Advising 

Throughout your USD experience, you'll explore many opportunities for academic, personal and professional growth. Your academic and faculty advisors will play important roles in your journey as they help you plan for and understand the requirements for graduation while assisting you in preparing for your eventual career.

Incoming Students

As an incoming freshman or transfer student, you’ll have the opportunity to meet with an advisor and register for your first semester classes at one of our Coyote Registration Day events.

As you continue your academic career at USD, you will meet with an advisor specifically assigned to you, either through the USD Academic and Career Planning Center or through your major’s school or college:

• Academic and Career Planning Center
  
  • College of Arts and Sciences majors, undeclared majors, secondary education majors and majors in the School of Health Sciences including alcohol and drug studies, health sciences major, medical laboratory sciences, nursing and social work
• Beacom School of Business Student Services Center
  
  • Accounting, business administration, economics, finance, health services administration, human resource management, innovation and entrepreneurship, management, marketing and operational analytics
• School of Education Center for Student and Professional Services
  
  • Elementary education, special education and kinesiology and sport management
• Department-Assigned Advisers
  • College of Fine Arts majors (art, music, theatre), dental hygiene

After completing 45 hours of course work, you will be assigned a personal faculty adviser in the department of your major.

Current Students

Find the right major. Stay on track. Complete your degree. The following advising resources are available through the myUSD portal to help you in successfully accomplishing your academic goals:

• Change or declare your major
• Change of catalog form
• Degree audit form

The learning specialist will provide individual consultation to any student who has a desire to improve their academic performance or be more successful. For each student, the learning specialist will conduct an intake screening to identify the student's strengths and concerns and will assist the student in developing an action plan with strategies and resources that can help them reach their academic goals.

The learning specialist will work one-on-one with the student to help them understand their learning styles and acquire successful learning strategies and study skills, develop a personal academic plan to improve the likleihood of college success, and create a specific action plan for classes or academic tasks that are causing the most difficulty.

Possible learning topics include:

• Identifying obstacles to success
• Setting learning goals
• Becoming a more active learner
• Using critical thinking skills
• Improving reading comprehension
• Dealing with test/performance anxiety
• Academic stress management
• Time management
• Motivation
• Procrastination
• Concentration
• Organization skills
• Test-taking strategies
• Note-taking
• Memory strategies

Students can schedule an appointment with a Learning Specialist through Coyote Connections or by emailing advising@usd.edu.

The college years can be filled with new and enriching experiences, but can also present challenges which may interfere with your academic progress and emotional well-being. The Student Counseling Center's goal is to help you make the most of your years here at USD. On our website, you will find information about our services, staff, campus resources, crisis management and how to refer someone. There are also links to self-help tools and general health information.

If you would like to continue services or schedule a new appointment, please visit the Student Counseling Center page. You can also follow our social media accounts to stay up-to-date on what we have happening.

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a learning enhancement program designed to organize and improve the ways in which students prepare for studies outside of class. SI is attached to particular courses and provides students with a systematic and disciplined approach for processing the subject material assigned by the professor. The SI leader attends the course to keep up with the subject content being presented and then holds out of class sessions to help students with effective study skills and course content. A current SI schedule can be found here.