<p>Are the students eventually assigned a one-on-one advisor? During Bama Bound, my son was hoping to have an advisor to consult with schedule and registration, but it didn’t happen. He said there were professors available in the computer room during registration to answer any questions. If he has a question about his schedule over the summer, who does he call up to ask? Does the student have to take the initiative and choose a faculty member as an advisor?</p>
<p>After students officially declare a major (usually their sophomore year), they are assigned an adviser. Or, you could do what my son did. He knew that one of his majors definitely would be economics, so he sat down and e-mail the department’s adviser. Following Bama Bound, he got to meet his adviser, and the two checked over his schedule.</p>
<p>My son is in honors and already knows his major and has a couple of questions particularly since he couldn’t fit in a couple of classes. He opted for a couple of new classes that switched what he had originally planned in meeting with Dr. Jackson. It would be nice if he could get an “official” advisor to go over it. He’s wondering if he doesn’t have the needed amount of “core” classes to avoid future conflicts. Would you recommend e-mailing Honors and/or E. engineering dept?</p>
<p>I do know that some colleges assign advisors based on major, with there being general and pre-med, and pre-law advisors for students who don’t yet have a major (pre-med and pre-law are not majors at UA). In business, we are able to choose whichever advisor we want and can switch at any time. </p>
<p>I have multiple advisors depending on what is being discussed. I have a business advisor to sign off on courses, the department head to discuss my major(s), professors for course advice, and Dr. Halli at the honors college when I’m confused about what I want to do during and after my college career.</p>
<p>Both your sons are more than welcome to call or e-mail whomever they would like to help advise them. Everyone will be glad to help them and should they not be an expert about a certain question, they will direct them to someone who can answer that question.</p>
<p>sophocles…what is your son’s major?</p>
<p>Thank you, I always wonder if we’re jumping ahead of ourselves but with the credits he’ll hopefully get it seems like we’ll have to jump around on the engring flowchart and we’d hate to have things fall through the cracks. I’m still trying to get my thinking around the fact that UA is more “helpful” than what my friends are finding elsewhere.</p>
<p>Mechanical engineering major. Any good faculty advisors that anyone would recommend in ME?</p>
<p>Ok…</p>
<p>I think for mechanical engineering, you contact </p>
<p>Beth Ann Todd</p>
<p>Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Coordinator
Office: 280B Hardaway Hall
Phone: 205/348-1623
Email: <a href=“mailto:btodd@eng.ua.edu”>btodd@eng.ua.edu</a></p>
<p>Education:</p>
<pre><code>* Pennsylvania State University (B.S., Engineering Science)
- University of Virginia (M.S., Applied Mechanics; Ph.D., Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering)
</code></pre>
<p>I would send her an email and ask to be sure. If she’s not the right person, she’ll tell you who is.</p>
<p>Thanks, Mom2!</p>
<p>No advisers in engineering. Another way to say is that all the professors are your advisers. To be honest, the flow chart is your adviser.</p>
<p><a href=“http://me.eng.ua.edu/undergraduate_programs/FlowChart.pdf[/url]”>http://me.eng.ua.edu/undergraduate_programs/FlowChart.pdf</a></p>
<p>To be less flippant, like I said above, you don’t have a single adviser in engineering. For your freshman year, the Freshman Engineering Program will advise you. The advising is sort of “in-house” as you will go through the curriculum in one of those 5 1-hr FEP courses. Once your declare your major, your department will advise you. </p>
<p>Each engineering department has devised an extremely useful flow chart for you graduate in four years. As you can see in the ME flow chart above, it’s pretty informative. For each course, it is explicity stated what its prerequisites and co-requisites are and what if any courses it is a prerequisite or co-requisite for. With this flow chart, you can pretty much advise yourself.</p>
<p>I think this is better than the flow-chart</p>
<p>[Mechanical</a> Engineering Undergraduate Curriculum](<a href=“http://me.eng.ua.edu/undergraduate_programs/curriculum.asp]Mechanical”>http://me.eng.ua.edu/undergraduate_programs/curriculum.asp)</p>
<p>Since Engineering is “sequenced” there isn’t a lot of choices/options out there for a lot of “one on one” advising. That doesn’t mean that there’s no one to ask questions to, but since the courses are sequenced, it’s not like a person has to choose between a bunch of different classes - which happens in other majors. </p>
<p>They don’t really care how you complete your General Ed courses that have nothing to do with Engineering. If you want to take a music class for a fine arts (FA), then fine. If you want to take American Lit instead of British Lit, then fine. An advisor isn’t going to have a preference…it’s the student’s choice.</p>
<p>In some ways it’s like you finish with first grade, you move on to second grade. 
</p>
<p>Sophocles…what kind of questions do you or your son have?</p>
<p>I disagree. The flowchart shows the inter-relationships between all the required courses. Therefore, it becomes easy to see the outcomes of deviations from the model, such as taking up a minor, having pre-college credit, or (<em>gulp</em>) dropping or failing a course. It really does allow you to advise yourself. Furthermore, when you’re finally ready to graduate, it makes fill out your application for graduation a process that will take you at most 5 minutes. And there is no way you’re gonna get a rejected app from the registrar saying you missing a required course because you have your flow chart as evidence to back you up.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>I understand your point, but I’m too ADD and my eyes go in circles trying to understand that flow chart. I would prefer something else showing me one thing at a time where I don’t have to see all those arrows. LOL</p>
<p>I agree with m2ck about all the arrows, luckily S is better at navigating them. When we were at BB we got the engineering advising sheets but it said that when you’re past a certain level math (don’t recall which) you will exist the freshman advising. S is past that coming in, and I’m just curious about where that puts him for advisors. General pool or still freshman advisors? Anyone come across this situation.</p>
<p>Socal…</p>
<p>When kids are past the “basics” and come in with English Comp credits, math credits, etc, they just cross those off and move on to the next level, take a fun class, or include a minor/second major. </p>
<p>If a student with incoming math credits is confident that he won’t forget his math knowledge, and wants to have a “math-less” semester, then he can do so. Some don’t like doing that because they don’t want to forget anything. :)</p>
<p>My older son didn’t take any math his first semester. Then he took Cal II his second semester. </p>
<p>You can ask a freshman advisor a question, but he/she may then direct you elsewhere if needed.</p>
<p>My S is pondering a minor or second major I’ll tell him he may want to look into those areas to see if there is a class that might work. This might be a good time to explore it especially since he couldn’t fit the next math since it conflicted too much with chemistry.</p>
<p>LOL, I never thought about it that way. I will say that ME flowchart is especially messy because their courses are lot more inter-related. Still, they didn’t help things by drawing in those arrows freehand. By comparison, the CHE flowchart is much simpler.</p>
<p><a href=“http://che.eng.ua.edu/undergraduate_programs/flowchart2010.pdf[/url]”>http://che.eng.ua.edu/undergraduate_programs/flowchart2010.pdf</a></p>
<p>And, of course, these are only provided to aid you. You can still talk to a professor for help regarding more complicated issues, like double majors. You’re just not assigned a specific professor as an adviser. At least, that was the case when I was in chemical engineering.</p>
<p>Re…Minor or Second major…</p>
<p>I think it’s kind of hard to fit in a second major with engineering simply because not many of the classes (major and Core) can be replaced with APs/CLEP credits like other majors can. </p>
<p>I’m not sure how a second major works with engineering. If the second major is in College of Arts and Sciences, does that mean that you have to fulfill those Core Req’ts, too? If so, that might be hard to do (unless you have the right AP/Dual/CLEP credits. </p>
<p>However, I think a minor could be doable. Minors are typically 18-22 credits and the student has more freedom as to which classes to take.</p>
<p>What is he thinking of minoring in or double majoring in?</p>
<p>How many AP/Dual/etc credits will he enter UA with?</p>
<p>I had a friend who double majored in Aerospace Engineering and Spanish with a minor in Japanese. He had to get two degrees (BSE and BA) since the core curricula are different.</p>