ESS 501: Golden Bear Advising

Laura Vogt:
Hello, thank you for joining me in The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I’m your host, Laura Vogt, the associate director of marketing and communications in the College of Engineering, and this is our first episode of our fifth season. Today’s guest is Sharon Mueller, the director of advising and policy in Engineering Student Services. Hi, Sharon. I’m so glad that we get to chat today about Golden Bear Advising. And you were my first ghost… My first ghost. My first guest! when we started this five years ago.

Sharon Mueller:
Oh, was I? I don’t even remember that. Thank you for having me. I’m happy to be your first guest for this season of the podcast as well. I am Sharon Mueller. I am the director of advising and policy in Engineering Student Services. I oversee the advising office for the college.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you so much. I know that you do a lot of work for the students and they might not work with you one-on-one because you’re a supervisor for all the other advisors. I think it’s great that the students are going to get to know you a little bit better in this forum.

Sharon Mueller:
I am a little bit invisible, I will say, because I do a lot of behind the scenes work. I go to a lot of campus meetings where I represent the interest of engineering students to make sure that any campus policies that are changed are actually beneficial to engineering students. I’m sort of the representative for students in the college of engineering, particularly undergraduates. But yes, unfortunately, I don’t get to interact so much one-on-one with students anymore. I do miss that.

Laura Vogt:
Like I said, today, we are talking about Golden Bear Advising, which is a mouthful, so we’re shortening it to GBA, which will then match what the campus does as well. Can you tell us a little more about GBA and why it’s important for our students?

Sharon Mueller:
Yeah. GBA is the first part of what the campus calls Golden Bear Experience, which is a plethora of orientation programs for incoming students. GBA is the very first one and the focus of GBA is really to help students choose their classes for the fall semester. GBA is broken up into four modules and they are actually housed in bCourses, which students are actually going to use throughout their careers at Berkeley. bCourses is a learning management tool, so most courses on campus use bCourses to put announcements and assignments and grades.

Sharon Mueller:

This is sort of a first intro for students to bCourses. The four modules are… The first module introduces students to discovery type experiences on campus just to kind of get them excited about the realm of possibility for their time as an undergraduate. The second module introduces students to CalCentral, which is the campus system where students will go for financial aid information, enrolling in classes, bCourses connects there, their bCalendar connects there. The CalCentral is kind of the hub that students use.

Sharon Mueller:
Module two just kind of introduces students to how to look at CalCentral and where to find information. And then module three really focuses on course search and planning in a general way. It introduces students to the class schedule. It introduces students to Schedule Planner, which is a really cool tool that students will use to actually plan out their actual schedule once they have the courses they know they want to take. And then module four is the college specific module. When our students get to module four, it looks really short in GBA, but it actually is…

Sharon Mueller:
There’s a link there that students have to click on and that’s going to actually take them out of TBA and into the College of Engineering Online Orientation. The College of Engineering Online Orientation is about… We expect it’ll take students maybe an hour to two hours just for that, and it will help students determine where they stand as far as their curriculum is right now. So if they might have APs or IBSs or A Levels, or maybe they even took a course or two at a community college, so that will kind of help them determine where they stand at the moment.

Sharon Mueller:
And based upon how they answer questions, GBA will actually spit out a recommended course list for them with a backup list of courses usually as well. And once students complete our online orientation, they will get an email confirmation saying, “Thank you for submitting your course plan.” I should back up and say, as part of that online orientation towards the very end, once they’ve gotten their list of recommended courses, then the students actually enter in what courses they do plan to take in the fall. So they’ll do that.

Sharon Mueller:
They’ll hit submit. It will send an email to them, and it will send an email to their ESS advisor with a summary of everything they did in online orientation. And then they can expect that their advisor will get back to them. Give us some time though, at least a week, because as I’m sure students can imagine, we’re getting hundreds of these. It does take advisors some time to get through them all. But then they’ll get some feedback from their ESS advisor saying, “Hey, this looks great here. Here are some tips and tricks. I might recommend you enroll in…”

Sharon Mueller:
Sometimes there are strategies students might want to use for enrolling in certain courses. If there’s any of that type advice, then advisors will put that in an email. And that kind of opens the communication for students to continue on that with their advisor. And then once they’re done with module four, they go back into bCourses just to finish out GBA. There’s a quick wrap-up page for them and then they’re done.

Laura Vogt:
One of the things that I know doesn’t happen instantly, but I think students expect it too, is that inside of CalCentral, they have a task list, that GBA is one of the tasks. Since it isn’t instantly checked off, what is the process and when should students be concerned if it hasn’t been checked?

Sharon Mueller:
Right. Yes, GBA is going to show up as a task for students pretty soon. For freshmen, they probably don’t see it on their task list yet. But on June 1st, they’re going to see it on their CalCentral task list. They might finish GBA and notice that the task is still there. And that’s because it’s a fairly manual process for us to clear that out of their GBA task list. It could take us three or four days to actually clear that out. I just say, don’t worry about it.

Sharon Mueller:
If you’ve gotten that email with a PDF of your actions that you took in online orientation, you are done. It’s just going to take us a few days to actually clear that off of your task list and noted as completed.

Laura Vogt:
What are the important dates that are first year and transfer students need to keep in mind?

Sharon Mueller:
GBA goes live for freshmen on June 1st, so that is very soon.

Laura Vogt:
It’ll be the day that we release this podcast.

Sharon Mueller:
Oh, well, perfect! Then it goes live today, I can say. They should see it on their task list starting on June 1st, and they have until June 22nd to finish it. They have three weeks to get through it. For transfer students, it’s going to show up on their CalCentral on June 15th and transfer students have until June 27th. So transfer students only have two weeks to finish GBA.

Laura Vogt:
Is there a benefit to finishing early and later?

Sharon Mueller:
I think the benefit might just be that you might get a response from your advisor a little sooner. Some advisers actually kind of do all these at one time. They might save them for a certain day, so you might not hear back right away. Some advisors like to kind of get through them as they come in as much as possible. There’s not a particular benefit. But if there’s going to be a lot of back and forth with your advisor, the sooner you get it in, the better, just because it allows more time for those conversations to happen.

Sharon Mueller:
It would allow you more time to make an appointment with your advisor. Advisors can get booked as GBA is kind of winding down because students do have a lot of questions or they want to follow-up. I guess, I would encourage students to do it as soon as they feel like they have a good space and time to do it. I just want to encourage students, don’t panic. This is not final. You can put your list of courses and then the next day change your mind. And that’s okay.

Sharon Mueller:
You can actually go through and resubmit your schedule, although it’s not really necessary unless you’re changing something significant. Let’s say you at first said, “I want to take math 1B.” And then a week later, you’re like, “Eh, I think I want to take math 1A instead,” that would be something you’d want to tell your advisor. But if you’re just changing your reading and composition course from English R1A to comparative literature R1A, that’s not really something you would have to tell your advisor.

Sharon Mueller:
It’s just really if you’re changing the course and actually that changes the requirement that course is fulfilling, or maybe it changes co-requisites and prerequisites. Students can submit more than once. The advisor will actually review the most recent submission, but they don’t have to if it’s a small change. I just want to reassure them that it’s not set in stone. Don’t worry if you’re not sure about what you’re submitting. Go ahead and do it. That’s just the start of the conversation.

Laura Vogt:
When students submit their course plan, you’re not submitting a specific schedule like, “I’m taking math 1A on Tuesdays at 10:00.” You’re not doing that granular, correct?

Sharon Mueller:
We are not. Yes, thank you. That’s a really good point. Students will do that for themselves in Schedule Planner once they’ve chosen the courses they’re going to take. We don’t need to know any of that. We just want to know the course. We don’t need to know whether it’s online, in person, any of that. We just need to know the course. We don’t need to know when you’re taking it. When you’re filling it out, all we need you to say is math 1A for four units, or chemistry 1A for three units.

Sharon Mueller:
We just want to know what course it is. It doesn’t matter to us what time it is.

Laura Vogt:
Many of the upper division courses, I assume that there might be only like one section of the upper division courses. But definitely for lower division courses, they have more sections available to choose from.

Sharon Mueller:
Right. The freshmen will be enrolling in lower division courses. Those are the courses numbered one to 99. Those are for freshmen and sophomore students. And yes, a lot of those courses like math 1A probably has two or three lectures times available to them. It’s true that some of our transfer students will be jumping into upper division courses. And for a lot of those courses, there’s only one time offered. Freshmen may have a few more choices with some of the math and physics.

Sharon Mueller:
When they get to the engineering courses, there might only be one lecture time available. But yes, you’re absolutely right that we just need to know the course. We don’t need to know the details. We don’t need to know their actual day-to-day schedule.

Laura Vogt:
For the courses that you are suggesting students take along with the alternates, what was the process you used to come up with that list?

Sharon Mueller:
We have looked at prerequisites. We have ensured that as of this moment, the courses are being offered in the fall. It’s a logic driven program, which is why we take students out of bCourses because we couldn’t build it within bCourses. When I say we, I mean our programmer. It was not me. Actually, Laura, you were very involved in that too. It’s a very complex logic driven program. Depending upon how students answer the questions, the courses that are recommended are based upon those answers.

Sharon Mueller:
It’s really important that students either already know their exam scores or at least have a good guess of what their exam scores are going to be and base their answers upon that. Or if they’ve taken a course at a California community college, for instance, they can check assist.org to see what, if anything, that course satisfies at Berkeley so that they know, “Oh, okay. I actually did math 1A at a California community college.” It’s solely based upon their answers. We at this moment do not have any formal records for them in the college of engineering.

Sharon Mueller:
I know that they’re in the process of sending in transcripts and so forth. We won’t have access to that. The GBA is solely based upon how they’re answering the questions. We’re relying on those answers being accurate.

Laura Vogt:
And that’s the same for transfer students where you might feel like you already gave us some of this information, but the systems aren’t actually talking yet, so you’re going to have to give us that information again.

Sharon Mueller:
That’s right. It actually takes quite a long time for our central evaluation unit to get all those transcripts into our system, get all of those exam scores into our system. We actually won’t see any of that data until very late in the fall semester, maybe not even until the beginning of the spring semester. So same thing for transfer students, they’re going to need to know what the courses they took are satisfying. The best way to do that is on assist.org if they went to a California community college.

Sharon Mueller:
If they did not go to a California community college or took a few courses outside of a California community college, then they’re going to work… They’re going to kind of make their best guests when they do GBA, but officially they’re going to work with their ESS advisor this summer to actually get those courses officially evaluated. So that hopefully by the time they register in July, they know what they should be registering for.

Laura Vogt:
If students are going through the process, if they have any questions or concerns, what’s their best means of getting support?

Sharon Mueller:
I would say, I don’t want students to get too wrapped up in, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I should do math 1A or math 1B.” Just go ahead and submit something, because they can’t actually make an appointment with their ESS advisor until they have submitted their course plan. They don’t actually have access to the appointment system until they have finished GBA. And then I would say, don’t make an appointment with your advisor right away.

Sharon Mueller:
Give your advisor some time to review your schedule and get back to you, and then go ahead and make an appointment and you can kind of work with your advisor to decide, should I take that math course? Should I take physics, or should I take chemistry? Then you can kind of work through all the nuances of it. I want students to kind of look at GPA as maybe a starting point to start that conversation.

Sharon Mueller:
Now, if they have technical difficulties, let’s say they get to module four of GBA and they click on the link and they’re not getting access to our online orientation, or they’re getting an error message then absolutely they should reach out to ess@berkeley.edu. That is the main Engineering Student Services email address. So ess@berkeley.edu. Send an email there. Explain the challenge you’re having accessing the College of Engineering Online Orientation, and we’ll get on it and try to resolve that.

Sharon Mueller:
Any kind of technical difficulties, go ahead and please do report those as soon as possible so we have some time to figure out what the issue is. But if you’re just kind of worried about which courses you’re choosing, please don’t worry about it. Go ahead and submit and we’ll talk about it from there.

Laura Vogt:
Once students are able to actually contact their advisors, what’s the process? How do they make appointments? Should they just be emailing? Should they be calling? Please don’t call. We’re not in the office.

Sharon Mueller:
At the moment… That’s right. At the moment, we’re still working remotely. Just on that topic, we are going to be in a hybrid work schedule in the fall, so students will have access to their advisors either in-person or online, depending on their preference, depending on the student’s preference. So yes, we are not at our phones at the moment. But in that email that students get with the confirmation that they’ve completed the College of Engineering Online Orientation, in that email are actually instructions on how to make an appointment with their ESS advisor.

Laura Vogt:
Let’s talk about a little bit more about how different GBA is for freshmen and transfer students.

Sharon Mueller:
Yeah. The beginning is quite similar, sort of an introduction to university requirements, Berkeley requirements, college requirements, major requirements. Where it does differ is when we get to the logic part. The first year students will be mostly answering questions about exam scores or community college coursework they may or may not have taken. And that’s going to be very focused on math, physics, chemistry.

Sharon Mueller:
The transfer students have already finished the math they need for their major, or at least the lower division math, the lower division physics and chemistry they need for their major, so we actually don’t ask them those questions. For the transfer students, we’re asking more about the engineering courses they may have already fulfilled. For transfer students, they’ll really need to be aware of having their transcripts in front of them, having a assist.org ready, so that they can pretty fluidly answer those questions.

Sharon Mueller:
For the freshmen, because a lot of students on campus are trying to get in to those math, physics, chemistry courses, we give them alternative courses. We just want to make sure that students have a full schedule, which in the college of engineering means that students need to be in at least 12 units every semester. No more than 20.5, although I would suggest that new students stay far away from 20.5 and stay closer to 12 or 16.

Sharon Mueller:
We’ve given alternative courses for freshmen when there were options, just so that in case a course is totally full or in case they decide, “I don’t think I actually want to take that course this semester. Maybe I’ll try one of the options,” those are there for students to choose from, just to give them more choices, just because scheduling can be a little more complicated when you’re competing with a lot of other students on campus. With the transfer students, they’re often taking the engineering courses.

Sharon Mueller:
We have a little more control over enrollment in those courses, the engineering departments do. For the transfer students, we didn’t really recommend backup courses. However, if a transfer student is concerned or it looks like, “Oh, geez, this course is starting to fill up. I’m kind of worried, or the waitlist is filling up. I’m worried I won’t get into it,” then they can talk to their ESS advisor and say, “Well, is there anything else I could enroll in as a backup, just in case?” That’s certainly something they can talk to their ESS advisor about.

Laura Vogt:
And for our first year students, does GBA give any guidance on if you’ve taken a AP test for math, which math class you should sign up for this first year?

Sharon Mueller:
Yes, it does. Yes. We ask questions about all and any exams they’ve taken. As part of that, we’ll let them know what they have fulfilled so that they can very clearly see that, “Oh, I got a five on the calculus BC AP exam, which means in the college of engineering, I fulfilled math 1A and math 1B.” One thing I want to be really clear about is that not all colleges on the Berkeley campus count exams the same way. So here’s a very common misunderstanding.

Sharon Mueller:
Students in the College of Letters and Science can actually AP out of both semesters of reading and composition, so reading and composition part a and reading and composition part B. In the College of Engineering, no matter what score you got on an exam, you must take reading and composition part B. We do not take exam scores for reading and composition part B. I just want to caution students that they might have a friend in a different college and maybe their friend says, “Oh, but I got this score and I don’t have to do these requirements.”

Sharon Mueller:
It’s different for every college. When students go through GBA, that will be on there. It’s actually, just to point out if they want to look at it ahead of time, it’s on our website too, coesandbox.berkeley.edu/exams. And that will take them straight to our exams page, which shows them this score does this for you. Now, I also want to point out that even if they’ve AP’d out of something, they might decide they want to take it. Maybe we have a bioengineering student who may or may not want to go to medical school and they want to leave their options open.

Sharon Mueller:
So let’s say they scored high enough on an exam to get out of general chemistry or chemistry 1A and 1AL, the first semester of general chemistry. They might decide, “Well, actually I think I’m going to take that course because I think I might want to pursue medical school, or at least I want to leave my options open.” So it might be something they decide to take and that’s something they can talk to their ESS advisor about too. There is information on the Berkeley Career Center website about pre-med requirements and how best to fulfill them at Berkeley.

Sharon Mueller:
They might want to peruse that information too just to kind of decide for themselves, “Actually, I’m just going to take that course just because I just…” The point is, just because you examed out of it, you can still take the course at Berkeley.

Laura Vogt:
Since we talked a little bit there about chemistry 1A and 1AL, those you have to register for separately. Are there very many courses like that, where the lab and the lecture aren’t combined?

Sharon Mueller:
I know. That’s actually very curious because some courses with labs, you’re just registering for one course. And when you register for the lecture during the enrollment process, you actually get prompted to pick a lab. It’s just part of all one course. But there are courses like chemistry 1A and 1AL where you actually register separately for the lecture and the lab. Same with like there’s a material science course that all the material science students take, all the nuclear engineering students take, and it’s called material science in engineering 45 and 45L.

Sharon Mueller:
So that’s another one where you have to register for two different courses in order to get the full package. If a student’s major requires chemistry 1A and 1AL, that means they’re actually enrolling in two different things. But not all courses are like that. It’s actually more common for the lab to be part of the course.

Laura Vogt:
I’m not wrong to think that those ones stand out more.

Sharon Mueller:
Yeah. They do stand out more. Yes, definitely.

Laura Vogt:
I know a lot of students, especially our first year since they’re just finishing up high school, probably are still at home with their parents or guardians and might be going through this entire GBA process with them. If those parents or guardians want to get more information and send emails or contact advisors, are we going to be able to work with them, or is there a policy about working with the parents?

Sharon Mueller:
There is. Yeah, thank you for this question. We actually cannot communicate with anyone except the student when it comes to the student’s record or plans. We can talk in very general terms to parents and guardians. Basically we can reiterate for them anything that’s on our website. But when it comes to talking about a specific student situation, we can only discuss that with the student. We understand parents may have questions. Unfortunately, their students are going to have to send those in.

Sharon Mueller:
I know with my own daughter, she’s like, “I can handle it. I don’t need to know that.” Of course, I’m badgering her, but I know that they can’t talk to me about any of this. I just keep hounding her to please email with this question. So I get it. I’m a parent of a college student too, but we really cannot talk to parents about specific situations due to FERPA, which is a confidentiality. Berkeley has actually very strict confidentiality policies that are even stricter than FERPA. We just can’t. We just can’t talk to parents.

Sharon Mueller:
The only exception would be is if the student signed a waiver and allowed us to talk to parents. And even in that waiver, we have to be really specific about what kinds of things they want us to talk to their family about. But yeah, so the answer, sorry parents, is no on that one.

Laura Vogt:
One of the things we had happened a few years ago for GBA was a student finished in like three minutes. Might’ve been four. And when the advisor reached out to them and was like, “Hey, you seem to finish GBA really fast,” the student response was, “Oh, my brother did this a couple of years ago. I already know what I need to know.”

Sharon Mueller:
Oh!

Laura Vogt:
But policies change, processes change, course offerings change.

Sharon Mueller:
Curriculum changes. Yeah, yeah. A lot of things change.

Laura Vogt:
We’ve actually contacted students who finished fast and ask them to go back through.

Sharon Mueller:
Yeah. Here’s a little secret, we actually can see that. Sometimes it’s really obvious because sometimes a student will ask a question that has probably been said in online orientation five times in like big bold letters. We’re like, “Hmm, I’m going to see how long it took that student to finish all my orientation.” So yeah, just as fair warning, we can’t actually see that. We don’t create these things just because it’s super fun for us. We create these things because we think there’s some really valuable information we want students to know.

Sharon Mueller:
It is a lot of information. I just want to say a lot of it is reiterated on our website, and we’re not trying to give them too much information. We’re just trying to give them enough information to understand what are requirements, what are units, how many courses should I enroll in, and what should I enroll in? We’re just trying to give them kind of the basics so that they can enroll in their first semester classes. So please watch the videos, read through it. Even if you can’t remember every detail, that’s okay.

Sharon Mueller:
As long as you kind of remember, “Oh, wait, I kind of remember something about that,” then you can always look for it on our website. But yes, please do kind of take your time going through it.

Laura Vogt:
This is going to stay up through the summer. So if you want to go back and revisit or reread the information.

Sharon Mueller:
It’ll still be there, yes.

Laura Vogt:
Sharon, is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you wanted to add?

Sharon Mueller:
Just that I’m really excited. We have a big freshman class coming in. We’re super excited about our new students. Unfortunately, we’re not going to get to meet them in person at Golden Bear Orientation in August because that’s actually… At least our portion is going to be online. That’s true for all colleges, but we will certainly see them in Engineering Student Services, in 230 Bechtel. We’ll see them online in appointments. I just want students to know that I am available if they need to escalate anything or they’re concerned.

Sharon Mueller:
Maybe they haven’t heard back from their advisor in a while. I will say advisors get dozens and dozens of emails every day from students and many of them take quite a while to respond to because they have to research that particular student’s record. I just ask for patience for students, especially during super busy times at the beginning of the semester or at the end of the semester. Those are like super busy times for us, or around midterms. It might take a little longer for their advisor to get back to them. Students are always welcome to email me as well.

Sharon Mueller:
My email is… Maybe we can put it on the website, Laura, when we post the podcast, but I’ll say it now too. It’s smueller, so that’s S-M-U-E-L-L-E-R@berkeley.edu. I just want to let students know they can always reach out to me as well. And welcome. We’re excited to meet you.

Laura Vogt:
Sharon, thank you so much for being here today. I can’t believe that GBA starts today for our first-year students and our transfer students in a couple of weeks. And thank you everyone for tuning in. We want to make sure that you keep checking your Berkeley email. Each Monday or Tuesday when there’s a holiday throughout the summer, we’ll be sending a newsletter and releasing a podcast. Starting today, you’ll be receiving a weekly newsletter with Sharon as my partner on the newsletter team.

Laura Vogt:
During the summer, it’s going to be shorter, advertising the newest podcast and highlighting resources available. During the year, it’s expanded and it includes deadlines, events, workshops, job and internship opportunities, research opportunities, and so much more. And the email comes from ess@berkeley.edu.

Sharon Mueller:
Laura, since… Can I just ask? Since this is our first podcast, do you mind just kind of giving students a little preview of other podcasts that you’re planning this summer? Because I looked at your schedule and there are going to be some great podcasts for our new students. Just maybe as a teaser for what’s coming soon.

Laura Vogt:
Sure. This summer we’ve got quite a few podcasts that I’m actually really excited about. Some of them we haven’t done before or with new topics. We’re going to have students here to talk about their… First year students and transfer students to talk about their first experiences as a Berkeley engineer, what it meant to them, how they chose classes. We’ll have students sharing their registration tips, how they got involved in student organizations and competition teams.

Laura Vogt:
And we’ll be learning more about the resources available on campus, that include tutoring and other support services, financial aid, campus partners like the career center and the libraries, and so much more. We’ve got 15 podcasts we’re doing this summer. And if you have a topic or a question that you would like to have addressed in one of our podcasts, please send us an email. Again, the email address is ess@berkeley.edu.

Laura Vogt:
And if you’re looking for any of the links that we’ve talked about today in the podcast, it’s on the podcast page on our website and that’s coesandbox.berkeley.edu/podcast, or excuse me, /esspodcast. Thank you so much for listening today, and I’m really excited to get to know all of our new incoming freshmen and transfer students this summer. Looking forward to advertising these exciting workshops and events that we have and giving you an amazing experience as a Berkeley engineer. I’m just really looking forward to this year.

Sharon Mueller:
Me too. We have been stuck in our homes for a long time, not seeing each other, not seeing students. I’m really excited to get back on campus again.

Laura Vogt:
I know. I used to tape all the podcasts like in person with fancy microphones.

Sharon Mueller:
That’s right. And here I am in my house and there you are in your house looking at each other on a screen.

Laura Vogt:
Strangely we’re both in our kitchens. It’s all lovely.

Sharon Mueller:
Yes, we are. Clean part of the kitchen.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you everyone for tuning into The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I look forward to podcasting with you next week. Thank you.