Hi, welcome to the Bachelor of Computing Academic Information Session for the
Spring Academic Open House. My name is April Nejedly. I'm
one of the two undergraduate program counselors in the
Department, along with Greg Klotz. I come to this role with
a B.Sc., M.Sc., Bachelor of Education, and two decades of experience at
the University supporting students via teaching courses,
course development, coordinating courses, and more recently as a program counselor. I have specialized training and experience in learning
strategies, learning disabilities, anxiety, and
trauma. As a program counselor, I will
help you with selecting, adding, and dropping courses, academic
consideration when you have extenuating circumstances,
checking your graduation requirements, and I also refer
students to other services on campus. Greg Klotz's
presentation covered the programs offered by the school
of computer science. For this reason, I'm going
to talk about the support that will be available to
you as one of our students. I have a holistic view of
Student Success. This means I see student success as not
just about the courses that you take, but it also
involves the learning supports you have, your
mental health, physical health, social connections. Primary learning supports,
regardless of what program you choose, a Guelph, you should
never feel alone and unsupported in your learning. You just have
to reach out to the many, many people and resources that are
available to you on campus. You can start with your
professors: if you have questions, the professors have
office hours that you get individual help. I find the
faculty very friendly and helpful. Most courses have labs
every week. This is an opportunity to practice the
course material in small groups and to ask teaching assistants for help. Teaching assistants are also available to help students
outside of class and lab. You'll also develop a network of
peers that you can turn to. Student clubs on campus will
help you make that connection. As mentioned in the departmental presentation today, there are student run clubs like the Guelph Coding Community, the
Society of Computing and Information Science, and Guelph
Women in Computing Science. These are the first places
you'll get support. Next you can reach out to
Learning Services in the library. There you can get one
on one appointment with professional learning
specialists to talk about things like: time management,
procrastination, notetaking, study skills, preparing for
exams and more. If you need more intensive
course specific help, you could hire a tutor. Course specific tutors can be
found at a website called tutoring at Guelph. If you experience a disability,
whether it be a learning disability, a physical
disability or any kind of disability, you can register
with the Student Accessibility Services (SAS). When the students
registered with the SAS, they will be paired with an SAS
advisor who will work with them to get this learning
strategies, the accommodations and
technologies they need to achieve success. In any given year, one in five
people in Canada will experience mental health problem or
illness. For example, a lot of students on campus struggle with
anxiety. The University of Guelph has an entire Department
dedicated to student wellness, and it's aptly called Student Wellness. There you will find online resources and more. Counseling services, for
example, you can have one on one appointments with counselors.
They can refer you to counselors off campus as well. There's a
student support network. This is where trained peers meet with
peers to talk about mental health. And there's always the
phone lines. The crisis lines are available 24 hours, seven
days a week. And if you're too shy to call or talk to someone,
you can even text. There's a text crisis helpline. We also
have the stress management and high performance clinic. They
run programs for anxiety, stress, sleep, worry, headaches and more. The other great mental health and physical resource we have is the Arboretum, with its
nature trails: just going for a walk in nature is such a healthy
thing to do, and walking leads to your physical health. As a computer
science student, you will have access to our newly renovated
Athletics Center, it's equipment, and dozens of fitness classes.
If you happen to overdo it at the gym, we have the Health and Performance
Center which specializes in sports injury. There is also
chiropractor, massage therapist, nutritionist, and
more. Maybe you're not the sporty type, but are you kind of
thinking about getting a little healthier? For you, we have the
You SHINE program. This is a peer mentoring program to develop healthy sleep, diet and exercise habits. Regardless of who you are, everyone gets sick
sometimes, so we have doctors in health services for you to see. The last part of the puzzle that supports your academic success is your social life. I
already talked about the clubs specific to computing, but if
you visit the GryphLife website you will find around 366
different clubs and organizations where you can meet
people and pursue your interests outside of academics. But
remember, academics first! There's even a Department called
Student Experience, and that has groups and supports for
international students cultural diversity, there's support for
students whose identity's are outside the cis-gender and
heterosexual paradigms, there's the Multifaith Resource Team, 
and finally, there's help for off campus students: resources for those who commute to campus. So the School of Computer
Science at the University of Guelph not only gives you a
degree in computer science, it opens the doors to myriad of
supports, including academic, mental, physical, and social
supports, all of which ensure your success. If you have
questions about the Bachelor of Computing Science at the
University of Guelph, ask your personal program
counselors, Greg Klotz and myself April Nejedly. We're
here to help you navigate through University on the
path to your dreams. I really look forward to
meeting you, thanks.