Administrators are in the midst of implementing the University's Total Advising initiative — a portion of the Cornerstone Plan aimed at revamping academic and career guidance.
The administration presented the Cornerstone Plan to the Board of Visitors last year. It is intended to be a comprehensive plan to prepare for a new age and to anticipate the changes that come with it, making the University continuously competitive in the higher education field.
According to the Cornerstone Plan, the advising initiative is “a multidimensional process that combines high-quality academic advising, career advising and coaching.”
Advising reform is taking shape through several initiatives, including career development programs, an expansion of the first-year College Advising seminars for Engineering students, a Student Council-led peer advising program and a planned advising center in Clemons Library.
“There is a lot of information students need to manage,” Assoc. Provost Archie Holmes said. “We would like to help with that and we know there is not one answer, but an answer for everybody.”
Holmes and Everett Fortner, associate vice president of Career and Professional Development, are in charge of implementing the University’s new advising plans.
The two are working on a way to get students better connected with people involved with their potential future careers. This is taking the form of online “career communities,” which help establish networks between students and alumni and faculty with ties to their careers of interest.
Fortner said students need specialized resources for each career area to be better versed in their possible careers, as one-stop advisors can't offer tailored advice.
This fall, a pilot program was launched that focuses on arts, media and design. A full program is slated to begin in Spring 2014.
Another initiative focuses on internships, with the goal of creating an Internship Hub. At the moment, online career resource CavLink and postings on bulletin boards are the two main ways students hear about internships through the University. Fortner suggested this is insufficient in meeting student needs.
“We think [internships] are so important that we wanted to create a center for finding an internship and getting one,” Fortner said.
He said professionals involved in Career Development believe internships are essential to an evolving career and that his office aims to make it easier to find and get positions.
In the academic sphere, the Provost’s office has already added 15 new College Advising Seminars this fall, making a total of 60 available to first-year students.
COLAs are one-credit classes first-year students take with their advisors, allowing them to explore an interesting topic while also learning to navigate University life.
Additionally, Student Council will continue to run its own pilot course — University Peer Advising Link. The program pairs second and third-year students with incoming first years. Currently, there are between 300 to 400 students involved.
“We want to fill the holes that currently exist,” said ULink Co-Chair Jason Carrier, a second-year College student.
ULink initially began in response to Council’s own observations about advising.
“We realized there was a resource gap … where students could really benefit from a peer advisor, … a boots-on-the-ground perspective,” Carrier said. “We needed students helping other students succeed in school and acting as a complementary resource to [faculty advising].”
ULink will continue to work closely with faculty advising in hopes of pairing each first year with a peer advisor, though Carrier said the group aims to ensure there is continually low ratio of advisers to first years.
In a united front with faculty advising, ULink will also be looking into attaching one peer advisor to every COLA, possibly pairing first years with their advisors based on the COLA they take.
A final point in the Cornerstone Plan includes a plan to construct an advising center in Clemons Library. Holmes said they are only in the preliminary stages of this plan, but hope to receive an in-depth survey from students to better understand their needs before construction begins.
ULink members are discussing creating an office which would also be housed in the center.
“Anything is on the table," Holmes said. "We are all ears in hearing about [student needs]."
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