General Responsibilities & Office Operations

Team Tools & Organization

Our team uses Microsoft Office platforms for most of our daily work: 

Teams are used for quick messages to one another with questions, updates, or memes that we want to send. There will be a lot of memes. 

Outlook is our mail and calendar platform.

OneDrive is our cloud organization for documents. There is a Wayfinder doc to help us keep track of what goes where, since OneDrive doesn’t have the best search functions...

We have a central inbox that all team members have access to, connected to the has-center@uw.edu email. The Program Coordinator is mainly responsible for this, but all team members can assist with the central inbox, especially during peak times or if someone is out sick.

  • Individual advisers may prefer you to forward them emails or put them into their adviser folder within the main inbox. Check with each adviser to see what they prefer.
  • Folders other than the adviser folder can be organized based on whatever works best for you—just make sure to archive all answered emails instead of deleting them due to record retention policies.
  • You will also have your own persona; inbox associated with your individual UW NetID. You can choose how you want to use your inboxes and how present you want to be as an individual. You do not need to have any student-facing emails go to your personal email account, nor do you have to sign your name on the central inbox’s email. That boundary is completely up to you! Here is an example general email signature if you need it (but you are welcome to change it): 

                    Best,
                    Humanities Academic Services Center

                    Padelford Hall, A-Wing, Suite 002
                    University of Washington
                    Box 354330, Seattle, WA 98195
                    Need an appointment with our HAS advisers? Visit: https://hasc.washington.edu/advising

  • You can choose a different calendar system and connect that to Outlook, if you prefer to use a different platform daily. The central inbox will only be accessible via Outlook due to UW's partnership with Microsoft and how that impacts shared netIDs.
Additional tools
  • BI Portal, which is used to gather data on students, classroom enrollment, major/minor codes, and other relevant information. 
  • Canva, which is a platform used in creative projects, such as making posters and editing videos. 
  • Constant Contact, which we use to create our ENewsletters and send other mass-emails to students, faculty, and/or staff.
  • EARS, the Electronic Academic Record System, which allows us to see student profiles, transcripts, transfer credit, academic plans, and run audits. 
  • SDB, the Student Data Base, which is a desktop app that we use for course registration.
  • ScheduleOnce, our appointment scheduling platform.

Typical Workflow

Daily, you’ll be responsible for:

  • Main office communications through the central inbox, phone, and visitors who drop by (when you are in-person)
  • Managing the Zoom session for virtual drop-ins 

Weekly, you’ll be responsible for:

  • Attending Communication team meetings on day/time TBD
  • Attending HAS team meetings on Fridays from 10:00 AM—11:00 AM

Quarterly, you’ll be responsible for: 

  • Departmental 10th Day Census Reports
  • Comms team course recommendations list

Answering Questions 

  • While no two days at HAS are the same, you should be expecting to answer at least one student question per day. Since you don’t have scheduled appointments, inquiries are managed via email, over the phone, or if a student drops-in without an appointment. 
  • General rules of thumb when responding to questions:
  • It is alright to not know the answer right away. It is better to be honest than to misadvise a student. You are welcome to consult the team in-person/via Teams for clarification. You can offer the student a follow-up email or call back depending on how busy the team seems.
  • After responding to an email, it’s best practice to mark it as complete. This helps you keep track of which messages have been addressed.
  • If you’re unable to respond right away, consider flagging the email so you have a visual reminder of messages that have been read but still need a follow-up.
Tasks you should be comfortable handling independently with training
  • Helping enroll students (except GERMAN, HUM, and Slavic courses)
  • Provide link to current and prospective students to make an appointment with an HAS adviser
  • Clarifying registration restrictions using the Time Schedule
  • Help students understand General Education and graduation requirements
  • Provide links to where to find information regarding Humanities-affiliated departments and campus-wide resources
  • Provide links to for world language placement/proficiency testing procedures within the humanities
  • Verify if local college transfer credit will be equivalent to UW courses or helping understand what credits students will receive with AP/IB exam scores
  • If student asks questions about courses or programs outside of our departments, guide them to the appropriate department/unit
  • If a certain course will apply towards a major/minor. This will vary on your comfort level of understanding each major/minor offered in each department
Tasks reserved for advisers
  • Making exception for 100-level world language courses to count for Arts & Humanities (A&H), if student has already met their world language requirement
  • If you notice in EARS a UW 1XX course on their transfer credits, advisers can help view more information about the transfer course
  • Verify if a certain course will be officially canceled; if a course can allow higher class standing courses enroll during certain registrations; and other quarterly enrollment clarifications
  • Adviser-Assisted Drop Request from UW Office of the University Registrar
  • Study abroad pre-program inquires and post-program credit evaluation forms (except ones for Spanish & Portuguese Studies, which go sps@uw.edu
  • Transfer course evaluations. For example, prospective students will ask if a course they took will count for English Composition (C) credit or Additional Writing (W) credit. 
  • Student is asking specific questions about course scheduling
  • Petitions to have previous (or current scheduled) courses count for a specific General Education requirement/ Area of Inquiry
  • If faculty are requesting to drop a student from their course, forward email to adviser based on department liaison
  • If a student discloses that they want to repeat a course, or you catch that a student wants to repeat.
  • English Language Arts Endorsement Evaluation requests
  • HAS Credit/Course Equivalency form emails can be forwarded to specific advisers. You can also take a whirl at completing them and ask the Teams chat for confirmation if you’d prefer.
  • Students with complaints about faculty or grade disputes should be encouraged to make an appointment. 
  • Any advising question that you feel is far too complex, or becoming complex, to answer without an appointment.