Interim Report on Undergraduate Advising

1.  Overview

The first of the three charges to the Faculty Council Academic Services Committee for the academic year 2001-2002 reads:

Survey the academic advising systems in the undergraduate colleges and in academic departments and make suggestions for
a.  increasing faculty involvement in advising of students before selection of a major.
b.  improving coordination between the colleges and academic departments with respect to advising students over the entire course of their studies at Rutgers.
c.  improving the academic advising of both majors and non-majors by academic departments.

     This report summarizes the Committee's initial review of advising carried out during spring 2002.  As stated, the charge is very broad.  To limit the focus a bit, the committee decided to look at the advising of students in Cook, Douglass, Livingston, Rutgers, and University Colleges.  The Committee took a very broad definition of "advising", namely any communication between the University and students designed to improved the students' academic experience at Rutgers.

     In preparation for the Committee's deliberations, in fall 2001 the chair met with the deans of the five colleges to be studied.  During March and April, 2002, three meeting were held to consider advising at three different periods of time in the academic careers of our students.  Representatives of the five college deans' offices were invited to all three meetings.  The specific topics and the other participants at the meetings were:

1.  Advising prior to a student's first class at Rutgers.  Representatives of the Admissions Office were present.  The discussion looked at advising that occurs in the recruitment, admissions, orientation, placement testing, registration, and sectioning of new students.

2.  Advising after a student arrives on campus but before the student declares a major.  Representatives of the deans of faculties offering majors to students in the five colleges were invited.  The discussion considered efforts to make clear the college graduation requirements and to assist students in selecting a major.

3.  Advising after the major has been declared.  Representatives of several departments with large numbers of undergraduate majors were invited.  The discussion dealt with the advising of majors and the monitoring of the progress of students toward their degree.

     The Committee was fortunate to have an additional resource for its deliberations.  One of the Committee members is Professor Brent Ruben of SCILS, who directs the Center for Organizational Development and Leadership.  The Center has nearly completed a report entitled Pursuing Excellence in the Undergraduate Student Experience, Assessing and Improving Advising:  A Preliminary Report

The report describes the Center's efforts, with the assistance of the University Academic Advising Task Force, to look at the advising of first-year and transfer students from the time they first indicate their intention to enroll at Rutgers through their first year on campus.  When the report is submitted to Vice President Seneca, it will be made available on the Web site of the Center, http://www.odl.rutgers.edu.

     Professor Ruben made draft copies of the report available to the Committee members.  The draft notes that interviews with students indicate that their dissatisfaction with advising is only slightly less than their dissatisfaction with parking, transportation, and the dining halls.  In an effort to understand what aspects of advising the students thought needed attention and to develop recommendations for addressing those concerns, the Center conducted interviews of deans of undergraduate units, held focus groups of students, and undertook a search of the Web sites of more than 35 universities to gain a better sense of how these institutions approach advising.  The draft report contains eleven recommendations related to advising.  The Academic Services Committee urges members of Faculty Council and other interested faculty to read the full report when it is published.

     The charge to the Academic Services Committee includes a call for suggestions to improve advising and to increase faculty involvement in the process.  The Committee does not consider itself ready to respond in detail to this part of the charge.  In this interim report, the Committee is making only two recommendations to Faculty Council:  First, that the Council continue the charge to the Academic Services Committee to study advising for another year and, second, that the Council request that Vice President Seneca appoint a committee to review the technical, financial, and procedural feasibility of implementing software to provide deans, advisors, and students accurate and timely information about the students' progress toward their degree.  These recommendations are supplemented by a number of impressions of the state of undergraduate advising of students in the five colleges studied, impressions that suggest areas where further work is needed.
 

2.  A proposed resolution

     There is wide agreement among the staffs of the deans' offices of the five colleges the Committee looked at and among directors of undergraduate programs serving the students of these colleges that the University needs a comprehensive package of software to track students' progress toward their degree.  Such programs are said to perform degree audits or automated degree checks.  Currently such checks are performed manually and, depending on the students' colleges, students might not find out until the summer before their senior year that a mistake made during their first year at Rutgers could prevent them from graduating on time.

     The need for automating the monitoring of students' progress has become so acute that many programs within the University are trying to implement software for their own students.  Recently, Vice President for Student Affairs Emmet Dennis allocated several tens of thousands of dollars of student life funds to assist three programs with such software development.  For years, the University has had numerous "shadow financial systems", systems developed by departments and deans' offices in reaction to perceived inadequacies of the central financial systems.  We are facing the very real possibility that shadow degree audit systems will proliferate.  These systems seem likely to be inadequately supported and subject to error.

     The draft report from the Center for Organizational Development and Leadership has as its second recommendation:

Implement a University degree check system to allow for better coordination between departments and students/colleges, and up-to-date monitoring of the academic career by students and academic advisors.

Such a system would be most beneficial if it would permit students to explore "what if" scenarios.

     Both the Registrar, Ken Iuso, and the University Director of Administrative Information Systems and Planning, Bernice Ginder, have indicated support for the development of a degree audit system.  However, in a time of reduced budgets, the deans and the faculty must take the lead in this initiative.

     There are many questions that need to be answered before a package could be acquired and installed.  These questions concern technical feasibility, cost, and impact on current practices in the offices of deans and departments.  To answer these questions the Academic Services Committee proposes the following:

Resolution.  The New Brunswick Faculty Council recognizes the desirability of developing a University-wide computer system to monitor the progress of students toward their degree and requests that Vice President Seneca appoint a committee composed of representatives of the Registrar, RUCS, deans, and academic departments to review the technical, economic, and procedural implications of such a system and to make recommendations about how to proceed.

3.  Impressions of the state of advising in New Brunswick

     Discussions with the staff of the deans' offices of Cook, Douglass, Livingston, Rutgers, and University Colleges and with representatives of faculties and departments that serve the students in these colleges have produced a number of strong impressions, many of which indicate areas for further work.

a.  We are having difficulty communicating with our students.

Students do not look in their Rutgers mailboxes and they do not use their Rutgers email accounts.  They do not tell us what email accounts they do use and they are not able to set their Rutgers accounts to forward email.  The touch-tone and Web-based registration systems give students unprecedented freedom in making choices about their academic programs.  Some individuals remember fondly the time when students were required to see advisors before registering.  While it is probably not possible to return to such a system, we need to find ways to make it easy for advisors and students to communicate.

b.  There appears to be no common vision, shared among Admissions, deans, and the faculty, concerning the kind of educational experience we want for our students.

Even when students are willing to listen, the advice they get varies a lot depending on who is giving it.

c.  The unusual academic structure in New Brunswick has a substantial influence on the nature of the advising process.

Because of our structure, students need more help than students at a typical public AAU institution, help to make informed decisions about many aspects of their academic program.  However, also because of our structure, there are fewer places students can turn for accurate advice.  Students talk with other students, but if those students are not in the same college, their suggestions may not be appropriate.  Many faculty hired after the academic reorganization of the early 1980's have only a vague understanding of our college system and are not able to give useful guidance outside the offerings of their own department.

d.  There is no consensus about who should be advising students.

Cook faculty still have overall responsibility for the educational experience of students at Cook and the faculty are expected to be active in advising.  Reorganization released arts and sciences faculty from this sort of responsibility for the undergraduate experience.  Many faculty within FAS and the professional schools do not see general advising as part of their responsibilities.  If faculty can't or won't advise, then the task falls to staff.  However, Rutgers is so understaffed by the State that it is not realistic to expect that we can build an advising staff of the size and caliber we need.

e.  There are no significant rewards for faculty who undertake undergraduate advising.

Most chairs would tell new faculty not to get involved.  Not only will advising not get one tenure or a promotion to professor, it is unlikely even to result in a merit raise.

f.  The approaches to advising within departments are extremely varied.

In some departments, advising is done by senior faculty.  In others, it is done by a secretary or an administrative assistant.  In one department, much of the advising is done by a TA assisted by undergraduate peer advisors.

g.  There is an opinion held by many that for advice about college and departmental regulations secretaries and staff are more reliable than faculty.

In this view, faculty should largely limit themselves to mentoring activities, such as discussing graduate schools and other options after graduation.

h.  There is a tension between the desire to increase the use of technology in advising and efforts to encourage face-to-face interactions between students and advisors.

i.  There is no consensus about how actively we should intervene if we perceive that a student may be having problems.

The only advisors that regularly send email to instructors asking about the performance of specific students are the advisors associated with the athletic program.  Some deans would oppose expanding the use of such interventions.  They say that college students should be treated as adults.  If they make poor choices, then they must learn to deal with the consequences of those choices.

j.  There is much variation among departments in their efforts to assist students in picking the right major.  Some departments are seen as doing a good job.  Others appear unwilling to talk to students until the major has been declared.