Changes that could improve the quality of student advisement are being researched by some Undergraduate Student Government members seeking to standardize SIUC advisement procedures.

Megan Moore, USG vice president, and Kris Bein, USG Academic Affairs commissioner, are wanting to improve the quality of student advisement at the University by encouraging all colleges to advise students at the departmental level.

Basically, we’re looking at ways colleges can move advisement to a more personalized level, Moore said.

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While some of the University’s colleges advise students at the departmental level, others lump students together for advisement.

Moore said a large part of standardizing departmental advisement within the University simply is making students aware that they can receive advisement from their department.

In the College of Liberal Arts, for example, students do not always know that they can get advisement at the departmental level, she said.

However, departmental advisers within COLA cannot register students for classes. Students must register for classes through the advisement department.

Moore said the central theme of USG’s proposed advisement changes seek to put more responsibility on the student, while providing more customized service.

Our whole goal is to put the power of shaping students’ college careers in their hands, she said.

Bein said that without a University standard for departmental advisement, advisers for a large school might have to give students a generic schedule instead of a customized one.

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It’s unfair to expect advisers (in a large college) to know every detail of every major, she said. We want to get advisement departmentalized so advisers don’t need to be superhuman.

However, COLA’s chief academic adviser Wanda Oakey said her college stopped letting students register with departmental advisers in an attempt to better serve students. There are 3,000 students in COLA.

The reason we got away from departmentalized advising (including registration) years ago is that we found it was much more efficient if we all prepared to advise all students, Oakey said.

Oakey also said that when COLA used a departmental approach, students sometimes were stuck with an adviser they did not like.

In the current system, a COLA student wishing to register can request any adviser, she said.

The other way is very narrow, and it didn’t pan out for us, she said.

Oakey said her only idea for improvement within her college would be to increase the amount of time counselors spend talking to students.

Because registration forms only can be processed when the registration computer is on-line from about 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, appointments with students usually are limited to half an hour to maximize use of the computer.

I wish there was more time to talk to students, Oakey said. I think we’ve lost some of the personal touch.

Moore and Bein also have been studying Indiana University at Bloomington’s World Wide Web-based advisement system to get ideas for improving SIUC’s programs.

The site contains the required course work for all majors enrolled at Indiana. With a few clicks of the mouse, students enrolled at Indiana can find out exactly what classes they need before they talk to an adviser.

Bein also said USG is researching the feasibility of mailing progress reports to students to keep them aware of where they stand in their degree progression.

It would work sort of like a report card, Bein said, except it would show the students what classes they will have completed at the semester’s end, and what classes are needed to complete their degree.

Bein said another part of USG’s advisement improvement plan is to get each SIUC department to publish a survival guide, which will contain information about the best times to register for classes, the last drop date, degree requirements and scholarship information.

The College of Applied Science and Arts currently publishes its own student handbook, which is theoretically identical to Moore’s and Bein’s idea of a survival guide.

CASA’s chief academic adviser Ratna Sinha said the degree information in the student guide likely streamlines the advisement process.

Sinha also said using both faculty and academic advisers at CASA improves the quality of her college’s advisement to its students.

More faculty involvement in career counseling makes advisement work out better here, she said. But different colleges will not necessarily benefit from a similar program. The

reason ours works is because of the diversity of our program.