Professional communication in emails is very important, as it may be the first way that an individual at UConn interacts with you. Please review this useful video on crafting professional emails put together by the UConn Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills. We also highly recommend creating an email signature. If you would like examples, please review this tutorial for student email signatures.

We encourage you to consider changing your UConn email to be in the FirstName.LastName@uconn.edu format. This is often easier for people, especially those outside UConn, like preceptors on rotation, to understand and remember. You can activate that by going to this UConn Knowledge Base tutorial.

UConn has the option for faculty, staff, and students to have a chosen name for email, HuskyCT, and other sites. This does not require you to have legally changed your name. You can find out more information by going to this UConn Knowledge Base tutorial.

Some additional recommendations are:

• Please address faculty and staff with a formal title (e.g., Dr., Mrs., etc.) until you are told otherwise.
• Please send one email to multiple people if you want multiple opinions or multiple people need to be involved.
• Please make sure your email is clear and to include all information that you have along with your question.
• Please wait a minimum of 48 hours to send a follow-up email and until 5 pm on Monday for responses to emails you have sent to us over the weekend. Most faculty and staff do not typically work on weekends. There may also be periods of time when they are out of the office or during busy times in the semester where responses will be delayed. Please wait patiently for a response rather than sending multiple emails or emailing or calling other faculty and staff in the School of Pharmacy. If you are having an emergency, it is important to reach out to UConn emergency contacts. There is a full resource list located on the Division of University Safety website.
• Please respond professionally and promptly when emailed. Most faculty and staff will expect a response typically come within 1-2 business days.
• Please make sure to continue checking your UConn email during fall and spring recess and during winter and summer intersessions. Faculty and staff do not always have the same breaks as students and may be attempting to contact you for important reasons.
• Please only use your UConn email to communicate with us once you have officially become a UConn student. We are legally required to only communicate with your UConn-issued email in order to comply with FERPA. Students on an official leave of absence may have to use their personal emails if their UConn email is switched off.

These are common best practices for meetings with faculty and staff at UConn.

• Please come to a meeting already having researched the questions and topics you wish to discuss and prepared to take notes.
• When attending a virtual meeting, you must be fully clothed, appropriately situated (e.g., not laying in bed) and not engaged in any other distracting or dangerous activities (e.g., driving). This is for mutual comfort and safety, as well as making it possible for a productive meeting.
• When attending a virtual meeting, please make sure that you are in a location with stable internet and joining via a computer or tablet that can support WebEx.
• Please do not knock repeatedly on a closed door. If you knock once and there is no answer, it is because the individual is occupied.
• Please do not show up more than 5-10 minutes ahead of your scheduled appointment slot and expect to meet outside your scheduled time.

• Please prioritize reading emails from Megan and Lyn, as they contain important information on how to schedule appointments, drop-in hours, and more. We make sure to only send important information, so please open our emails!
• Please make sure to address Megan, Lyn, and our peer advisors by their first names in email. While it is important to address the faculty in the School of Pharmacy and staff in the Office of Experiential Education with a formal title (e.g., Dr., Mrs., etc.), Megan, Lyn and our peer advisors all prefer you to address us by first name. A simple “Hi Megan/Lyn” is fine.
• Please send one email to multiple people (Megan, Lyn, your peer advisor, etc.) if you want multiple opinions. We all communicate regularly with each other and getting multiple separate emails about the same thing is more likely to slow down a response rather than speed it up.
• Please make sure your email is clear and to include all information that you have along with your question and make sure that it has not been answered on the website FAQ, your advising sheet on Nexus, or cannot be easily searched on a UConn site.
• Please wait a minimum of 48 hours to send a follow-up email and until 5 pm on Monday for emails you have sent to us over the weekend. While we make every effort to respond to students within the first 24 hours after an email is received, we do not typically work on weekends. There may also be periods of time when we are out of the office where responses will be delayed until we return, or busy times for our office where we may not be able to get back to you quickly. Please wait patiently for a response rather than sending multiple emails or emailing or calling other staff in our office or the School of Pharmacy. We will always prioritize truly urgent requests. If you are having an emergency, it is important to reach out to UConn emergency contacts. There is a full resource list located on the Division of University Safety website.
• Please respond professionally and promptly when emailed. Just as you anticipate a response to typically come within 24-48 hours, and longer on weekends, we expect a response in a similar timeframe.
• Please make sure to continue checking your UConn email during fall and spring recess and during winter and summer intersessions. We may be reaching out during that time.
• Please only use your UConn email to communicate with us once you have officially become a UConn student. We are legally required to only communicate with your UConn-issued email in order to comply with FERPA. Students on an official leave of absence may have to use their personal emails if their UConn email is switched off.

• Please address us by first name in-person!
• Please come to a meeting already having researched the questions and topics you wish to discuss and prepared to take notes. You may do so via pen and paper, computer, or phone notes, but we do not allow recording of advising sessions.
• Please do not plan to meet with us several times with the same questions. Follow-up questions are fine, but please do not book several appointments to go over the same material. All students should wait a minimum of two weeks before booking with us again to allow other students time to meet with us unless the concern is extremely urgent.
• When attending a virtual meeting, you must be fully clothed, appropriately situated (e.g., not laying in bed) and not engaged in any other distracting or dangerous activities (e.g., driving). This is for mutual comfort and safety, as well as making sure we have a productive meeting.
• When attending a virtual meeting, please make sure that you are in a location with stable internet and joining via a computer that can support WebEx. Joining via the phone WebEx app is not recommended, as it will be too small a screen for you to easily see information we are sharing. Do not attempt to join simply by calling in. We do not offer phone appointments because virtual appointments require sharing screens to provide crucial information.
• When showing up for an in-person or virtual appointment, please wait in the waiting room. Virtual appointments will have a virtual lobby. For in-person appointments, make sure to check in at the kiosk before waiting. This will let us know you have arrived and are ready for us to come pick you up.
• Please do not knock repeatedly on a closed door, as we may have another meeting. If you knock once and there is no answer, it is because we are occupied. Repeated knocking during a meeting is very disruptive and disrespectful to us and whoever we are meeting with.
• Please do not show up unannounced when there is no posted drop-in session. Instead, make an appointment with us on Nexus. If there are no appointments available, or the earliest appointment is more than a week out and you have a time sensitive request, you may email us.
• Please do not show up more than 5-10 minutes ahead of your scheduled appointment slot and expect to meet with us at a time outside your scheduled time.
• Please do not come to drop-ins with questions that may need more in-depth conversation. For example, these are appropriate questions for each type of session:
  • Drop-ins: I went to my CCC+ class, and I don’t want to stay in it. Can you help me swap into the new CCC+ class that I picked out?
  • Meeting: I want to plan out my entire schedule for next semester.