Learning Abroad Center

Resources for Developing Major Advising Pages

Developing Major Advising Pages

All resources are designed to be shared with partner departments and colleges.

  • Division of responsibilities:  Outlines the roles of the study abroad office and the academic department within their cooperative relationship. (This will need to link to Overview of the division of responsibilities found in section 4.)
  • MAP Audiences: Defines the intended audiences for the piece. Audiences may vary at other institutions, but target audiences should be defined before drafting of advising resources begins.
  • The Assess, Match, and Motivate Worksheet (pdf): A question-based outline that helps structure work with faculty and departments. Has been modified for use at various stages of the process and can be easily adapted.
  • Sample 4-year plan with preliminary study abroad matches (pdf): Geology example given to selected departments to show how curricular assessment can lead to an understanding of how study abroad can fit into a major with less flexibility. Useful for some technical and professional majors; often unnecessary for less requirement-laden majors, as in many of the liberal arts.
  • Current Electronic Major Advising Pages: for majors or sets of majors on the Twin Cities campus. We are in the process of replacing the PDFs of paper sheets with online versions; currently the links go to a mix of the 2.

Additional Resources

For the University of Minnesota, many of the following resources are now dated. However, some will still prove useful to other institutions, particularly those using paper advising sheets.

  • Stages of Study Abroad Curriculum Integration in a Department
  • Learning Outcomes handout: Designed to help departments think about their particular priorities for students.
  • Researching curricular matches (pdf): A process map that loosely describes the research process. Still used selectively.
  • SAMAS Template (pdf): Template used to ease production during our stage of paper SAMASes. Some variant of this, designed for the particular institution’s format for advising sheets, can be very useful to the study abroad office and the academic department alike as they drafting their respective content.
  • Communications strategies (pdf)
  • Communications innovations (pdf): Shares innovative ideas that were developed in academic units, offers more detailed web development ideas.
  • Qualitative and quantitative evidence show that University of Minnesota students believe the "cost" of study abroad to be the most significant factor influencing their decision to study abroad or not. The University's curriculum integration initiative is proactively addressing the financial concern of students through scholarship development, training advisers on "how to talk about the cost of study abroad", and educating students on the long-term investment in study abroad.