Minnesota State Family Orientation Podcast 2021

In this episode of the Family Orientation Podcast, Dr. David Jones discusses what you should remember for upcoming classes, resources for any more specific information, and plans for returning this fall.

In this episode, Dr. David Jones chats with the Director of the Kearney International Center regarding what international students might expect in regards to the upcoming year. They touch on events, advising, academic support, visa and transfer processes, and much more!

David Jones: Welcome and hello listeners, thanks for joining another episode of the podcast,  Minnesota state university, family orientation podcast. Appreciate everybody, uh, choosing to listen into us again here today. I probably say this every episode, I'm excited about the topic today, but that's definitely true yet again, as we talk about The more in-depth aspects of how we support students academically here during their time.And it's obviously they're gonna learn some incredible things in the classroom. And today's guest is going to tell us a little bit more about the things they do outside the classroom to make sure that in the classroom experiences phenomenal. And so, I'm welcomed here today and I'm going to let you introduce Sarah, your whole title and everything, cause I will goof it up, I promise you. Sarah Granberg-Rademacker, here joining us for today's episode, Sarah, why don't you first welcome. Thanks for agreeing to do this.Sara GR:  My pleasure! David Jones:  Share with our listeners who you are, what you do here at the university.Sara GR:  Awesome. Yeah. Thank you, David. My name is Sara Granberg-Rademacker, my role is the director of our university advising department here on campus. And that means I have the great privilege of working with the professional advising community that helps our students as they're navigating their college experience all the way through to graduation. And it's, we have an awesome team that are here to support students along the way.David Jones: Excellent. Excellent. So how long have you been at MSU now? Sara GR: Oh, goodness. I'm going to have to do some math. I think we I've been here about 16 years and have been serving in a variety of roles. Working with students who were majoring in the college of arts and humanities before then moving over to working with students who weren't sure what they wanted to major in to now serving in this role. As we continue to develop our advising resources for students. David Jones: Wow, you've had quite the journey and I could see why you'd be the expert on all things advising at this point here at the university. So over the 16 years, I'm sure you've had a lot of experiences worked with thousands and thousands of students.What's your favorite part of working here at Minnesota state? Sara GR: Honestly, David, when I think about my favorite part, it comes down to the people and the possibilities. It's such a pleasure to work alongside people who are so committed to our students, their journeys, their success here and are looking for ways to help positively influence that.Having worked with the undecided students, I will tell you, I think we are a great campus when you're not sure what you want to study, because we have a broad range of majors, we are not a school known for one thing or a school known for a little bit of everything. And similarly, we have brought opportunities outside of the classroom as well.If that's things like study abroad, getting some leadership opportunities and registered student organizations, all of these things that really make. a college experience complete. The classroom piece is essential, but then those out of the classroom internship opportunities or opportunities to hear guest speakers who are experts in their own field is just, is phenomenal as well.Like to think that, at Mankato, we're small enough that you can find your connections and find your circle of folks, but we're big enough where you can also Let yourself get a little intentionally lost in, in, in the fray and enjoy the experiences around you. David Jones: Wow. That's a great way to put it.Yeah, we are that kind of special size and a lot of ways that you get to the exposure to things you may not come across day in and day out before your experience here, as well as during your time here. So that's great. Well, thanks for all  you do as well. I have the pleasure of seeing the, the success of your students, who you work with and your team works with. And so, that parts super fun, super fun to see that kind of thing. So, we're recording this. I always share the date today is June 8th, 2021. So as we reference COVID anything we share today is what we know as of today.So, as with most things within the state of Minnesota, the governor and the Minnesota department of health may drop new news on us tomorrow, and so, something might be out of date, but what we shared today will be accurate as of today. So this whole past year, you know, Sarah has been clearly defined by the pandemic and the work that you've had to do and everything.And I know last year we shifted a lot of it to virtual work or online orientations and things like that. As we're looking ahead to fall 2021, what is the classroom registration or course registration, and what are our new students experiencing? Getting ready for the fall? Sara GR: Absolutely. No, that's a great question.We've done a lot of pivoting in the last year and we've learned a lot and the good news with that is We have evolved, and come to a process that I think is both welcoming for our new students and provides them with the support they need to come up with a good fall semester schedule so they can hit the ground running come fall.Specifically we've learned to take advantage of some of our online tools through our learning management system and D2L as students get some background information, when they sign up for orientation, get to see some short videos that helpfully. Help lay-the-land in terms of the courses you need the tools that are available to you.But at the same time, we place a premium on those connections with students. And so we're offering synchronous zoom sessions on most Mondays in, in the months of June and July and those synchronous zoom sessions involve just some basic general information from both the director of orientation and from me, but then we quickly try to get the students connected, to the areas where they plan on majoring or if they don't know what they want to major the undecided areas. And in those areas, they get more in-depth information just to give them some background and to help them feel more confident in the classes they'll be looking at during that in-depth session, they will also sign up for either individual or small group appointments.One of the things, the pandemic. Helped move along for us was this idea that we can have individual experiences and a campus of our size, that's not always possible. And so we've had individuals, small group experiences over zoom where advisors are talking directly with the students and helping them make some good decisions about those first semester classes.And so I'm very excited about. How the pandemic basically brought us to that, because that was something that we hadn't been able to do. Our scale across the university before. And I think it, it gives our students a strong sense of who are some of their advocates here before they actually come to campus.And so hopefully they have a firmer sense of who those advocates are and some initial developing relationships with them during the course of their orientation, registration, and advising experience. David Jones: Wonderful. Wonderful. So is the students get did do some of the same activity last year. How did students...

Dr. David Jones: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of the Minnesota State University family orientation podcast. I'm thrilled that you're continuing to listen to these, and we have a, another exciting episode for you. We are recording this on June 7th. 2021. I shared that date just so you can reference this is what we know when we talk about reference any COVID information or pandemic related information, and that is particularly important today for today's guest.I'm joined by Dr. Wendy Schuh she's our director of student health services. And couldn't be more thrilled for the work that she's been doing for many years, but especially during the pandemic. And we'll ask her to share a little bit more about that, but to start us off, Wendy how long have you been at MSU and what do you like about working here?Dr. Wendy Schuh: [00:00:52] Yeah, thanks for having me. Gosh, I have been here since 2001, so I am coming up on 20 years in August that I've been here. My role has changed a little bit from a Health Educator to Associate Director to the Director. Now, for the past 10 years, I've been in this role working here and, you know, really with those transitions in the positions to.I have changed my role a little bit as far as some of that direct student interaction. To working a little bit more at an administrative level. But so those, that balance, those two opportunities have really been fun to see both sides of it. And I would probably say that's something I've enjoyed.I would imagine. , so student health services, obviously you're full service student health center. You want to share, is this a little bit? What's it? What's that include? Yeah. So student health services is comprised of a medical clinic, a pharmacy. a laboratory and health education services. And so for people to know that all of these are available within our medical clinic.A lot of times I'll just say, you know, stop in you know, stop by and poke your head in. And they'll say, Oh my gosh this looks like a real doctor's office. And that can be a surprise to people because you know what a student health services means can vary. According to where you're looking. And as you said, we're a full service facility within our medical clinic, we have three physicians and three nurse practitioners that are on staff.We're open every day that classes are in session. We have a nurse line that students or parents can call if they have questions about whether this warrants a visit, whether you know, this is a visit that can be seen at health services, as well as the pharmacy that you know, students can use whether or not they use our healthcare providers, they can use the pharmacy just like they would a, a corner pharmacy.So stop in and get some. Tylenol cold tablets toothbrush things that they may need replaced things that they weren't planning on needing. We talk about prepping, preparing for students to come to college and getting those supplies. Well, Hey, if you forget something, if you need a thermometer, if you need some , fever, reducing medication, you can stop down to that pharmacy and get some of those supplies as well.And then with the laboratory you know, if they have. Visits through our health service, or even if they need regular lab work that their home doctor is requesting. They get, we can work with them on that also. So really a variety of ways. A lot of people will say, Oh, I just assumed I would use the health service when I couldn't get home to my provider.Completely appropriate. But what we find is about 75% of the students who use us, consider us their primary care, like yep. I see Toya when I go to college because that's my doctor, that's my healthcare provider while I'm. I'm at MSU and then the last thing is the health education services.So we have a lot of prevention, education including substance abuse and healthy sexuality and stress and sleep and nutrition. That do programming around campus. And so that's great to get into the classrooms to get onto residence hall floors, but it's also a volunteer opportunity for students that may have been involved in something like this in high school that may be looking at going into a healthcare career that want to get that experience.So that's kind of a cool thing for students to know about also that they can get involved in the health pros. Wow. That's a lot going on. At least that's impressive. Well then I think it's one of the great strengths of our size university that we have that kind of resource, you know, for over 14,000 students, if they can lean heavily upon it.So with all those resources and such. And from looking back from last March, you know, clearly the pandemic started changing the work we did at the university. And how did it impact student health and how did you respond during the pandemic? Yes, it's certainly affected our work as well. We had to make some difficult decisions and more staff meetings than probably most people cared to attend, but we really got into the.To the heart of, okay, what do we need to do? You know, what student health services needs to provide care to our students? So we stayed open last spring and continue to be onsite providing healthcare as well as made some changes. Like you said, because of COVID. Some of those changes included serving our students when they couldn't physically get into health services.So telehealth visits were incorporated. We did have the benefit of having already had some tele-health visits. That we offered mostly for, for mental health. And so to have those policies and procedures in place allowed us to pretty seamlessly expand those appointment reasons. I know a lot of places sort of had to make that plunge and we were fortunate to be able to do that pretty seamlessly.So all of our providers offer telehealth visits if students had either moved away from campus, if they were ill and were under quarantine or isolation, And so a lot of those appointments for that continuity of care, like you need to continue to get you know, birth control filled and you need to continue to get, you know, ongoing prescriptions figured out.And so we were able to do that. We also made some changes with our pharmacy. So they began offering mail order options for people who were already regular customers that were getting their prescriptions filled that then needed to get that sent home. So we offered some some mail order options with the pharmacy.We, uh, Implemented sort of a separate physical space. So we were still all student health services, but we opened a separate upper clinic is what we call that. That was really serving students who may have had. Any sort of COVID symptoms, which as we experienced, they were adding new COVID symptoms weekly for a while there.And it went from respiratory to you know, eyes to GI issues. There were all sorts of things that we were trying to keep up on. So we could continue to see people who had symptoms that were related to COVID in this separate physical space. And so that was something that we worked with our environmental health and safety with residential life.So we could continue to work out of the same building yet keep our well students well and see our sick students.That's a lot again it can't imagine having to stand up a whole new facility doing this and everything, but you made the reference to telehealth and tele-mental health and you are quite the leader within the state. Can you describe a little bit of what you provide support for a lot of colleges, universities beyond just Minnesota state Mankato?

David Jones: [00:00:00] Hello, thanks for joining us for another Minnesota State University, family orientation podcast! I appreciate you listening for us a little bit more today; as a reminder I'm David Jones, I'm the Vice President for student affairs and enrollment management here at Minnesota State.  Again, thrilled to be giving you updates and introducing you to some of the most interesting people here at the University, and  the many things that they do  to make us a cool special place. So, I'm particularly excited about today's episode because we have our newest leader here at the University , we're joined by our new student government president.  I'm going to let Rihanna do a full introduction of who she is here in a moment, but just to give everybody context, because I know we'll be talking about some COVID stuff.  Today is June 7th as we're recording this, every time we record one of these, we'll talk about what we know based on what the Governor and Minnesota Department of Health has released. So,  it's all in context of today's date at this point.  Enough about that, we'll talk more about that I'm sure, in due time as part of our conversation. So Rihanna, thank you for joining us! Why don't you with our listeners here, share a little bit about who you are, your title, and what you're studying.Rihanna: [00:01:13] Yeah! Well, thank you for having me, Dr. Jones,  as you alluded to, my name is Rihanna Steph and I am the newly elected Student Body President. So,  I am actually a junior, but I'm entering my senior year, this fall, and I'm double majoring in Mass Media and Political Science.  I have been involved with student government over the past two years, and then the opportunity came up this year, of course, to run for president and implement some of the things that are important to me and my Vice President Kara's pearson.So I think it started excited to kind of see some of those plans come to fruition and hopefully help out a lot of students in the process. David Jones: [00:01:51] Excellent, excellent! Now what'd you share folks, where are you from, where's home? Rihanna: [00:01:56] I am from Illinois, actually in a very small town in Illinois called Mulberry Grove. I think when people hear Illinois, they associate that with Chicago and Walmart. I do have a lot of family there and I was born there. I moved to the Southern portion of the state, I'm in the town of about 700 people so that's where I grew up.David Jones: [00:02:16] Mankato itself , the niversity is bigger than your hometown.Rihanna: [00:02:21] Yeah! I said in my my inauguration speech that I will be serving 14,000 students, and that my constituency is now of course, bigger than my entire town's population and the towns next to us combined. So,  Mankato is definitely a jump in size from what I'm used to. David Jones: [00:02:38] Right! So,  the natural question is going to be how did you find us and why did you come here?Rihanna: [00:02:44] Yeah! So, I have a sister who lives in the Twin Cities and she had been trying to get me to come to Minnesota for years,  and I was like, well that sounds good, but I need to explore my options.  I knew I did not want to stay in Illinois, I did want to see somewhere new, I want to try a different state.I feel like in Illinois, your options are very rural where I'm from or Chicago, and I didn't necessarily want to be in either.  Then my sister actually had my niece and that kind of sealed the deal for me,  so I started touring schools in Minnesota.  I went to a couple places St. Cloud. I went to the U and then I toured Minnesota State, which it felt like an actual college campus to me, that's kind of what separated it from the other schools.  I didn't want to feel like I was just like roaming through the inner city; I wanted to feel connected. Like I can have a campus and I can have a campus community.  I also didn't want something super small that reminded me too much of home. So, coming here, the campus was beautiful.  They had the program I wanted, which is political science originally, before I added on my second major.  Then I saw the arena and I saw just the opportunity to get involved with different organizations, and I was like, okay, I can definitely see myself being here! Luckily it ended up great as you guys can see!David Jones: [00:03:58] Yeah, absolutely  buddy! President,  that's not too shabby to say the least, just awesome! So this past year with the pandemic has been different right? In so many different ways. So, how did you navigate this past year?Rihanna: [00:04:12] So this past year, well I do like, I guess my own company, it has been very difficult getting used to your own company when you don't have a choice. At the beginning of the pandemic,  when all the departments of the school closed,  you know, student workers are sent home. Students were sent home from their dorms, and so I actually lost my job on campus because I couldn't be inside the department.  Luckily, an opportunity arose for me to become a tutor,  doing zoom tutoring. So I got to combine 10 of my passions for,  reading and writing and do that in a format that was safe for everyone.  Over the summer, you know,  adults still have to go to work. They still have to pay bills, and so my sister and her husband still had to do what they had to do to support their family.So I ended up actually leaving my apartment in Mankato and staying in Minneapolis all summer  2020 to kind of help them with my niece, basically.  Then of course we had social justice movements, we had the death of George Floyd, and so all of this combined was kind of  very taxing on myself and a lot of other students, but it was nice having the support of the University, having the University give us constant updates on what the plans were moving forward. Then really just having University that took the pandemic and COVID seriously it implemented safety measures that could help students get back to normal life as we are about. David Jones: [00:05:30] Yeah! Yeah, I would imagine. So, obviously when you're a college student, the key  thing is taking classes. How did your classes switch and how were you able to manage that? Rihanna: [00:05:42] Yeah. So, of course all of my classes went completely online. And  because a lot of my classes are reading and writing focused , whereas we would do some of that work in class. Usually now you have to do all of it at home , you have to still give reports, you still have to write papers.And, you know, instead of having the two days of the weekend, it kind of felt like an endless stream of   school basically.  So with that I really had to start making the schedule to really  start planning things out when I'm going to incorporate time to focus on school, because whenever you're at home, It feels like school2. So,  luckily I had some really great professors who understood this and who are  switching completely online themselves, but it was definitely a big transition g...