Reporting Concerns About Individual Students

If a student has been persistently absent and/or unresponsive to emails, or if a student is in danger of failing your course, contacting advising can help connect the student to additional services and ensure that others are aware of the student’s situation. Please use the Action Item function in MyBU to share your concerns with your student’s advisor. When a faculty member creates an Action Item, the student’s advisor will be notified by email.

You can create an Action Item by navigating to your course roster, checking the student of concern, and selecting the Action item icon (see below). More detailed information is available in this guide.

Faculty, along with all other members of the BU community, can also use the Terriers CARE reporting form, a resource designed to simplify the process of reaching out to students in distress. The Terriers CARE forms are shared with advisors, first-year success directors, and Behavioral Medicine to help students holistically; please fill out the form to report “behaviors that may indicate a student or employee is in distress, struggling with mental health, exhibiting disruptive or threatening behavior, or showing signs of potential harm to self or others. When in doubt, report.” (Note that due to privacy laws (e.g., FERPA), you may not receive detailed responses to your report, but faculty “concerns are taken seriously and are followed up appropriately.”)

In the case of immediate concerns about a student’s health or well-being, faculty should contact Student Health Services, which offers 24/7 phone consultations.