Advising, Registration, and General Course Information

Advising

Faculty Advisor

When you formally declare Communication as your major, you are assigned a Faculty Advisor. You must meet with your advisor when you register for courses (see REGISTRATION). You will also need your advisor's signature when you add or drop courses, change or add a declared major or minor, declare your intent to graduate, and so on. In addition, you are encouraged to meet with your advisor when you wish to discuss career choices, graduate programs, plans of study, and academic problems o r concerns. The best time to speak with your advisor is during his or her regularly scheduled "office hours." However, you may make specific appointments. Do not assume that your advisor will be available to meet with you at any other time you drop by. Faculty have many teaching, service, and research responsibilities that regularly take them away from their on-campus offices. And even when in their campus offices, faculty may not always be able to interrupt the work they are doing to meet with you. For information on leaving messages for your Faculty Advisor, see CONTACTING FACULTY & STAFF below. Before calling or leaving a message for your advisor for help with a common process (such as having an Add/Drop form signed) you should always check for basic instructions in this guide, as well as checking for notices in the hallway or on your advisor's door. (Keep in mind that each faculty member typically advises between 40 and 60 majors.)

Director of Undergraduate Advising

Professor Jennifer Borda is Director of Undergraduate Advising for the department. She invites you to call or come see her if you still have any unanswered questions or unresolved problems after speaking to your Faculty Advisor. Professor Borda also welcomes your suggestions for improving any aspect of the registration and advising process.

Department Chairperson

Dr. Larry Prelli chairs the department. He invites students to stop by his office, Horton 112B, to discuss any concerns, problems, or suggestions they have about the undergraduate program, or university issues.

Office Staff

Our office manager, Ms. Bonnie Hodgdon, and her staff can give you information about faculty office hours, registration instructions, add/drop instructions, and so forth. The office is located in Horton 112 (862-2292).

Contacting Faculty and Staff

Mail Boxes

Each faculty member has a mail box in the main office (Horton 112). You may leave messages and other items for faculty in their mail boxes during regular business hours.

Phone and Voicemail

You may call and leave messages for faculty and staff via the university's voice mail system. Each person's office phone number is also his/her voice-mail number (see COMMUNICATION FACULTY & STAFF). Three suggestions: 1) If you are leaving a message for a person who does not know you personally, say your name very slowly and clearly, or spell it. 2) Always leave a phone number, and indicate how early or late you can be reached by phone. 3) Before calling to inquire about routine activities (such as having an add/drop form signed) check the Communication Department's hallway and your advisor's door for posted notices. (Remember that several hundred other majors are typically seeking similar information at the same time. The less time that advisors and staff have to spend dispensing readily available generic information, the more time they can spend with you on your unique problems and concerns.) Please note that faculty often receive more phone calls than they can return (especially during registration and add/drop periods). It is often best to call during faculty members' office hours.

E-MAIL

Many faculty can be also be reached via their e-mail addresses, which can be used 24 hours a day to send brief messages and to ask questions that have short answers (see Communication Faculty and Staff).

Registration

Enrolled students may register in the middle of one semester for courses to be taken the following semester. All registration is now done by telephone. The Time & Room Schedule for the next semester will be delivered to each student's mailbox in the MUB. Follow the directions in it for telephone registration. The Registration Access Code (RACs) number required for telephone registration will be given to you by your Faculty Advisor after he/she has approved and signed your proposed schedule. Before your advisor can sign your registration form, you must:

Check the department hallway for your ADVISOR'S EXTENDED OFFICE HOURS for registration. Faculty typically post sign-up sheets for meetings during registration. Write your name in an available slot. (Since each faculty member has to set up appointment with 40-60 students, please do NOT call your advisor to make an appointment, unless you are off-campus for the semester or none of the available time slots is possible for you.)
Retrieve your ACADEMIC FILE from the Communication Department Office (Horton, Room 112).
Update your MAJOR REQUIREMENTS FORM. Include all requested information on completed courses and all information, except for grades, on current enrollments. (Also update your phone numbers, if they have changed.)
Update your GENERAL EDUCATION & FOREIGN LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS FORM (on back of Major Requirements Form). Include all requested information on completed courses and all information, except for grades, on current enrollments.
Prepare a TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE (with alternates) for next semester to discuss with your advisor. If you come to your appointment without having completed these steps, your Faculty Advisor may need to postpone your meeting.

Add/Drop Period

Telephone registration typically ends the day before classes begin. All additional schedule changes for the semester (course Adds and Drops) must be made with a Change of Registration Form (available in the Registrar's Office), which re quires your advisor's signature. If you are submitting an Add/Drop form, and you are unable to come to your advisor's office hours for a signature, you can leave the form in your advisor's mailbox (Room 112). Please attach a very brief note with your form describing the schedule changes you've made and why you've made them. (If you've added or dropped more than 3 classes, you might find it simpler to come to speak with your advisor during office hours.) Indicate a phone number or numbers where your advisor can reach you if he/she has any questions.

General Course Information

Attendance

If you are absent on the first day of class and there is another student present who wants to add the class, you may be dropped from the course. (You must still complete a drop form and obtain a signature from the instructor.) You are expected to attend all class sessions unless you have an emergency and to take the initiative in making up work if you are absent. If a serious illness or a death in the family will result in your missing a lecture, an assignment deadline, or an exam, please follow the university procedures for notifying the Dean's office, which will in turn notify your individual instructors. If you are absent, it is your responsibility to get the notes from a fellow student.

Course Papers

Unless you are given other instructions by a professor, assume that all course papers should be:

Typed in dark, easy-to-read print (10-12 characters per inch) on good quality white paper (8 1/2' x 11")
Double-spaced with 1" margins a ll around and page numbers on each page
Stapled in the upper-left hand corner (no paper clips or other fasteners). Proofread and revise your writing (spelling, grammar, and style always "count"). Always back up your computer work. If you use fan-fold computer paper, separate the pages. See that your name is on the paper. Keep a copy of your paper for your files until your original is returned by the instructor.

Academic Honesty

The work you hand in to professors must be your own. UNH does not tolerate plagiarism, cheating on exams, or receiving unauthorized help on out-of-class work. Plagiarism means claiming someone else's words or ideas as your own. If you make use of someone else's ideas anywhere in your papers, provide the source references. Always put quotation marks around direct quotes, but remember that paraphrasing does not relieve you of the responsibility of referencing the source of an idea. ( Simply listing a book or article in a bibliography is also insufficient, unless it is clear within the paper which ideas are yours and which ideas are derived from specified others.) Remember, too, that you are not allowed to hand in the same paper for m ore than one course (unless you are doing a double project that is approved by both instructors). You are also not allowed to share the research or writing with another person unless you receive explicit permission from the instructor to work on an expanded joint project. (See the university's Student Rights and Rules for more examples of academic dishonesty.) If a professor believes that a student has engaged in academic dishonesty, the professor will first discuss this with the student informally and attempt to resolve the issue in a mutually acceptable manner. A plagiarized paper will typically lead to an F (0 points) on the assignment, a possible doubling of the weight of the failed assignment, and a potential F in the course. When notified, the College Dean may decide to take further action (including suspension or expulsion from the university). If a student decides to refute a dishonesty accusation and/or appeal the penalty imposed by the instructor, the Department Chairperson will appoint an ad hoc faculty committee to hear testimony from both the faculty member and the student and to recommend sanctions is cases of proven academic misconduct. Recommended sanctions may be lighter or heavier than those initially imposed by the professor. (See UNH's Student Rights and Rules publication and your Faculty Advisor for more information.)

Course Problems

If you have any serious difficulties with a course, you should see your instructor during his/her office hours or set up an appointment for a different time. (Although it's often possible to ask instructors a quick question immediately before or after class, these are not usually the best times to have serious, detailed conversations.) You may also draw on the suggestions of your Faculty Advisor, the Department Chairperson, and/or the Director of Undergraduate Advising (See ADVISING section). If you feel you need improvement in general academic skills, we recommend the Center for Academic Resources in Wolff House (adjacent to the Health Services Center, M-W, 8-8; Th & Fri, 8-4:30), which offers instruction in note-taking, textbook reading, time management, exam preparation and strategies, writing skills, and organizational strategies. Call 862-3698 for an appointment or for the schedule of drop-in tutoring sessions. If you need help with writing contact the UNH Writing Center (Ham Smith, Room 7). Call 862-3272 for an appointment. The center offers free consultations on all aspects of writing, including subject choice, research, composing processes, genre, organization, style, grammar and conventions, and punctuation and spelling. For real-time answers to questions on grammar and form, contact the UNH Writing Center.