Course Advisement

Every matriculated student is assigned a primary academic advisor in their major. You may have additional advisors if you have a second major or minor, are a member of a special program (e.g., EOP, CAP, GEO), or are a student-athlete.

Your academic advisor is usually your first contact when you need to:

• Plan courses for the next semester
• Ask a question about a campus resource, or
• Explore major-specific careers or other special opportunities

Meet with Your Advisor

It is important to get to know your advisor. Consult with your advisor on a regular basis. You should meet with your advisor at the following times:

• During the two-week “Course Advisement Period” (more information below)
• If you have a question about a degree requirement or college policy
• When you are making changes to your current or planned schedule
• If you have academic difficulty or something new is affecting your academic performance

Current Students — Login to your MyPlattsburgh account. Under the Students tab, locate Academic Info to see the name of your primary advisor and their contact information. Shortcut: Advisors are listed under the Student ID on your Degree Works.

New First-Year Students — New students are assigned an advisor just prior to the beginning of a semester; assignments are generally complete by the end of the first week. If you are an undeclared major, contact the academic advising office ([email protected]), 518-564-2080.

New Transfer Students — If you are a new transfer student needing course advisement and a registration code, find the appropriate department contact on the “Chairs & Department Contacts” list which was mailed to you by the admissions office and appears on the Advisement and Registration webpage.

If you would like the office location, phone number, and email address of your advisor — or any faculty/staff member — click on the Find People link at the bottom of any SUNY Plattsburgh webpage. Search by name or department.

The course advisement period occurs during the full two weeks after midterm grades are issued. YOU must visit or phone your advisor’s office to learn about their advisement procedures and appointment sign-up schedule. Do not wait until the last day of advisement to make an appointment.

Prepare for your meeting by:

• Reviewing your Degree Works audit for requirements not fulfilled (indicated by a red circle and the words “still needed”);
• Searching “Look Up Courses to Add” in your MyPlattsburgh to find classes that fulfill your requirements;
• Making a tentative schedule of courses for the next semester (complete with CRNs, days, times); and
• Preparing a list of questions or concerns you’d like to talk about — anything from when a course will be offered next to future career plans.

Course Advisement Period

Course advisement for winter and spring 2025 runs Mon, Oct. 21 through Fri, Nov. 1, 2024. Each student must connect with their advisor during that time to discuss planned courses, review midterm grades and obtain a registration PIN. Use your registration PIN to enter priority registration at your assigned date/time of entry between Mon, Nov. 4 and Sun, Nov. 17.

• Email your primary academic advisor or respond to their outreach to you about the procedure for making an advising appointment.
• Look up courses that will be offered in the upcoming intersession and semester. From your MyPlattsburgh dashboard, choose the Students tab > Registrar heading > Lookup Courses to Add > Browse Classes > Select the term, then Continue. Search by subject, or choose Advanced Course Search to search by General Education/Cardinal Core category in the “Attribute” field.
• At the conclusion of your advising appointment, be sure to obtain your registration PIN and the date/time you may first access Banner to register.
• Receiving advising and your PIN are necessary for priority registration.

Did you miss course advisement? Need a PIN to register?

• If you did not connect with your advisor, you must wait until the second week of priority registration to register. Starting Nov. 11, to obtain your PIN, you must email [email protected] from your Plattsburgh account, include your Banner ID (701......), first advisor’s name, and a list of first choice and alternate course sections that you looked up. In response, we will provide your PIN, and copy your advisor on the email.

Late Registration (PIN not required)

• Students who miss priority registration (Nov. 4-17) will still be able to register during the course adjustment period. Course adjustment is Mon, Nov. 18 through Sun, Feb. 2. Even if you missed priority registration, please reach out to your advisor for guidance — to discuss your future courses, how you are doing, and how you are progressing on your degree.

Registration Dates & Forms

You may freely add or drop a course online on Banner until Sunday 11:30 p.m. after the first week of courses.

Starting Monday of the second week of the full semester, you may officially withdraw from a course following the procedures outlined on the registrar’s webpage Course Withdrawal Schedule and Procedures. Use the fillable field form available there. The last day to withdraw from a full-semester course is Friday, Nov. 1.

Course Withdrawal Procedures

You will be able to make curriculum changes by email.

To declare or change your first major or minor, or add another major or minor:

• Send an email to the department chairperson of the major or minor you wish to add. (To learn who that is, visit our Explore Our Majors web page, choose your major from the alphabetical list. The “Contact Us” box lists the name and full contact info for the department chair or coordinator.)
• Emails must be from your Plattsburgh account, and include your full name, your Banner ID (701......), and the specific major or minor you wish to add.
• Also include a working phone number in case your chair or the advising office needs clarification about your request in order for us to process it.
• The chairperson will determine your admissibility to their program, will reply to you with questions or confirmation and, if admitted, the name of your major or minor advisor. They will copy in, or forward to, the academic advising office for official processing.

To delete a major or minor, no authorization is necessary.

• From your Plattsburgh email account, send an email to [email protected].
• Include your name, Banner ID, the specific name of the major or minor you wish to delete, and whether you have applied to graduate at the end of this semester.
• Also include a phone number where you are reachable in case we have a question about your request before we are able to process it.

If you want to see the program requirements for any major or minor, you may also look at our Academic Catalog, link in the menu titled “Majors, Minors, & Certificates.”

You may opt to initiate a change of major/minor/advisor by completing the following fillable field form and forwarding to the respective department chairperson.

Fillable Change of Major/Minor Form Option

Personal circumstances can sometimes interfere with the academic focus needed to complete coursework and 2024 continues to be challenging with added concerns about family, health, safety, remote learning and finances.

We know that the decision to withdraw from college is a difficult one. If it would help to discuss your situation, please consider reaching out to your academic or program advisor(s), or to the academic advising office 518-564-2080. We encourage you to talk with someone; we might be able to resolve certain aspects of your circumstance or salvage some of your courses with available resources.

If you determine that college withdrawal is your best option, please do the following:

For Personal, Non-Medical Withdrawals

The preferred option is to complete the online form here (authentication required).

OR

If you are unable to complete the form, send an email to [email protected] from your Plattsburgh email account. Include the following required information:

• First and last name, Banner ID, major, cumulative GPA (unless you are a new student with no GPA yet)
• Full mailing address, phone number, and personal email address
• State whether you are withdrawing from this semester (the current term) OR if you are completing this term but wish to withdraw from a future term (state which term).
• Briefly explain the top three reasons, factors, or concerns that led to your decision to withdraw/transfer from SUNY Plattsburgh. If your reasons are related in any way to the pandemic, please elaborate, so that we can best understand and help with what our students are experiencing.
• State whether you intend to return to your studies at SUNY Plattsburgh and, if yes, estimate which semester.

If you receive financial aid, please consult with student financial services to discuss the impact of college withdrawal upon your current and future aid.

It is possible that the academic advising office, or another college staff member, may reach out to assist you as we work to process the college withdrawal you submit.

For Medical/Psychological Leaves of Absence

• Medical leaves are processed through the Student Health and Counseling Center. Please email [email protected] or phone 518-564-2187.

Advising local and residential students will primarily take place in person. Occasionally, an advisee may be in isolation or quarantine, or have other circumstances that necessitate remote advising. Plattsburgh online and SUNY online students need to be advised remotely. Whether in person or remote, we offer the following for your consideration.

• New students who feel connected to campus are more likely to successfully complete their first semester and persist to the next one. Consider your first outreach to them, preferably in the first couple weeks of the semester, to focus primarily on how they are doing personally and academically, and not yet on long-term planning.
• Communicate early and often about the means by which your advisees should connect with you (e.g., scheduled appointments via Google, Cardinal Star, Doodle, phone, email.)
• When meeting remotely, it is of utmost importance that our individual advising practices and procedures allow for equitable access. This involves having options set aside for those students with variable wifi signal strength, time zone differences, disabilities, availability of a private environment for them to virtually meet, needs for synchronous vs. asynchronous communication, and so on.
• Please be aware that advising remotely may be more time consuming than face-to-face, and students might also have an increased need to talk about pedagogical or other concerns.

Course advisement for winter and spring 2025 runs Mon, Oct. 21 through Fri, Nov. 1, 2024. Each student must connect with their advisor during that time to discuss planned courses, review midterm grades and obtain a registration PIN. Priority registration for main campus undergraduates occurs Mon, Nov. 4 through Sun, Nov. 17. See Registration Dates & Forms for complete registration access details.

Once you have determined how you will schedule your official course advising appointments, inform your advisees about how to make an appointment with you (email, call, Cardinal Star or Google calendar, etc.)

Be sure to let your advisees know how you want them to prepare for your appointment, such as offering the following guidelines for “How to prepare for our meeting:”

• Review your midterm grades
• Review your Degree Works Report
• Highlight general education and major requirements “still needed”
• Review the course schedule on SSB 9 (Look Up Courses to Add, under the Registrar header in the Students tab)
• Draft a tentative schedule to review
• Have a list of questions for us to discuss
• Remember to ask me for your registration PIN and access date/time.

Advisor and Advisee Roles

Just as always, you have much information in one place by using Argos.

• From MyPlattsburgh, click on the “Dashboards & Reports” tab
• Faculty-Advisee Listing; GO
• Choose the current term; Submit
• You may view your entire list of advisees (default “all” in the Type column), or filter those for whom you are 1st major, minor, program advisor, etc.
• Click on an advisee, and you will see columns for (use scroll bar) Banner ID, email, registration PIN, registration dates/times, telephone number.
• To the right is your advisee’s photo if submitted, and below are their current schedule and midterm grades
• At the conclusion of your advisee appointments, remember to release their registration PIN and access date/times.

To extract a spreadsheet of your advisees to track your course advisement (all or by type), click on the little gear icon above the student’s grades column. “Export to CSV,” and click “Apply,” and “Open with Excel.” (This is one method of communicating a mass email to your advisees, by copying/selecting the email addresses and pasting into the “bcc” field in your email.)

Cardinal Star provides this information as well. For a list of advisees in Cardinal Star:

• Start in MyPlattsburgh, click on the Cardinal Star icon
• In Cardinal Star, upper left corner, click the three line (hamburger) icon
• Select “Students”/"My Students”
• You may need to clear filters to see a complete list of advisees. Under “Additional Filters”, click “Edit Filters”, then “Clear All Filters”. Submit.
• Find the “Connection” dropdown and set it to "First Major Advisor”
• Click any student name to see their file

In each file, contact information is located under the student’s photo. In the “Courses” tab, midterm grades will be posted with each class. PINs, registration dates/times and other information are on the “Overview” tab. 

Course advisement runs for two weeks. What happens to advisees who missed the course advisement deadline?

• Historically, the majority of students see advisors during the two weeks designated for course advisement. If you want to extend your course advisement appointments into a third week, use your discretion to do so. Bear in mind the priority registration dates and order; if you extend course advisement beyond the second week of advisement, some junior- or senior-level advisees may lose their priority access to registration during that first week.
• Students who received their PINs from you may access Banner registration at their assigned date/time during the first week of priority registration.
• Students who did not connect with you are able to register starting the second week of priority registration (starting Monday Nov. 11), but must email the advising office with a draft of their first choice and alternate courses. We will reply with their PIN and copy the first advisor. Please do not send an advisee to the advising office for a PIN prior to Nov. 11.
• Students who neither receive nor request a PIN are able to register during the course adjustment phase of registration. Course Adjustment begins Nov. 18. A PIN is NOT required during this phase. Students may contact Academic Advising if they need further assistance. We encourage students to reach out to you for guidance on their course selection, regardless of their timing. Continued outreach to advisees and encouraging registration activity gives us a better sense of our enrollment picture.
• Questions about advising, call the academic advising office at 518-564-2080 or email [email protected]. Questions about registration, call the registrar’s office, 518-564-2100, or email: [email protected].

Undergraduate (main campus) registration opens by class level accordingly:

• Senior (85+ cr.)
• Junior upper level (71–84.99 cr.)
• Junior lower level (57–70.99 cr)
• Sophomore upper level (43–56.99 cr.)
• Sophomore lower level (28–42.99 cr.)
• First-year upper level (14–27.99 cr)
• First-year lower level (0–13.99 cr)

Registration dates

The college has worked diligently to support students in the pandemic era to succeed in the classroom and engage with services and opportunities across the broader campus. Still, some students may be distracted and disengaged. In many cases their struggles predate the start of the semester. In other cases, students may be feeling new challenges and looking for answers as to the best course of action.

It is important for students to know realistically if course withdrawal would be best under the circumstances (e.g., no reasonable way of passing the course) or if being offered latitude and flexibility wherever practicable would improve their outlook. As always, encourage the student to consult with the financial aid office to learn if withdrawing from a course or the college might have an impact upon their current and future aid semesters.

IF A STUDENT WISHES TO WITHDRAW FROM A COURSE, “Dropping Courses” in the student menu above, we provide the following simple process that has been put in place.

• Students will be able to withdraw from a course electronically using a fillable form, regardless of where they are located or learning modality
• Visit our registrar’s office web page for the Course Withdrawal Schedule & Procedures (linked below).

IF A STUDENT CONTEMPLATES COLLEGE WITHDRAWAL, we encourage them to reach out to their academic or program advisor to think through the decision.

• Refer them to “College Withdrawal” item in the student menu above. We will follow up with them as warranted, and process their personal withdrawal.
• You are always welcome to consult with the academic advising office if a student is having difficulty with the decision, or if you think that part or all of a student’s semester may be salvaged with some extra supports.

Course Withdrawal Procedures

• For simplified change of major/minor/advisor procedures by email, please refer to the “Change Your Major or Minor” item in the students menu above. You may instead opt to initiate a curriculum change by completing and forwarding our Fillable Change of Major/Minor/Advisor Form.

• Section-by-section Degree Works User Guide
• Use Degree Works in tandem with the student’s transcript: MyPlattsburgh > Faculty > Student Information > Student Transcript
• Address questions about Degree Works to [email protected]
• Academic College Catalog
• The registrar’s dates and forms page, for credit overload, deviation requests, grade irregularity, permission for off-campus study, and more
• Career Development Center, if advisees need assistance with job search strategies, resume writing, interviewing, or exploration into majors