With Drop/Add now closed, and students, for better or for worse, set in their classes for the semester, the stress of finding the perfect schedule is over. It’s not easy to find the right balance of classes that sound interesting, have open seats, and don’t conflict. What is supposed to make the process easier to navigate, though, are advisors.
On the whole, advisors do the best they can to guide students in their academic pursuits. A professor should not be expected to know small, footnoted details about policies of the Registrar’s Office. Still, many students don’t fully understand potentially avoidable issues like oversubscription and General Education expectation noncompliance until it is already a problem for them (usually at the twilight of their Wesleyan career).
We’ve all heard stories of students who needed their advisor to approve a scheduling change or answer a question regarding their major only to find phone calls and e-mails unanswered. At other times, even the most well meaning of faculty seem to have few answers aside from some talking points. Your advisor might keep telling you to fulfill your GenEds, but probably has little advice as to how to do that. Many advisors don’t even know what the separate tiers of GenEd compliance are, much less what does and does not count toward them.
A solution might be better training for faculty members who serve as advisors, though it seems unlikely that all of them would be interested in participating, and it’s hard to argue with them about it. Most students get information about credits and classes to take from older students. We support the creation of a student advisor role. For freshmen, a student advisor from their prospective major could offer guidance and tips on how to fulfill requirements and get the most out of their studies. Until then, class deans are a valuable resource for answers about credits and scheduling. They also hold copious office hours…use them.
Leave a Reply