Daily ip Trojan
Volume LXVII, Number 93
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California
Monday, March 15, 1976
Advisement changes: taking the sting out of academic woes
By Don La Plante
As soon as a student decides to attend the university he is faced with the critical choice of what courses he is going to take.
However, that decision is not as easy as it appears on the surface. Basically, this is because students tend to make their decisions in consultation with friends and other students, and not with the people who are trained to help the student make the decision—the academic advisers.
Although technically every student, graduate and undergraduate, must confirm that he has consulted with his adviser when he submits his request for class cards, the requirement is often ignored.
Some schools and departments are able to enforce the requirement by requiring their majors to produce a signed adviser’s card in order to receive “H” cards.
That usually applies only to students in the graduate and professional schools, such as the Schools of Business, Social Work, Architecture and Engineering. The vast majority of the undergraduate population, those majoring within the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, have been left with a hodgepodge of advisement systems and
rules to try to cope with and understand; or, as happens too often, to ignore.
However, starting in the fall, the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences will begin to move towards a system to make advisement mandatory for all students with majors in the college.
But before everyone starts running to make appointments with the advisers in the Letters, Arts and Sciences Advisement Office, a few words of explanation about the new system are necessary.
First of all, the system at the beginning will still depend on voluntary cooperation of the students. While advisement may be mandatory, there will be no practical way to enforce the system.
The Registrar’s Office has no way to physically police the program request cards or adviser’s cards to see that the student has seen an adviser. So for the first couple of years, there will probably only be spot checks.
The system will go into high gear within a few years, when the record system of the university becomes more computerized.
Also, the majority of academic advisement will be handled by the student’s major department, with the student usually being assigned the same adviser during his time at the university.
The new program for advisement in the college is in
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response to the expressed desires of students. In a survey taken last spring of more than 700 students, it was found that 80% favored some sort of mandatory advisement.
The breakdown showed 18% favoring mandatory advisement only upon entering the university, 26% favoring once a year sessions, while more than a third, 36%, favored mandatory sessions with an adviser every semester.
Norman Fertig, associate dean of advisement for the college, said that he was surprised by the strong show of support for mandatory advisement. He said he thought it showed a desire by students for help in planning their course of study at the university.
The majority of advisement will take place in departments with persons designated by the department chairman handling the advisement. In almost all cases, faculty will handle the responsibility, although some departments will have advisement done by graduate students or others.
The survey last spring showed that more than 75% of the students indicated that they wanted faculty to handle the advisement responsibilities. Fertig said he thought that this showed a desire by students to be in contact with the faculty and have the faculty help them in their career guidance and planning their academic programs.
“We will also give the departments a degree of autonomy for their own advisement systems. However, they will be held accountable for providing quality advisement,” Fertig said.
The system will not just hold departments responsible for giving good advisement; there will also be rewards to those doing the job properly.
Faculty load sheets give profiles of how much time every faculty member should spend on certain duties such as teaching, research, community service and university service.
For the first time, beginning next year, the sheets will have advisement as one of the categories. This will mean that faculty who become involved in advisement will not be doing it on their own time, but as part of their university duties.
While advisement may be mandatory, there will be no practical way to enforce the system. So for the first couple of years there will probably only be spot checks.
Because advisement will be part of their duties it will also reflect on the size of merit increases given to those faculty members.
“We are having faculty advisement responsibilities as part of the regular profiles. The section on advisement will be rewarded as to merit increases for those faculty. Advisement will be just as important a responsibility as good teaching or good publishing. It will not involve faculty overload pay,” said John Cantelon, vice president for undergraduate studies.
The move towards having departments do the advisement for their own majors will lead to a change in the functions of the LAS Advisement Office.
The office will concentrate on providing advisement services for the preprofessional students, such as prelaw, premedical, predental, honors students and students with undeclared majors. It will also help provide training for the faculty members doing advisement, Fertig said.
He said he believes the office will probably have more work to do now than in the past when its responsibility was primarily for lower-division students.
“We will still be handling the preprofessional and honors students and any students with special situations or problems. Some students might wind up seeing three or four advisers in planning their programs.
‘For example, a preprofessional student who is in the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps and an honor student would see the Navy adviser to make sure he completes commissioning requirements, while he would also see an adviser in his major, one for honors and another for his preprofessional program,” Fertig said.
Fertig also pointed out that students who need to see advisers would have to plan ahead and not try to come in right at the beginning of the preregistration period for advisement when an adviser mightonly De able to spend a few minutes with him.
The LAS advisement office is already taking appointments for students to plan for next fall and the preliminary schedules are available to help students select
"We are going to try to go beyond basic registration and deal with the whole person. We will try to help match up personalities and interests to help the student make the right decisions/'
courses. Some departments, and schools such as the School of Journalism, are also starting their advisement programs for the fall semester now.
“There will be some superficial advisement for students by their own choice. They will have read the bulletins and made their choices. There will be in-depth advisement for the majority of students, but there are a substantial number who won’t need it,” Fertig said.
“The student will have to touch base with an adviser to make sure that he is meeting his general education requirements and will be able to graduate on time.”
The drive for the new system of mandatory advisement is to provide a system of more personal service to the? students, said Juanita Mantovani, assistant dean for student affairs in the LAS Division of Humanities.
“We are going to try to go beyond basic registration and deal with the whole person. We wjll try to help match up personalities and interests to help the student make the right decisions.” she said.
“We are trying to broaden the concept of advisement from ‘courses you need’ to a plan of help in choosing classes. A faculty member in a department will be able to tell a student which,courses in the department might be of interest to a student and which ones would not.”
In addition to personal advisement, the LAS office has been directed by Cantelon to prepare advisement literature in simplified language for both students and faculty members.
“It will be two or three pages condensing the LAS bulletin into do’s and don’ts about such things as the pass/no pass option, cancellation and petition procedures. These will be guidelines to go by and the ABCs of getting a degree and fulfilling the requirements,” Fertig said.
While it is expected that many faculty members will become involved in advisement, it is not expected that all will be active participants in the new system.
It is planned that the LAS Advisement Office will train the departmental advisers and will give some training to new faculty members so that they will at least know the basics of advisement.
(continued on page 3)