Services

Academic advising – School of Chemical Engineering

The School of Chemical Engineering offers academic guidance to every student at the school.

Goals for academic advising

Each student should feel like an important member of university community. Through academic advising we communicate, that the school is interested in students and their studies, and support them in studies as well in career planning.

This objective is achieved through the goals set for academic advising:

To help new students to get to know and feel connected with their new study environment, university community and degree programme, and to promote communication between students and academic staff.
To monitor and support the smooth progress of students in their studies.
To discuss with students about their personal study plan and to provide guidance and study motivation.
To make students feel that others are interested in their studies and that there are a variety of different forms of support and guidance available to them.
To provide support and guidance for career planning.
To identify problems and challenges in good time and to intervene to help solve them.

At CHEM we care!

The basic duties of an academic advisor include:

short meeting during the student’s first stage of studies, usually during the orientation week
personal meeting (October/November)
monitoring of autumn term studies (February/March)
personal meeting (March/April)
monitoring of spring term studies (June–September)

Instructions for academic advising

Akateemisen ohjauksen malli kandidaattiohjelmassa (in Finnish)

1002.93 K

Akateemisen ohjauksen malli DI-ohjelmassa

921.49 K

Practical arrangements for academic advising meetings

In the first year of studies, academic advising is a compulsory part of the following courses:

Bachelor's Programme in Chemical Engineering: CHEM-A1000 University student’s ABC course
Master's Programme in Chemical, Biochemical and Materials Engineering: CHEM-E0105 Academic Learning Community course

For the students under their care, academic advisors arrange at least two personal meetings during the first year of studies.

The academic advisor invites the student to the meetings, but it is also worth encouraging the student to request meetings when needed. It is good to remind the student about this in the first meeting and to let them know when you are available and how to get hold of you. If desired, the academic advisor can arrange meetings and activities with their whole group.

A natural and relatively easy way to agree on meetings is with email or Student Success Hub (note that the student interface is called MyStudies). It is always worth starting the email heading with: "From your academic advisor". When inviting students to the meeting or reminding them about the meeting, it is important to explain the purpose of the meeting and how you would like the students to prepare for it.

When arranging the meetings, it is good to be aware of the students’ model timetables (can be found in the Student guide, e.g. BSc programme). When timing the meetings, also make sure you take into account examination periods and any mid-term exams. For the ‘Academic Learning Community’ course, which is common to all MSc programmes, a brief weekly time has been reserved in the timetable which can be used for meetings if desired.

During the first meeting, make preliminary agreements already for the following meeting. Meetings agreed face-to-face are more often stuck to.

Academic advisors have the option of using a small amount of money on the meetings. At the moment, the budget is €10 / student and advisor / term.

Reimbursement of expenses can be obtained using the M2 system, project: 901000/T19901, the invoice will be forwarded onwards. If needed, help is available from: [email protected]

Cue cards

Training for academic advisors

The School of Chemical Engineering holds trainings for academic advisors twice a year:

In October: a basic training which goes through the principles, goals and timetable for academic advising (training aimed primarily at new academic advisors)
In February: varying content, topics and themes of training are chosen based on the feedback and requests received from academic advisors