Under plan, students would receive advising from colleges

Colleges will play an increased role in a streamlined academic advising process, if UA President Peter Likins agrees with recommendations passed by a campus task force.

The Academic Advising Task Force will propose at an open meeting Monday that advisers from the Freshman Year Center and Office for Academic Studies be relocated to colleges and that those offices no longer offer advising services.

The task force's three-part recommendation will call for improved advising within colleges, which would entail reallocation of advisers to the colleges, installing a central advising hub and make recommendations for upgrading existing advising services.

"The bottom line is that students should be closer to their college," said Sylvia Mioduski, director of the FYC.

The task force, made up of administrators, faculty, student leaders and deans, originated during tuition negotiations last spring. Student lobbyists agreed to a raise in tuition if the university created a task force to investigate advising.

"There's room for strengthening advising," said Roxie Catts, co-chair of AATF. "I'm very pleased that we finally got the attention of the administration."

Under the plan, the FYC, as well as OAS, would be deployed to the University College, Social and Behavioral Sciences, College of Humanities and the College of Science. Students in these colleges currently use OAS for part of their advising.

"The Freshman Year Center and Office for Academic Services would cease to exist in its current form," said Ray Quintero, president of the Associated Students of the University of Arizona and co-chairman of the task force.

The proposed central advising hub would be a place where all undergraduates could go for a recommendation about which adviser to see, advisor course requirements. Getting information would also be less confusing than the current system.

Catts called the hub "a central resource" that would eliminate conflicting information from different advisers.

"If you're totally confused about where you need to go, you can go here," she said.

Chaz Elsten, a history and political science senior and transfer student, said he had problems finding academic help in one place.

"It was hard getting one straight answer," Elsten said. "You get bounced around from department to department."

Amber Giffin, a communication junior, said her adviser was helpful - once she got in for a visit.

"It was really hard to reach the adviser for an appointment," said. "But it was helpful because I didn't know what I wanted to do before."

As it is, advisers have more students than they can handle in colleges like Business and Public Administration and Social and Behavioral Sciences, said Paul Melendez, director of undergraduate programs in the Eller College of Business.

"For a college like us with over 5,000 undergraduate students and only one adviser for every 800 students, it is difficult to service the students the way we'd like to," he said. "The proportions really affect the bigger colleges."

The department of political science organizes information on its Web site so students can get advice without having to meet with an adviser, said Mark Barrios, an academic adviser for political science. With more than 250 students, the department of political science is the second largest in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

"One adviser I know of has something like 1,500 students and I happen to know that this person is very caring," Catts said. "But how caring can you be when you have this impossible mission?"

According to a survey conducted by the task force in August 2001, 51 percent of 102 advisers surveyed agreed that developing a better reward system for advisers is a high priority.

But a reward system and hiring of new advisers seem unlikely given the current budget crunch.

Karen Weaver-Sommers, the only academic adviser for the department of psychology, works with only two assistants. With more than 1,500 students, the psychology department's top priority is obtaining more faculty - not advisers, Weaver-Sommers said.

"Even if we did want more the money is not in the pipeline for that" she said.

"I don't feel like I get to go in depth enough with (students)," she added. "Especially if they're preparing for the world of work."

The AATF will introduce their recommendations in detail Monday in the Koeffler building, Room 218 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

The task force will accept student feedback at the meeting and then present a final proposal to Likins.