THE TIME is approaching faster than most would prefer to admit. The ISIS man is dusting off his keyboard, professors are practicing their signatures in anticipation of course action forms and students are beginning to hoard Course Offering Directories. It is that time of year again: fall course registration. But for all first year students there is a problem. In order to log on and snag the most sought-after courses, one must first endure a painful, 10-minute advising meeting with an assigned professor.
The current system of first year advising is flawed. Students sit down to face a professor who rarely knows anything about a student's area of academic interest more specific than how many proposed classes will go to fulfill an area requirement, let alone the student's name. These meetings usually involve a few generic nuggets of advice followed by a rubber stamp approval of the proposed schedule. My record time spent inside my advisor's office is just over four minutes. This is a problem.
There are a number of reasons this system is ineffective. First, there is no incentive for an advisor to go out of their way to aid a student. Second, rarely does the professor have any knowledge of the intricacies of the student's academic area of interest. At best, a first year might walk out of the advisor's office with names or phone numbers of people to contact. Third, advisors assigned to first years are often relatively new to the school themselves, depending on the department, and have only recently acclimated to the complicated academic culture of the College of Arts and Sciences.
These deficiencies are more the result of logistical convenience than lack of vision or planning by the College administration. Trying to pair every incoming first year with an appropriate advisor in the department of the student's perspective major would be a logistical nightmare. This match-up would discourage students from trying as wide an array of disciplines as possible by pushing the student toward what they have decided as a prospective major. It also presents the problem of students changing their minds about a major, then forcing the student to start from scratch with a new advisor.
Instead, students should not use their advisor as a source of factual information regarding coursework, but as a source of subjective and impartial advice or guidance. This professor should ask questions that would help guide the student through the tough decisions involved in choosing an academic focus. Rather than asking a student what class they have chosen to satisfy the second writing requirement, first years should be asked why they favor a pre-Commerce program over an economics major in the College.
The best way to implement such a change would be to offer all basic course information online. Students could input their prospective major and the classes already completed into the database. The software could then compile an array of courses that would be appropriate by credit, major and interest. Once the course-work side of advising was eliminated, the student could then sit down with an advisor to discuss the student's long-term goals at the University.
The University is pursuing this idea in their search for a replacement of the outdated software currently used by advisors. Hopefully, when the new software is selected, it will be offered to students as a companion to the online COD and ISIS databases.
The next problem is the motivation of the advisors. At this point, there is no advantage to being a particularly effective advisor other than the warm and fuzzy feeling received after truly aiding a student. But warm and fuzzy feelings do not get a professor tenure. Frequently, those professors assigned to first year students are busy researching and publishing articles. There is no marginal benefit to taking an hour or two away from research to guide a confused first year student.
Tenured professors have both the time, and most often the age experience, to effectively advise first- year students. These faculty members, professors most familiar with how to navigate both their department and the College altogether, should counsel first years in their long term academic planning.
The current system of first year advising is completely ineffective. Professors don't have the time, motivation or access to information to effectively advise needy first year students. Hopefully, the College will work to change the role of these counselors from sources of factual information and rectangular index cards, to providers of subjective guidance and the advice that comes from years of immersion in higher education.
(Preston Lloyd is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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