This year BVU is introducing the Navigate Student app, a double facing system for students, faculty, and staff.  

“It’s meant to make students’ lives easier. The whole hope with the app is to make life a lot less frustrating for students,” said Brittany Garling, Assistant Dean School of Education and Content Manager for Navigate Student at BVU.  Students can communicate with professors, schedule appointments with faculty members, view holds on financial accounts, access course schedules, connect with classmates, and so much more. 

Garling explained that the Navigate app is not intended to replace Beavernet, but to enhance it and help guide students to many helpful resources on campus.   

A team of faculty and staff spent all of last academic school year building BVU’s page on Navigate Student and preparing it for use across campus. This team included Garling, Steph Wilhelm, Mike Walker, Brian Lenzmeier, Jamii Claiborne, Donna Musel, Matthew Packer, Joshua Weitzel, and others.  

Jamii Claiborne, Director of Assessment and Faculty Development & Advising Division Chair at BVU, is focused on developing the four-year plan tool that will be featured on Navigate in the near future. The four-year plan feature will be a helpful tool for students and advisors and will replace the manual process BVU currently has in place.  

“Eventually, students will be able to build their four-year plans through Navigate which will be very different from the manual process we have now that requires students to interact with the degree audit, academic catalog, and the excel document,” said Claiborne. “As faculty member and an advisor, I’m really impressed with the information EAB can give me about my students. I think Navigate is an incredibly valuable tool for student success.” 

Garling spoke about her personal experience working on the Navigate project as Content Manager.  

“I spent about a month of my own training with the company that rolls out Navigate. I went to a conference with them to figure out how to introduce Navigate not just to our students, but our staff and faculty members as well. I did all that towards the end of last year.” 

Students did not have access to the Navigate Student app until this semester, but faculty and staff were introduced to the app beforehand.  

“We trained all peer mentors, we trained RA’s, and we also trained orientation team on the app prior to students coming to campus this fall.”  

Faculty and staff went through similar training sessions in the Spring Semester 2019. There will be a follow up training session for all faculty October 2019.  

EAB is the company that produced the Navigate Student app.  

“The company, EAB, will be here on campus the seventh of October, and I believe we will be doing a full faculty meeting. Hopefully, after this all faculty and staff will be fully trained,” said Garling.  

Though the app is live and available to students and faculty, it is not yet complete. Garling commented on the struggles of launching the new application.  

“We would say it (Navigate) is still not deemed finished. We have had a few hiccups with data. If you’re having a problem with the app or you see something that’s not right, let us know because we can work to get it fixed.”  

Some of the issue’s students have encountered include incorrect course schedules, class times, and majors/minors listed on students’ profiles.  

“By the end of this academic school year our goal is to have all students having downloaded the app and actually using the app. That’s the goal,” said Garling. 

In time, the Navigate Student application is intended to be a widely recognized, useful tool for students at BVU.