A revamped Student Planning tool known as the Student Education Plan is now available to students. The program, which has been in development for over a year, was unveiled to students March 24 and is designed to help students plan their entire college career by sorting the selected courses into an easy to read calendar.

As current/prospective students begin to think about their future at Los Medanos College, this tool may help to allow the student to visualize the road to success.

While the program is beneficial to all students on campus, potential students, or those coming in from high school or enrolling for the first time, will benefit the most. These prospective students will receive a much sooner priority registration date, May 20, for the Spring 2015 semester, if they complete this plan, as part of the three step enrollment process, than those who do not. The students who do not complete this process will retain a registration date of July 1.

While the program is being focused on incoming students, Armour stated, “Continuing students can use it…and be thrilled.”

Registration for new students includes the three-step process consisting of: orientation classes offered online, assessment tests then the education plan. While the ed plan is heavily recommended, it is technically not a requirement.

Accessible through WebAdvisor, the ed plan offers various tools to aid in the enrollment/registration process for students. In a press release, Director of Admissions and Records Robin Armour wrote “students will be able to track their progress, update the plan as needed, make an appointment with a counselor and register for classes all from the education plan.”

There are some limitations to the program at this point, as students cannot currently register using an add code from the system. Another feature of the program is the timeline function. This visual representation of past, current and future courses broken down into sections by semester, allows students to better understand the scope of activity required to fulfill the degree requirements applicable to them.

The online tool gives the user the option to do a program evaluation directly from the ed plan. The evaluation will allow students to see how their units stack up to the requirements of various degrees, and not just the major that they have declared.

The newly retooled program is designed to ease students into a new way of figuring out how to navigate the stressful world of college.

Armour stated that the improvements to the system are “a win-win for everybody.”