
up. Let's see here, first-year seminar is not required for our Adult World Campus students,
or for any World Campus student actually, for that matter. Right here, this is your
rating across the curriculum requirement. I think the rating across the curriculum requirement
is kind of, kind of hidden so I really like to point it out. This will be fulfilled by
a course with the suffix of W or Y, there is a course written into your program, its
Turf 436W. Whenever you take Turf 436W that will fulfill this W requirement and this No
will turn into an Okay. [Pause] If you move down further, you see that have a United States
Cultures and an International Cultures requirement. I think that this can be a little confusing
for students sometimes. Because you don't have to take a course separately to fulfill
these, or at least that's the goal. Usually there are courses written into the program,
again, or you can make sure that you take a general education course in the arts or
humanities that also fulfills a U.S. or an IL requirement. One of these requirements
will be fulfilled by Bio 120A that you take. So, ultimately you can choose either a U.S.
or an IL that you want to take in a general education course. You can see on the Schedule
of Courses if a course fulfills a U.S. and an IL. And it can be major requirement courses,
but a lot of the general education courses fulfill this. So let's move down here to really
the last part of the degree audit. And this is where, the area in which you can see how
many credits you've earned and how many you need. For this example, we have the names
crossed out because we do have a lot of transfer students and this calculation can get thrown
off by transfer credits just because of how the degree audit is designed. So, degree audit
is designed mostly for traditional Penn State students, which is, you know, not hopeful
for a lot of adult learners or people who have a lot of transfer credits, so it might
miscalculate if you've brought in credits from a different institution. And the reason
for that is because it's counting up all of the credits in your elective section, not
just what you need to fulfill in your major requirements, which means, you know, if you
have all of these credits in your elective section and you haven't fulfilled, like, like
50 credits in your program, it might take out, let me start over with that to kind of
show you like if you have 50 credits in your elective section and you need 50 in your program.
It will tell you that you're completely done when you still need to complete those requirements.
So you just have to make sure that you're checking on the degree audit to see what's
actually fulfilled or not and you, if you ever have any questions or think that something
isn't going to the right place in your degree audit, just contact your advisor about that.
But that is essentially how you can read your degree audit and understand your program.
Okay. Did you want me to take them to that list of courses?
Yes. That would be great.
Okay. [Pause] Unfortunately, I forgot to pull it up ahead of time [laughing]. I will do
that right now.
Okay. Yes, so these will be the Professional Agriculture and the Professional Management
and Economics Courses that I was referring to in the degree audit. So here is the main
page that you can find these lists and other information for the degree on the course requirement
site on the college of ag, so, Richard would you pull up, or I can pull this up.
There you go.
So let's first take a look at Professional Agriculture. So this is what the course list
looks like for Professional Agriculture. You can find this on the website, as well as,
you know, I mean if you know the ag website that I just showed you, as well as the My
Degree page for Turf that Shawna was showing you earlier. So there are a lot of courses,
as you can see. Any of these courses will suffice for Professional Agriculture, so,
it's really just, again, a matter of interest and career goals, as well as what's available.
So you can just take a look through that. Now the Professional Management and Economics,
this is where I was talking about bolded courses versus non-bolded courses. So as you can see
here, some of the courses are bolded. You need to make sure that you have 9 credits
in the bolded courses. And then 6 in any course. If you want your 6 credits also to be in bolded
courses, that's fine, you just have to make sure you hit the 9 credits in the bolded courses.
So, same thing with Profession Ag, you just have to take a look and see what's available,
and what you want to take. Sometimes for some of the business courses here, there might
be a control on the course, just talk to your advisor about that and, and you'll see how
you can proceed if there's any issues. A control is typically indicated on the Scheduled of
Courses. So those are the Support Course Lists. I would definitely recommend printing those
out and looking over them or just saving them on your computer. And next I want to show
you the recommended academic plan. Do we have those up or should I just pull those up?
I'll take, if you go to the, right here, to the World Campus website and you can pull
those up.
Sure.
[ Silence ]
I'm going to the My Degree page. It's just taking a second.
It's just a little slow.
So the My Degree page is so helpful. I really recommend that you explore this a bit. The
quick [inaudible] in My Degree or Certificate, like I just did, and then Bachelor Degree.
And then you'll scroll down to Turfgrass Science or your program. And here [pause] first let
me show you the degree audit. This will show you, first of all, the instructions for how
to run your degree audit as I described to you in the demo, as well as a degree audit
that's blank that has little blue links that will tell you the information that I told
you for each course. So, for example, Computer Science 203, you can substitute that with
STAT 200 or Comp Sci 101, so this is helpful for you to, you know, really be able to double
check if you kind of forget or want to know what's going on in one of our [inaudible]
substitution areas, that can get a little confusing. So the Recommended Academic Plan
is what I want to show you. I think the Recommended Academic Plan is so helpful, I use it a lot
as an advisor in advising students. It just helps you to keep track of where you're at
and kind of use in tandem with your degree audit. Again, the degree audit is the official
document for the university, but I like to call the Recommended Academic Plan a roadmap
to your degree audit. So, it's, the Recommended Academic Plan, we call them RAPs, R-A-P, it's
broken up into stages. So you can see stage 1, 2, 3, 4, you kind of read it like a book.
It has each semester and it covers all of the requirements for your program. So there's
a second page that has it formatted differently. So the way that this can really help students
is that it sets you up so that you complete all of your prerequisite courses as you move
into your higher level courses. For instance, it has you starting out with math here, and
chemistry, so, math is really going to set you up chemistry and chemistry's really going
to set you up for your higher-level turf courses and, you know, soils and everything in terms
of just being prepared with the kind of knowledge you'll need in those courses. I really recommend
that students, again, either print a copy of this or save it on your copy and kind of
cross off courses you already take and compare it with your degree audit and it can help
you understand where to go next for courses. So, I really like this as a tool and I like
to make everyone aware of it. [Pause] So the last thing I want to go over with everybody
are certificates. [Pause] Let me go to the certificate page, [pause] for turf. So, Turfgrass
is really nice in the way that are a lot of different ways that you can work on your degree
and kind of build stages for it. So, sometimes people start out on the Bachelor's Program
and then they'd, they would like, kind of halfway mark, or alternatively, they start
out in the certificate program and work their way up the Bachelor's. So let's take a look
at the undergraduate certificate. Go down to Turfgrass Management. We have two undergraduate
certificates for Turfgrass Management, the basic and the advanced. Let me start with
the basic. There is no degree audit for a certificate, so, you essentially just need
to use a check sheet to see what the requirements are. It's important to note that certificate
students alone, if you're just a certificate student, you are considered a non-degree seeking
student. So what that means is certificate students, often they do not, well not often,
always do not receive financial aid, because they're degree-seeking so I just like to note
that also. You'll see for the basic certificate, you have courses that are required. You have
to take Turf 230, 235, and 436W. And then you just need to take an additional 9 credits
here. Turf 238, PPATH 412, ENT 317, as well as 425 and Turf 434. You can see here that
there are prerequisites. Certificate students are, are not necessarily held to those prerequisites
if, so if you decide as you're working towards your Bachelor's that you would like to get
your certificate and take these courses, you can certainly do that. Sometimes it's helpful
in terms of professional development as you move towards your Bachelor's Degree. You,
you do need to earn at least C grade or higher in each course in order to be eligible for
the certificate. [Pause] Now I want to show you the advanced certificate and those requirements.
The [pause] each certificate is essentially, it's 15 credits, sometimes that changes a
little bit if somebody waives Turf 230, well it's not letting me go back. So, I will.
[ Silence ]
Okay. [Pause] So here's the advanced certificate.
[ Silence ]
The advanced certificate is about twice as many credits as the [pause] basic, so the
basic's about 15, the advanced is about 30, again, that changes because of Turf 230 being
waived and sometimes in the additional courses area, different courses are different amounts
of credits, so, some are 3 credit courses, some are 4 credit courses, that's a Turfgrass
Nutrition. So it's the same concept with the advanced certificate. You can just follow
the checklist. You kind of have to keep track of that yourself and with your advisor. You
have your core courses that you're required to take, so you have to do an internship and
take the 1 credit colloquium course here. This is the course in which you present on
your internship. And then, you just have to choose 18 and 19 credits from the course,
the additional courses. Again, right here there's a little note about the varying credits
and you also need to have a C in all of these courses in order to be eligible for the certificate.
[Pause] And there's also something I realized I skipped over. I didn't show you the Course
List for Turfgrass, so let me show you that quickly before I end, so that you're aware.
Let me go back to Bachelor Degrees. Turf. [Pause] We do have a Course List on the My
Degree page too. So you can always kind of get a different view of the courses that are
required in your program here, and it's, you know, just a different way to look with some
more information about that course descriptions and everything. Sometimes there are little
notes about the prerequisites, which is helpful. And you see how many credits the courses do,
so this is always a helpful tool. Again, the My Degree page is so helpful and I think everyone
should use it. [Pause] Okay. So, I think that's all I wanted to go over today. If Shawna wants
to go to the Schedule of Courses.
[ Silence ]
Absolutely! Thank you so much. The, as you saw, the degree audit, really, once you start
using it and once you start looking at it. It, it gets a lot less confusing. Especially
with Rachael telling you exactly how to read it. So, it's, it's really a good way for you
to be able to pull up an updated one and keep track of exactly where you are at all times.
So the Schedule of Courses is actually our online site for finding out what courses are
offered each semester. As you can see, let me get control here of the screen. There we
go. I need my mouse. As you can see, it's just schedule.psu.edu. You can get to the
Schedule of Courses by going into eLion, but you don't have to log in to eLion to get to
it, you can just go to that website. So there's a couple of different ways to look up courses
on the Schedule of Courses. You can look up a specific course that you know is a requirement,
or you can look up all of the courses that would fulfill a general education area. So,
I'm just going to run through quickly how to do both of those. At the top, first of
all, you want to choose your semester, so Fall 2013 is the one coming up. Campus is
World Campus, and the location you can go ahead and choose as World Campus, as well.
So, let's just go down here and say that we want to look at what Turf courses are offered
[pause] this fall. So I choose Turfgrass and then I click the blue Search Courses box.
Now what that's going to bring up is basically all of the turf courses that are offered through
World Campus for the fall semester. Now, what you see on here, are all of the courses that
are offered and their formatted in exactly the same way. So when I show people or talk
to students about how to read the Schedule of Courses, you know, it's, it's, every single
course has the same information. So you see that it says Turf 230, Turfgrass Pesticides,
so it's the name of the course, how many credits its worth. It gives you maybe a shortened
[pause] course description right here, and then you'll see a bunch of columns underneath
here. The first thing is every course has a unique 6-digit schedule number. So that
6-digit schedule number is the one that you're going to use to make sure that you get the
specific course that you want. We may offer more than one section of a course, that's
okay. You can be in either section. Some of our courses might have up to 8 sections or
10 sections. It's all the same course. On the Seats column, the first number that you'll
see is the number of seats that are still open in this class, the second number is the
maximum number of seats allowed. Alright? So, for instance, for Turf 230 for fall, there's
still 3 seats allowed. Or 3 seats open. If you look down here at Turf 235, you'll see
that there is 0 seats open. Now if you're sitting on, on the Schedule of Courses and
you really want a specific course, if you click this little green refresh seats button,
it's going to give you a real time update on how many seats are actually open in there.
And you'll see that that first number goes bold to make sure that you know that it, that
it updated. Of course these are web courses, if the instructor has been identified it'll
be listed there. The beginning and end dates, which are typically the same for fall and
spring. Summer, they may be a little bit different. You can tell that this course does have controls,
but the course details is really what I want to show you. Controls just mean that you may
have to have advisor permission to get into the course. So if I click on the course details,
it's going to bring me to a course catalog page. This is going to give me more detailed
information about the course itself. So, some of the same information. The name, the course
number, important dates, a longer course description, okay? Particularly, this one says stronger,
strong writing skills are recommended for this course. There are no prerequisites. You
can see a sample course syllabus of most of our courses. But do remember that it is just
a sample, it's not the actual one, you'll get that once your course starts. You can
have, you can do that tuition estimator from here and find out exactly what the tuition
and fees would be for a specific course. If the professor has any remarks about the course,
they're going to list it right here. So, for instance, this professor says that there are
no prerequisites; however, some turf field experience and courses in plant and soil sciences,
chemistry and biology might be helpful. So if there are any remarks here, you'll want
to read them. As you move on down, you'll see that it gives you instructions on how
to schedule the course. And down towards the bottom is the important part, the material
requirements. If there are any material requirements for the course, they will be listed here,
textbooks or whatever, and, there will be a link to either Penn State Ag Sciences or
what's called MBS direct, which is our online provider for textbooks. And if you just click
this link it's going to take you to that website. So that you can order your textbook online
and have it shipped to you. Very easy, very quick and simple. And then, at the end of
the page, if there are any specific technical or software requirements for that course,
that will be listed there, as well. So those are the things that you're going to find if
you click on that course details for each course. [Pause] Now, if you go up, if you
want to look up another course, you'll go up to the top and you'll click New Search.
It'll take you back to the main Schedule of Courses page. So as I mentioned, you can also
look up all the courses that will fulfill a certain gen ed area, by clicking Additional
Search Criteria. The menu kind of opens up and you can kind of choose what you want.
So let's say that I want an arts course, and I know that I actually need an International
Cultures course, as well. So I'm going to check both of those and then I'm going to
click Search Courses, and it's going to bring up a list of all the courses we offer this
fall that will fulfill both of those requirements. And you can see right here, it satisfies General
Arts, U.S., or IL, this one satisfies General Arts and IL. So, the, the main thing to remember
about general education courses are simply that if you're interested in it and there's
a seat open, you can take it. It's up to you. So that's how you use the Schedule of Courses,
it becomes pretty easy after you do it a few times. Alright. I think that those are the
specific things that we actually wanted to go over with you. We're going to go to a different
page here and actually Rachael and I are going to start our webcams. And show you our faces
so you have kind of a face to put with our names, and we're going to answer any questions.
There she is! We're going to answer any questions that you might have. Again, your microphone
is muted, but in the chat box, go ahead and type in any questions about whatever, about
the curriculum, about Penn State, about World Campus, we'd be more than happy to answer
them for you.
[ Silence ]
So one thing that Rachael, kind of, hit on that I'll, while you guys might be thinking
of questions, that I might reiterate is the fact that the Turfgrass Degrees are very good
about looking at what you have done in the past and trying to give you credit for those
type of things. So, if you have, for instance, completed seminars through the GCSAA, let
your advisor know, and we may actually be able to give you credit towards your degree
for those seminars. So, if there's something like that that you have in your background,
let us know and we'll definitely check into it and, you know, see if you can actually
get credit towards your degree for it.
Yeah, that's a good point Shawna. Thanks for bringing that up.
You want to go ahead and answer the first one Rachael?
Sure. So can everyone see this chat then?
They can. Yes.
Okay. So that's a good question Luke. [Pause] You can. So as long as you've completed those
courses, that's fine. That's actually kind of a loophole through, you know, being a degree-seeking
student and not having to be just non-degree to get the certificates. So some people do,
do opt to do that. They can be in the degree program and then take [pause] the certificate
courses and if you want to get your certificate before you graduate with your Turf Bachelor's
Degree, then, yeah, you would just need to fulfill the requirements for the checklist
that I showed you. And then, you know, once you've received Bachelor's, it's kind of stronger
than the certificates anyway, but as you're working towards it, yeah. Certainly that's
an option, just talk to your advisor about what you need to do.
In fact, our Turfgrass Programs are kind of stair stepped. Because we have the basic certificate
which is 15 credits. We have the advanced certificate which is about 30. Then we have
an Associate's Degree, which is about 61 credits and then the Bachelor's Degree which is 120.
So, in essence, if a person wanted to, they could stair step and make sure that they get
a piece of paper telling them, you know, that they have that certificate and that degree
along the way and, and it provides kind of a shorter term goal for people.
Right. [Pause] Looks like some people are typing in here.
[ Silence ]
One thing to point out about the internship, as well, is, you know, you absolutely may
be able to stay at your current employer, but it is going to mean that you're going
need to take on new responsibilities. You know? A lot of students ask us how can I find
an internship, you know, I work, you know, if you guys work in the turfgrass industry,
you're probably right now working about 80 hours a week, and, so, you know, what people
ask us all the time, what am I supposed to do? And one suggestion I give is, you know
what, go talk to your supervisor, ask if there is an initiative or a new project that they
haven't had the manpower to do or some kind of new project that they haven't had the money
to actually initiate, and take that on as your internship. Typically, you know, golf
courses always have a ton of things to do.
So it looks like we're about out of time and I don't see other questions being typed, so
we're going to go to our final poll. So we're going to take one more. So now that we've
discussed the Bachelor of Science and Turfgrass Degree, how confident are you that you understand
the requirements for this degree? So do you feel a little bit more confident now that
we've had the time to go over it So are you very confident, confident, neutral, not so
confident, or not confident at all. And it looks like.
Alright!
It looks like we.
It looks like we improved!
We have some very confident people. So, that's about all the time we have for this evening.
Shawna or Rachael, anything you want to say before we depart?
I just want to say thank you for, you know, taking the time to do this webinar with us,
we really hoped that it helped. It's great to see the poll that everyone feels confident.
With that said, you know, always feel free to contact your advisor with any clarifying
questions and, and I guess have a great night!
Great. Thank you.