For Major Advisors

You should contact your advisees now if you haven’t already.  You should determine how you will make and hold appointments with your advisees. We strongly urge you to use video chat or phone for appointments rather than email but we also support flexibility for students who cannot make synchronous times that also work for you.  Some options for remote communication are:

COMMUNICATION OPTIONS

• Email
• Consider WhatsApp (whatsapp.com) and Skype or Zoom if your advisees have those apps.
• Activate your Zoom account.
• Phone: You can use call forwarding from your direct office phone number in case you have advisees who don’t have internet access. Choose “Features & Voicemail” and then choose “Call Forward...” and enter your cell/home number. You can send your advisees your direct office phone number and when they call it, it will forward to your cell/home phone. Callers will not see your number.  Remind advisees to pick up the “blocked” call from you at the time you agree to talk.
• Consider adding your remote app IDs/links (e.g. Skype: jane.doe; Zoom: https://sasupenn.zoom.us/my/janedoe; Calendly: https://calendly.com/jdoe) to your email signature.
• Appointments: Calendly (https://calendly.com/) is recommended for scheduling appointments.  You can set it up so that Calendly feeds from your Outlook calendar and students can make appointments with an url.

In order to use some of this technology, you may need to:

• Update your home computer's operating system and web browsers.
• Test your computer's video camera and microphone.
• Consult with your School or Office computing support to request remote access.