The office of Dr. Sheila Patterson, West Chester’s associate provost, has established the University Academic Advising Committee, a collection of students and faculty that is intended to improve upon relations between students and their advisors across the campus.The contract to which the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties has tentatively agreed broadly categorizes advising as a faculty responsibility. The means by which the faculty administers this responsibility varies among the schools and departments that comprise the university.
Each department has a set of required courses one must complete to earn a degree in that major. When scheduling classes for the coming semester, students in most majors have been assigned an advisor, generally a random professor from their department, with whom they must meet to be approved to self-schedule on West Chester’s website, www.wcupa.edu. Pre-scheduling for the fall 2004 semester begins on Feb. 22.
As on most university campuses, West Chester students frequently complain of their advisors keeping erratic office hours, being curt in their responses to important inquiries, and demonstrating severe ignorance of their department’s requirements. These concerns prompted Patterson to form the committee as part of the university’s “student success initiative.”
The committee includes the Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs, Diane DeVestern. She acknowledged that the committee is, “just getting off the ground,” having met for the second time Friday morning, but she reported great commitment among the faculty to improve.
However, Jason Smith, who was appointed to the committee to represent students as the faculty relations senator of the Student Government Association, suggested that a callous attitude is prevailing among professors in regards to advising. Smith said that the faculty should be held accountable by having students rate their advisors; the professors who are rated as better advisors should be rewarded with some incentive such as increased pay or status.
Dr. Nancy Allen, director of the Pre-Major Advising Center, pointed to several flaws in the advising system that the committee could amend. Allen pointed out that in more popular majors, professors are overloaded with advisees. Professors who develop a reputation as unhelpful advisors may be rewarded by having their advisees seek out other professors, whose reputations as useful advisors burden them with more advisees. Allen said that an important function of the committee is to inform both students and professors of the specific uses of academic advising, and to enlist the more capable advisors in educating the others.
Undeclared student Penelope Stecher reports that she was grossly mishandled by her advisor. “After I met with him, he e-mailed me out of the blue to advise me to take classes which I discovered were already filled,” recalls Stecher. “Just to stay at West Chester, I’m now taking 12 credits I don’t need.”
A criminal justice major who requested anonymity recounts a similar experience. “When I add up all the classes I took which I didn’t need, it becomes clear my advisor delayed my graduation by at least one semester,” the student complains. “That advisor retired, and somehow I was never assigned another one.”
The University Academic Advising Committee will continue to meet to address such gripes indefinitely.