Last Year #9: Advising

Of all the duties-as-assigned that full-time faculty are required to perform, the one I've always been worst at is advising.  Fortunately, one of the finest minds on the COCC campus, Vickery Viles, tries to make the process as fool-proof as possible.  She gives us a wonderful workbook with all the info we need about placement tests and managing our new online tool, Gradtracks.  She and her folks have also created an easy-to-read booklet for students to help get them through their first year.

It wasn't always so.  Here, from my Bendnotes letter of September 22, 1988, is my attempt to describe to my colleagues back in Utah the way student advising worked. 

"Advising took three days and was supposedly the stripped down, new, improved version.  Certainly all the old folks said that it was no longer the madhouse it used to be. . . . "

Three other new humanities folks and I were supposed to just observe but because one of the senior English teachers was sick, I needed to take over for her.  

"We had all had a good lecture about the process from Bart [dean of instruction] during our week of orientation.  Nevertheless, I did not enjoy being thrown into it. . . . The process was to go something like this.  My work was first to ascertain that the student who walked into my office (or Mary's office, that first day) had a green X at the top of their registration form.  then I was to ask if they had filled out the form.  Sometimes they had, sometimes they hadn't (the form is three sheets, with name, ethnics, and class time, number spaces).  If they had, I was to call 525, the number of the registration switchboard, and read off the subject numbers . . .  to the operator on line.  She (always of that gender) would punch the numbers into a computer which would report with a beep if the class was closed (in our Tuesday meeting, however, Bart insisted that we say to students, 'the  section is filled' -- thus does discourse analysis enter the organization.)  If not flustered or pressed . . . the operator read back the subject numbers and their classes.  If all went perfectly, there would be no beeps and the student would go away happy as a clam.  At the sound of the beep, however, the student would have to sort through the 'full year schedule' and find another course.  

"(After Wednesday morning, it was also possible to check the list of closed sections before calling in.  A runner would bring them around three times a day -- color coded sheets with the most recently closed classes marked with starts.)

"The student could decide to drop or add classes any time during the day just through the phone registration technique (by having the advisor call in the schedule change).  After being put into the computer, the student needed to register by the end of the day of s/he would be 'invalidated.'

"Now, if the student had no idea in hell what he or she wanted to do, real advising had to take place.  The advisor [sic] had to explain the need for the four sequences required for an AA degree, and why (if the student didn't know)the student would need an AA degree.   . . .

"Advising tools:  the class schedule, the college bulletin, a big blue three ring binder with every teacher's expectations for students for every course clearly articulated and quantified, the student's placement test scores, pre-interpreted for our convenience, and (for us in humanities) a list of the acceptable cross over requirements from the four year institutions."