Assorted advising advice for those advising CJ majors
A few important websites:
1. Degree Navigator/DN (classified courses): http://dnadvisor.rutgers.edu/
2. CJ major requirements: http://sociology.camden.rutgers.edu/major.htm#cjmaj
3. Our CJ advising page for students with some pointers: http://sociology.camden.rutgers.edu/advising-cj.htm
4. Rutgers transcripts to see actual transcripts): https://www.acs.rutgers.edu/admgrades
5. Artsys (to look up transfer courses on occasion): https://www.njtransfer.org/artweb/chgri.cgi
Some known problems in DN:
1. the total credits reported by DN is often incorrect, especially for transfer students (solution: look up transcripts at: https://www.acs.rutgers.edu/admgrades to get correct count) For example, the below student actually has 120 credits, but DN shows her as having only 117, which might cause an advisor to erroneously tell her to take an additional course. This is true for all majors. I have seen the count off by nine credits.
2. The CJ Internship class (202:404) is counted
incorrectly by DN if the student takes the 6-credit option (solution:
make sure there are four distinct courses listed under CJ
Requirement V2: CJ Electives). There is a note that DN displays for all students
under Condition N10: "(Applies to all requirements)Service/Internship Criminal
Justice 50:202:404 - only 3 credits may be applied toward major" but some students
don't actually read this or other contracts.
For example, the following student has only taken three electives, but DN counts her as fulfilling the requirement because it miscounts her 6-credit internship as two courses. The first graphic shows the short report and the second shows the full report.
Short report solution: count to see that four courses are listed. Only three are listed under requirement V2, so the student needs another elective. Not catching this could mean the student has to postpone graduation to meet the requirements.
Full Report solution: count to see that four courses are listed. Only three are listed here, so the student needs another elective. Notice the note from Nancy Gulick; though it shows up, it does not prevent DN from counting the course. That note only appears for students who have taken the 6-credit option and may not show up for all of them as she may be annotating them on a case-by-case basis.
3. Waived courses (usually 202:204 [courts] or 202:202 [policing]) are ones where we waive the requirement that students take a particular 200-level core courses if they have already taken two specific courses at a local community college that together constitute the equivalent of one of our courses (see below for examples). Waived courses do not show on DN unless they have been coded (solution: students who were granted waivers prior to the implementation of DN have all been told to retain signed checksheets with signoffs or you may look for waivers, as detailed below). Some have been coded so they pose no problem as they are reflected in DN, but there are some students who have not yet been coded. For example, though this student has met the 202:204 requirement by taking two courses at CCC, she is shown as lacking one 200-level process course (she received credit for 202:203 but the waiver has not yet been coded for her 202:204 course) so an advisor might mistakenly tell her to take one of those courses.
There is no way for you to know about uncoded waivers unless the student alerts
you or you look for them on your own. If a transfer student has never seen
a departmental advisor, you should look for potential waivers, but they are
expected to notify us after their first appointment with a departmental
advisor. To look for potential waivers, eyeball their transcripts for the
following sets of courses:
-CCC: waive 202:204 (Courts & Criminal Law) for those who have
any two of the following: Legal
Systems, Criminal
Law, or Criminal
Procedure
-BCC: waive 202:204 (Courts & Criminal Law) for those who have
Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure
-GCC: waive 202:202 (Police & Policing) for those who have taken Principles
of Law Enforcement and one of the
following: Police
Org and Adm, or Pol Superv and Pers Mgt, or Cont
Issues in Law Enforcement.
For example, a quick glance at the following student's CCC courses on her transcript shows two EC courses, Legal Systems and Criminal Law. Those two combine to entitle her to a waiver of our 202:204 course. This is by far the most common waiver we grant. If you encounter a student who is eligible for a waiver or who has one that has not yet been coded into DN, let the chair or director know so one of them can code it into the student's permanent record.
4. Credit mistakenly given for 920:313 (Theories of Crime & Delinquency). This course does not transfer in from community colleges, but it continues to show up as such. To look for this, check the info listed for the course on DN. It should look like: 50:920:313 (3, Fall 2006, B) with a semester and grade rather than having TR in place of the semester. If credit for 920:313 has been given for a community college course (note that it is possible to receive equivalent credit for a course taken at a four-year college), then a Departmental Evaluation of Credit form should be filed with the registrar to request a change from credit for 920:313 to credit for 202:207 (our lower division criminology course).
5. Uncoded course substitutions and requested waivers not shown. One way to check for uncoded course substitions and requested waivers is to click on "notes" under My Account, which shows any notes, such as the following course substitution granted by Jane.
Below is a note regarding a course waiver request note I just completed for the student discussed above who had taken the two CCC courses. I added the note by clicking on the "Add Note" button then entering it and checking the "visible to student" box before saving it (only check the box if you wish the note to be visible to the student; otherwise, it can be seen only by any advisor who accesses the record). Advisors should not be authorizing course substitutions; only the chair should do that. You can include other notes in this section, however, such as information you wish to have access to at future advising sessions (e.g., noting that you have requested that a possible waiver be coded). Always include your name on any notes you add.
I then coded the waiver
into DN so that it's now a permanent part of the particular student's record
so you can see how a coded waiver works. Notice that the below segment shows
her as requiring only 21 credits (rather than 24) for requirement V1 and only
3 credits in the 200-level process courses (rather than 6). Also, my note actually
appears in the DN full report printout whereas notes added using the "add
notes" feature
can only be accessed by clicking on the appropriate button while in DN. I do
not include directions for coding permanent changes here; see the director
or chair for those requests.
6. Planned courses counted as completed. This is why I ask my advisees to bring a full report versus a short report. To illustrate, consider the following student's printout that was brought to me a student who looks like he's completed the requirements to graduate:
I was about ready to sign off on him until I ran a full report just in case he used the "planned" courses option. Lo and behold, look at requirement V3:
Oops! He hasn't yet taken that Spanish course. It's just planned! When I contacted the advising office to get this fixed, I was told "I think safeguards that you build into the final advising session can eliminate the planned courses problem." In other words, we're on our own. My solution is to require full reports for advising sessions. The advising office prefers that short reports be used for the final degree signoff to minimize the stack of paper in their offices, so you could either ask students to bring both to their final advising session or run DN for those students who are graduating and generate the full reports yourself without printing them just to eyeball for planned courses (also indicated by a yellow dot). I've seen a number of these "planned courses problems" and they are confusing to both students and advisors.
7. CJ major with a Soc Minor:
DN cannot figure out how to apply courses across programs, so every student
with a major in CJ will automatically be given credit for a Soc minor if they
add it. To check to see if a CJ major has actually completed a Soc minor, look
for Soc or Anthro courses at the end of the DN full report in the following
four sections (not all of which will appear for every student):
1. Unused Courses for this Program
2. Courses Do Not Apply for this Program
3. Unused Courses for this Program - Repeated Courses
4. Credit Limit Reached
For example, a quick persusal of the following student's "Courses Do Not Apply for this Program" shows that he has quite a number of Soc and Anthro courses that he can apply to a minor. In fact, he has almost enough for a double major:
None of the courses in the above four sections were used toward the CJ major so they are fair game. We require four courses above and beyond the CJ major for a Soc minor. Informally, we insist that at least three of them be bona fide Soc courses not simply surplus CJ courses. The above student has three anthro courses that are fair game as well as three Soc ones, so the Soc minor is complete. Very rarely, you might find a student who has taken a Soc or Anthro course that is applied to his/her gen ed requirements but not towards the CJ major, making it eligible for the Soc minor. I have seen this with Communication, for example, which is used to satisfy the gen ed writing intensive requirement but can also be used for the Soc minor. These cases are quite rare, but might cause you to glance in the gen ed section for stray Soc or Anthro courses.
8. Soc major with a CJ minor:
See the above section, but instead look for CJ courses in the bottom four sections. We require four CJ courses above and beyond those used to satisfy the Soc major. All 202 courses count and the follow six Soc ones do, too: 208, 217, 280, 315, 329, and 344. Sometimes, one or more of the six courses is used by DN to fulfill Soc major requirements since they are all suitable Soc electives. You can quickly exchange them between programs, for example, bringing 920:329 (or any of the other five) down from the Soc major into the minor and moving another Soc or Anthro class from the unused courses at the bottom of the DN printout into its place.
9. Double major in Soc and CJ
The double major in Soc and CJ was not designed for the faint of heart. A popular option with our students, it is an advising nightmare. DN cannot handle the combination, so it cannot be used at all in advising these students. I have tried many times to work a system that would require only eyeballing a DN printout but none are satisfactory. Instead, I created a double major checksheet, available at: http://sociology.camden.rutgers.edu/Double_major_Form.pdf. If you begin filling one out, you can ask the student to bring it in the future appointment because it is a bit time consuming to complete. We are looking into making the double major a third major offered by our department, so DN may work some time in the future. I find it easier to work off the transcripts rather than DN when completing a double major checksheet because the course names are also listed.
One last cautionary note that applies to all students in all majors:
When advising transfer students, check to see what courses they have been given equivalent credit for to be sure they are not registering for courses here for which they have already received equivalent credit. We have had instances of students who somehow enroll for our introductory course (202:201) yet have already been given credit for it because they took an equivalent course at a community college that transferred in as 202:201. This happens because the course "names" are different at each school and students are not always vigilant. Using DN will help prevent this because the courses are classified based on equivalent course numbers!
Also, our dept. homepage always has links
to the current (and often prospective) schedule of dept courses, the two-year
schedule of required courses, relevant online forms, etc., as well as to both
the student and faculty entry points for DN. There is also always specific
preregistration info in the current newsletter. The advising list is also there,
so I always refer students to that page to begin.
last updated: October 31, 2007