Members of Associated Student Government (ASG) are seeking to revamp academic advising at Miami University with a proposed bill discussed at their March 13 meeting. The proposed bill takes into consideration multiple aspects of advising for students.
The bill, sponsored by ASG's Academic Affairs Coalition and the Executive Cabinet, includes 10 major recommendations for improving academic advising.
The bill proposes the creation of a "What-If?" degree-audit report (DAR) students could use to plan their schedules by plugging in theoretical majors, minors or courses. Such a DAR has been available to advisors, but not to students. Additionally, the bill suggests the implementation of a "plain-language" DAR that students can more easily comprehend.
"For the majority of students, a DAR is just unreadable," junior Tyler Sinclair, who serves as ASG's secretary for academic affairs, said. "It's essentially in a foreign language."
The bill also calls for an online resource center for advising. According to Sinclair, an online resource center for advising could contain ways to schedule advising appointments, frequently asked questions, the general bulletin and other materials to help students find answers to their advising questions.
Another suggestion in the bill is mandatory meetings with an advisor each semester through the end of' sophomore year to ensure students are on-track.
According to Sinclair, Miami currently lacks a unified vision of advising and the proposed bill aims to change that.
"We don't have a vision of what advising is," Sinclair said. "We're recommending that the university comes up with a definition of 'what is advising?'"
Additionally, the bill aims to implement a better use of the advising resource AdvisorTrac so advisors can clearly understand how students have been advised in the past.
Other goals of the bill include using existing technologies and public relations for advising, Sinclair said.
Another goal is to assign post-secondary enrollment students a general bulletin before they are matriculated into the university. According to Sinclair, this would ensure those students stability in their academic requirements.
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In the past, post-secondary enrollment option students were advised to take classes in order to meet certain university requirements but by the time they became a full-time student at Miami, the requirements they had been working towards may have changed, Sinclair said.
The bill also calls for expanding the role of first-year advisors in residence halls to take on more of a "life advisor" role. In this capacity these advisors could potentially help students who may leave Miami due to personal reasons, according to Sinclair.
Ultimately, the bill calls for a more centralized advising system at Miami.
"We think the university would be benefited by a more centralized advising system with less layers of advising," Sinclair said. "A decentralized system creates more room for error and more stress on students."
ASG will revisit the proposed bill at their next meeting.
Vice Chair of University Senate James Kiper was also present at the meeting to discuss what issues students have that University Senate members are not aware of.
"If it's important for students, it's important for us," Kiper said in response to the points raised by senators.
Senators also voted in new off-campus senator, junior Charles Lee, and voted on sanctions the for student organization Drinks All Around, which previously misused ASG funds. The senate voted that the organization repay the $600 that ASG had given them.
Additionally, the organization will be prohibited from ASG's fall funding cycle and will be subject to two semesters of audits thereafter.
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