Junior David Solomon seeks academic guidance from College of Arts and Science Adviser Ted Peters.
It is an age-old complaint with Miami University students: academic advising. For the 2009-10 school year, however, the university is revamping the system.
According to Michael Dantley, associate provost and associate vice president of academic affairs, Miami is working to address problems with advising.
"We are really trying to attend to the issues the students have brought to us over the years about advising," Dantley said.
The academic advising office has developed a specific committee to deal with the problems facing advising and create a variety of recommendations.
"We have put together an undergraduate academic advising council," Dantley said. "It is a diverse group from across the university who really care about undergraduate advising."
According to Dantley, the academic advising office hopes to implement changes in the upcoming school year by working with the undergraduate academic advising council. The council will begin discussing ideas this semester.
"Some of things we hope to have work in the future in academic advising are some of the things the council will deal with in our first meeting (Sept. 11)," Dantley said. "These are ideas we will bring to the council, and they will work on next steps on how we might implement them."
The academic advising staff has already started to form a variety of ideas they hope to implement.
"They will be discussing mandatory advising for first and second-year students," Dantley said. "It's just an idea the council will deal with."
Dantley is also working with other ideas, including the development of a broad advising training for all staff.
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"We want to have a generic kind of training for everyone," Dantley said. "So the advisers are able to answer those questions, so when students come to appointments with questions the advisers cannot answer any further, they can refer them elsewhere. It's having the same kind of professional development for everyone."
According to Dantley, this works most primarily with the first-year advisers who live in the dorms.
Student board of trustees representative Heath Ingram acknowledged this is a major issue for first-year students.
"I do want to say the only thing I still have concern with is our first-year advisers, who live in the residence halls," Ingram said. "Through discussions, a struggle they have is understanding the complexity of advising beyond divisions"
Dantley said he believes a generic training will help with this issue.
"Often students want to stay with or get more information from their first-year adviser," Dantley said. "We are going to try to work that piece. So the final line is the advising we ultimately create will be in the best interest of the student."
The council will meet once a month and is also composed of five sub-committees. The sub-committees deal with policy, assessment, technology, training and partnerships, according to Dantley.
The committee is composed of assistant deans from the divisions; the registrar; the directors of undergraduate advising, honors and scholars, student retention and undergraduate advising; student representatives and a host of representatives from admission, student affairs, international education and liberal education, Dantley said.
Dantley said addressing advising may help with Miami's retention rate.
"We recognize that a good solid advising program assists in retention," Dantley said. "There is research that proves the better the advising the more likely they are to stay at the university. So, we are taking a good look at our advising process to make sure we are doing all we can in that area to retain our students."
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