PSU faculty and students have been voicing concerns over the inefficiency of the undergraduate academic advising model that the University uses for many reasons. Now, there is a group of individuals working to change this.
In previous years, the academic advising committee released a post-graduation survey to the senior class, asking whether people were satisfied with the advising they received while at Plymouth State University. When the committee released it last year, they opened it to the whole student body, using the incentive of a free ipod to one lucky student who took the survey, hoping that they would get a large turn out. 1004 students took the survey.
Students answered basic questions like “What is your major?” and more direct questions like “How promptly does your advisor respond to you when you ask them for help?”
All in all, the results of the survey showed the discontent that Plymouth students had with the university advising methods. One student wrote, “I have changed my major twice, but when I was a social work major my advisor didn’t get back to me after I had sent them 7 e-mails. I had to request another advisor through the department.” Another student said, “My advisor on coming into Plymouth was horrible and barely knew how to advise a new student.”
The reasoning behind the new survey method was to pinpoint the problems with the advising system and to design a more efficient model for PSU. One model being looked at was the peer-advising model. This plan entailed creating a peer-advising center, much like the reading and writing center, and the students there would be trained to help other students make their schedules based on their major’s specific requirements.
“After speaking to the student and faculty members, it is obvious that people aren’t happy with the advising method at PSU,” said Gene Martin, Parliamentarian of Student Senate and a member of the academic advising committee. “I feel as though peer advising would help because it would benefit both parties. It helps the faculty in the sense that they would be able to spend more time mentoring students about the future and working with students one on one. The students would benefit because of what the faculty has to offer them and because the trained peer advisors would know everything about the curriculum, specific needs for specific majors and will also know when changes in the curriculum are made so they can better help the student body.”
The academic advising committee was recently dissolved and combined with other smaller committees, like the academic standards committee, to create an even bigger committee to better serve the students of PSU. They are still working with the data received last spring and are planning on releasing another survey this spring to compare to the data received last year.