Find us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter

Opinion

To the Editor:

Poetry & Art

Classified Ads

Back Issues

Blogs

Counseling effort seeks to keep students on track

Krista Goeke
The Commuter

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Ten minutes. They said she’d be available in 10 minutes, but after 40 minutes had gone by, it was time to go. No counselor seen. No adviser found.

Sound familiar?

The Career Center has turned into a busy hub of employees working to make the student happy, but with so many students to please, this job may be more and more difficult to accomplish.

While some instructor/advisers elsewhere on campus are feeling less stress over their jobs, one look into the Career Center tells a different story. How does the school keep so many students on track for graduation?

Bruce Clemetsen, vice president of student services, said that the area of counseling has not been worked on recently, but it has come up in meetings and become a focus area in need of immediate attention. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Clemetsen leaned forward in his chair, enthusiastic about the topic at hand. A vision is cast. Not something wild and crazy, but safe and predictable. He described an evolving pilot project.

Staff are serving as “academic planning assistants” or APAs. They are your friends. APAs work to help get students the perfect personalized schedule, follow up on newbies by calling them if they miss a certain number of classes, and make sure students remember to drop classes or take other timely actions.

“Generally,” Clemetsen remarked with a smile, “students have really appreciated someone following up.”

This has been helpful to college kids who need a little nudge in the right direction and to those who are new and unsure how to go about this whole “college” thing.

Clementsen is hopeful that the number of APAs will rise and become a part of all departments. Sadly, Clemetsen admitted that “they’re very overwhelmed. It’s a lot of students to connect to.” His dark blue suit parallels his standing on the future of LBCC advising: professional and solid. “Our long-term goal is (that) there is at least one or two APAs per division.”

Last term over 200 students were helped by the pilot project. It’s pretty apparent, though, that in order for the program to grow, so does the number of APA employees. So what’s a student to do while waiting for help to come to their specific program? And where do these new students go once they are no longer “new?”

Every faculty member interviewed quickly agreed on one thing: “They need to be connected to faculty advisers.”

Stepping into the homey office of English instructor Linda Spain prepared me to witness the relaxed and yet organized job to which she is committed. Spain did not feel affected at all by the influx of new students.

Instead, Spain thinks the hardest part of advising is getting students into classes before they fill up. With this in mind, she seriously encouraged students to connect with teachers – the earlier the better. Several other instructors agreed that students would often wait or come in at inappropriate times.

“They might not come until they’ve got a couple of quarters left,” she explained. Engineering instructor David Kidd noticed this as well. He points out that popular times for students to drop in are during finals, tests, or at the beginning of term which are not always convenient for faculty.

This department does not appear to be overwhelmed by the influx of students. The engineering department even has a web page for students transferring to a four-year school that helps them to stay on track.

“I think that’s one of the things that’s helping us,” Kidd proudly stated.

The biggest advice given by both advisers and the vice president? Go see a counselor now. Don’t wait until graduation nears, or the beginning or end of the term.

In the words of Clemetsen, “They want to give you information. Take advantage of that.”

Comment

Commenting is closed for this article.