By Emily Culberson, For The Miami Student
The Academic Advising Office is undergoing some structural renovations.
According to Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education, Carolyn Haynes, the academic advising system is introducing changes. These include a new adviser training system and the implementation of the University 101 course which helps students explore DARS, a Degree Audit Reporting System that assists students in their course selections.
"Over the years, we have participated in major national surveys that ask our students about their [college] experiences, and we were not as happy as we could be about the results relating to advising," Haynes said. "So we took those things seriously and we thought [that] we needed to make some shifts."
One of academic advising's biggest reforms is its new academic adviser training modules, first implemented in May. This training course consists of five modules. Four out of the five are completed online and one in a face-to-face training session.
60 percent of advisers have already completed the training, and according to Haynes, there are colossal benefits to a centralized training system.
"We needed to make sure we had advisers who were well trained as much as possible [and] try to have some consistency in advising," Haynes said. "We tried to make sure [the training] was really easy to use and able to use over and over again".
After her unsatisfactory academic advising experience, sophomore Sarah Marcum hopes this expansive adviser training will make advisers more knowledgeable.
"My adviser just wasn't helpful at all," Marcum said. "She would tell my roommate something completely different from what she told me even though we were in the same major."
Haynes said she agrees that advising in the past hasn't been consistent. She believes collective training will help fix this problem.
"We have lots of good pockets of advising but it wasn't consistently implemented as well at it could be," Haynes said. "We didn't have clear outcomes, we didn't have a clear approach so that is why we did a very comprehensive and intensive shift."
Along with training, the DARS, a planning resource that allows students to look at their required credits needed for their major through BannerWeb, is also making academic advising more efficient as more students become aware of this advising supplement. Although not a recent development, students have had access to this resource since spring 2013. According to Haynes, more students are learning about the convenience of DARS, which allows students to have easy access to their class requirements for their major.
"The nice thing about the DARS is that it allows the student to see what's ahead for them and [allows them] to be able to make some decisions and plan," Haynes said. "It's a really great and important tool for advisers and for students."
Senior Jenna Toms said that with DARS being easy to access and easy to use, she was able to go into her academic advising meetings feeling prepared and knowledgeable.
"When they updated the [DARS] format my sophomore
year, it listed out every class that you could take and you could click on it and see a description and that made [using the DARS] really easy," Toms said.
However, Haynes still stressed the importance of face to face meetings with academic advisers.
"The DAR doesn't tell you everything," Haynes said. "Like what [a] class [is] really going to be like in terms of the expectations [or if it's] going to fit well with the other classes that you picked for that semester. That's why you need the adviser."
Toms said she agrees that having the support of an academic adviser helps tremendously in making tough scheduling decisions.
"It's just nice to have someone there that can confirm that you are on the right track," Toms said. "[I] know that [I] can always ask questions."
DARS is still a relatively new implementation, and according to Haynes, many students still don't know how to access and make use of DARS. Because of this, the University 101 class, commonly known as UNV 101 was created and is being piloted this year to help inform first years about this program and many other resources offered to them on campus. Currently 56 percent of first-year students are taking this course and according to Haynes, this class is a great supplement to formal academic advising.
"In [the UNV 101] course students learn about the advising system, how to find out who their adviser is, how to read a DAR, how to access their DAR, what the Global Miami Plan is and their own requirements because it just shifted," Haynes said. "Normally students learn from upper class students but in this case they need to know it because it's different [than in the past]."
With all these changes being made, Haynes said she knows the whole system may not work perfectly at first but knows that these changes are steps in the right direction.
"We hope that this will all work out beautifully but I'm not naive enough to say that there won't be issues that we need to address," Haynes said. "But in my view there is nothing more important than advising and nothing more rewarding than to sit down with a student, hear about their dreams, their goals, even their struggles, and be able to help them become full owners of their own educational experience so that when they leave Miami they are well prepared."