ISSUE 12 MAY 5
SPRING 2016
Photo by Nathaniel Ashton
Students discuss need for academic advising improvements
Many seniors have awoken from the same nightmare in the weeks before graduation. They’ve submitted their petition, and word comes back that they still need one more class that no one told them about. They won’t be walking this semester. Tension and stress run high when it is time to register for classes, and poor advising can mess up a student’s schedule or even affect their expected graduation date. It is this time of the year in the school of business that rumors fly about less than desirable advising. “It was hard for him to schedule to meet with me because he was hardly in his office,” said Birchel Ralph, a senior graduating this summer with a degree
in business administration with sports management. “His overall knowledge of the classes that I have to take wasn’t very good. I feel like it could have been better.” Ralph said he has also had issues with his adviser not knowing what classes he had to take and in what order. He had even been placed in the wrong classes at some points. “Basically, I had to be on top of him to make sure I was taking what I needed to take,” Ralph said. Margo McClintic, a business administration with sports management major, said she is good friends with the trolley driver, Oscar, and that he always talks about how people complain on the trolley about how advisers
are not doing their job. McClintic is a workstudy student that works in the front office at the business building and has close relationships with all of the professors. She said that while there are some issues sometimes with adviser availability and flowchart knowledge, the bigger issue is when students show up demanding to see their adviser without having made an appointment. McClintic said that when students show up without appointments, they will always try to see if the adviser is available for walk-ins but that there is no guarantee. “There’s a few who are regulars at lunchtime who are begging to see people — but it’s lunch! No one
is going to take time out of their lunch to come see you,” McClintic said. Thomas Haynie is a business administration major who also works closely with professors in various fields as a workstudy student at the center for entrepreneurship. He has heard complaints from students who have trouble knowing what classes they need to take. “I think it's more an issue with the students themselves,” Haynie said. “They expect the advisers to do everything instead of understanding what their path is.” McClintic often runs into this issue with students. She said she does her best to provide students with their flowcharts and explain how the prerequi-
The Board of Trustees and Administration met to talk about the future of Florida Tech on April 21 and 22, staying in a room from morning until nine at night, pondering the budget, the plan for the next five years and the mission. During those two days, they approved a smaller university budget than many had hoped for, made decisions for reductions in personnel and decided to cut the athletics budget and other departmental budgets. “Make it in the top 100 in the United States,” is what Executive Vice President T. Dwayne McCay is planning to do with Florida Tech’s status as an engineering university during his presidency. Students, faculty and staff are starting to feel the transition on campus as he takes his step into his role as president, though the official day has not come yet.
“I think one of the things I used early on is Tony has, Dr. Catanese, has built this nice house. We’ve been expanding and building on this house. But we haven’t completely furnished it. A few of the rooms are not as furnished as they need to be,” McCay said. “So my focus is not on growth, but on deepening the university.” With about 5,300 students at the university and only about a 5,500 capacity in the university’s classrooms, there will be no more building outwards — only focusing on what we already have.
sites work for their major but the days before registration are the busiest and it gets hectic. “There are course catalogs to look at with prerequisites in the office,” McClintic said. “It needs to be the student’s responsibility to keep track of their schedule, as well. Advisers each have around 40 students and they can't keep track of every single one.” McClintic suggested that the online major descriptions should be written more efficiently, clearly listing what the prerequisites for certain classes are. That way, students will have a clear online source
//AUDREY GANGLOFF SPORTS EDITOR
New university budget means cuts in athletics, staff
T. Dwayne McCay at a Town Hall Meeting hosted by ResLife. He was speaking about budget issues in athletics at the time. Photo by Ebube Ubochi.
The same goes for Athletics. McCay said his philosophy is to focus on a handful of things and be really good at those. “Choose a certain number of sports that we’re going to invest money in to be even better,” McCay said. “And there are others we’re going to have to run on a shoestring.” With 22 varsity sports at Florida Tech, McCay said we’re “overstretched.” //REBEKAH DUNTZ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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