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thursday The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
October 29, 2009
Groups meet to combat advisement problems by Kallie Red-Horse Daily Lobo
The Provost’s Office is teaming up with the Board of Regents and University College to streamline advisement all across campus. At Wednesday’s meeting of the Regents’ Student Affairs Committee, representatives from the three groups outlined their plans to make UNM’s advisement more efficient. The student-to-adviser ratio in the University College is 770 to 1. Wynn Goering, vice provost for Academic Affairs, said UNM is updating advisement software and consolidating advisement centers into a centralized advisement center. He said plans to remodel the Student Services Center are in the works, which will create a unified advising area for the College of Arts and Sciences and the University College. “We have a highly complex system that we have to deal with,” he said at the meeting. “We know that we need increased access to advising and we want to do a better job of advising. We want to make sure that it is accurate 100 percent of the time. We want to make sure that it is consistent as students move from department to department.” He said going to different places for advisement can confuse students, especially when advisers provide inconsistent information. Student Morgan Matthew said she is frustrated with UNM’s advisement system. “I had to go to so many different people in different departments who all told me different things,” she said. “They didn’t seem to agree on anything, which is confusing.” The E-Progress audit program advisers use is a major source of advisement problems, said Henry Gonzalez, UNM program specialist. He said he was involved in acquiring the $2.4 million Title Five grant that is funding advisement reorganization. “E-Progress is outdated software,” he said. “It is approximately 15 years old. It is difficult to read, confusing and provides no way for students to plan with it.”
The new software program, AdvisorTrac, will work with LoboTrax, which will replace the E-Progress report. AdvisorTrac would ensure that advisers can communicate and access the same information for each student, said Annette Torres, senior degree audit analyst. “Any time a student or adviser clicks on a particular area, it opens up a more detailed view,” she said. “It gives students the ability to click on courses that they need for graduation and allows them to add (the classes) into the course planner so that advisers can see what they are planning to take in the future.” The integration of the various advisement centers into a single physical space will clarify the advisement process for students, Goering said. “About 2/3 of students will be walking to the same building to get their advising,” he said. “It will be a building, not an organizational chart.” The renovation of the Student Services Center is slated to begin in November, Goering said. At the same time, the department will be structurally remodeled. “It will be more like a management group with a bunch of different units in different divisions doing different things,” he said. “They are all important to the success of the University and have diverse tasks. But, at the particular mission of advising students, they all have to work from the same playbook and do things in similar ways in order to accomplish their mission.” Matthew said she supports both the creation of a central advisement building and sharing information between various departments. “It is a little hectic trying to figure out where to go between different open hours for different colleges,” she said. “They need to have better communication between the departments.” The University’s ultimate goal is to ensure student success, Goering said, and advisement is an important component in that effort. “Advising is not primarily about getting students to graduate,” he said. “It is about putting students on a path to get where they want to go in life.”
Terrance Siemon / Daily Lobo From left, students Ian Alden, Amy Bourque, Rachel Leos, Laura Hosen and Tara Brown sit outside Popejoy Hall to gather signatures for a petition expressing problems with the theater department. Students from the department protested their concerns Wednesday.
Students protest theater department by Andrew Beale Daily Lobo
About 50 UNM students stood outside in the cold on Wednesday to circulate a petition describing their grievances with the UNM theater department. Student Morgan Harris was among the protestors in front of Popejoy. She said the protest ended Wednesday afternoon when James Linnell, dean of the College of Fine Arts, agreed to set up a meeting with the students. In the petition, students complained about safety and some faculty members’ treatment of students in the department. “We want to address respect for students, because there have been degrading comments to students,” said Katy Bowen, co-organizer of the protest. “We want to address regard for student safety. Regard for student safety is a large one.” Harris said the students also planned a performance art piece to signify their lack of input in the theater program. “For part of the morning, we all had tape over our mouths, to say we don’t have voices,” she said. “But it’s hard to say ‘Come sign this petition. Here’s what it’s about.’ when you have tape over your mouth.” Bowen said the complaints in the petition address department
chair William Liotta and associate professor Bill Walters. She said one petition asked students to describe complaints they have against Walters. “We decided that we would gather the voices of all the students. Just throw away the rumors. Find out what people are actually upset about, what they actually want changed and then bring it back to them and then maybe they’ll listen to us,” she said. Liotta said many of the complaints against the department were unfounded. He said the students may have had trouble adjusting to the addition of new professors to the program. “There’s been a turnover of most of our faculty,” Liotta said. “The people that have come in to replace our retiring faculty are more professional. They have more international affiliations than the previous faculty, so they have different standards, if that makes sense. So that’s part of it.” Student Leonard Hughes said students have tried to voice their concerns in the past, but the faculty didn’t listen. “I think that for most of the semester there have been a number of people that have gone personally to the professor or to the chair,” he said. Liotta said students met with
him on Monday, but he didn’t realize that they were planning a protest. “There’s obviously a communication lapse here,” he said. “They never told me the seriousness of it. They had several concerns that they laid out, but that was it.” Liotta said the students told him they were concerned about what they perceived as Liotta’s negative attitude, and they also raised questions of student safety. “One of the biggest beefs that the students have with me is that they say I’m negative,” Liotta said. “But I’m not negative, I’m a realist. I know what it takes to succeed in the business, because I’ve been doing it a long time.” Liotta said safety issues are not a problem. “They brought up one thing about students slipping for one of the shows, but that just came up and it was dealt with immediately before the second performance,” he said. Harris said students were glad to be meet with Linnell. “He seemed really positive about what we had to say, and he set up a meeting with a few of us,” she said. “This is certainly what we wanted. We wanted some attention to be paid and we wanted to be listened to, and I think this is the beginning of that.”
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Doing it in the Duke City Amie Zimmer / Daily Lobo Members of the Board of Regents look through the agenda during the Student Affairs Committee meeting held in Scholes Hall Wednesday. One of the main topics on the agenda was student advisement.
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