UCD Student Advisors introduce an instant messaging service
By Eithne Dodd | Mar 13 2017
STUDENT Advisors in UCD have introduced an instant messaging service for students.The service was introduced earlier this month and will be monitored during normal office hours between Monday to Friday.Students’ advisor for Quinn students Jacqueline Levine said “UCD Student Advisers are always looking to ensure that we are approachable, accessible and as easy as possible to contact. Instant messaging is yet another channel to help us do this.”The UCD student advisors will take it in turns to run the messaging service meaning that it will be a different advisor answering questions and queries each day. Anytime a student uses the service, the on-duty advisor will introduce themselves.“We hope that the instant messaging service will help more students to know about us and also make it easier to contact us” said Levine. “In many cases a student might ask a straightforward question that we can answer right away. We hope that students will find our messaging system useful for that. Other students may have more complex issues that would benefit from a face to face meeting.”“While we do not see this as a substitute for one to one meetings, we do hope that for students who feel nervous about coming to us face to face that it will help make that first contact, which is often the most difficult, a little bit easier” Levine added.Levine also said that students should feel free to use the instant messaging service for any queries or concerns that they have and this also applies if a student wishes to email, call or visit in person, a student advisor. Levine also wished to stress that this service should not be thought of or used as an emergency service.You can find the instant messaging service on the UCD Student Advisors’ website (https://www.ucd.ie/studentadvisers/). The messenger icon is quite hard to see, scroll to the bottom of the page in the right corner. According to their website, the response time of a Student Advisor is usually within a few hours.In the case of an emergency in UCD, students can go to this webpage which will let them know who to contact in this case of various emergency situations.