Cynthia Castro, the director of student success initiatives at the University of Idaho, came before the UI Faculty Senate Tuesday to share information about the new student advising structure that is currently being implemented.
Castro said up until this year the advising structure at UI has lacked uniformity — some advisors reported to their department chairs, some to strategic enrollment management, some to their deans and this needed to be addressed. She said a result of this lack of norms between the colleges created an inability to effectively determine how well colleges were advising their students and students in different colleges were getting widely varying levels of help from their advisors. The new system is meant to create a more uniform approach to advising and provide better training to advisors, according to Castro.
“We are working hard to elevate the level of service and improve on the experience our students get and help with timely degree completion,” she said.
The new uniform advising system Castro spoke of consists of professional advisors dealing with first- and second-year students in their colleges while faculty advisors deal with upperclassmen. Both professional and faculty advisors will work under the leadership of their college.
Additionally, two new roles have been created. There will now be a lead advisor for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) colleges and a lead advisor of liberal arts colleges. Castro said the uniformity of this new structure will clear up confusion and allow for higher quality advising. Castro said training professional advisors will be much easier using this model and advisors will be much clearer on what exactly their responsibilities are.
Sen. Anne Kern said the new advising structure does not address off-campus students like the ones she works with at the UI site in Coeur d’Alene. Castro responded that this first wave of changes to the advising structure focuses on the Moscow campus but the university hopes to incorporate it at all UI locations.
Senate chair Aaron Johnson asked Castro to clarify the role lead advisors will play in this new structure. Castro explained their job is to be a liaison to college leadership and to deal with difficult or complex advising cases.
Sen. Raymond Dezzani voiced concerns about students double majoring in various disciplines or pursuing cross-disciplinary career paths, saying he was not sure if this new structure would be able to accommodate those students. Castro said she thinks the new structure will give advisors the opportunity to learn about advising across disciplines and allow advisors to be more prepared to address cross-disciplinary students.
Sen. Chantal Vella said she did not think it was appropriate to have the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences under the leadership of the liberal arts lead advisor. Vella said a lot of STEM work is done in that college so that classification doesn’t fit.
Provost & Executive Vice President John Wiencek added that the College of Natural Resources has many students and faculty that do social science work even though that college is listed as a STEM college in the new advising structure. Castro responded that the titles given to the groupings of colleges are currently only working titles and she plans for them to be updated to better encompass the colleges they will be representing.
Gavin Green can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @gavingreenphoto