Feature

Academic Advising at WSU Needs Some Advising Themselves
By: Lauren Madeja
Apparel design student Lauren Barr stares off into the distance as her professor drones on and on about the textural differences between silk and satin, wondering how she will get through a fifth year of school. This should be Barr’s senior year at Washington State University, but due to poor academic advising, she will have to stay an extra year to graduate in her major.
“My parents are furious they have to pay for an extra year of school when I could have done it in four,” Barr says. “But there’s nothing I can do, I wasted tons of credits because my advisor didn’t know what she was talking about.”
The problem arose when Barr’s apparel, merchandising, and textiles advisor put her on the apparel merchandising track instead of Barr’s intended major of apparel design. So while she should have been taking sewing and fitting classes, Barr was taking classes in economics and accounting.
“I thought it was strange that I would have to take those math classes for design,” Barr said, “But my advisor told me all AMT majors had to take those classes.”
When Barr was switched to a different advisor in her sophomore year, she found out she had been taking those classes for nothing, putting her way behind in her actual major. Now, because of limited classes and the tight schedule apparel design majors have, she will be spending a fifth year at WSU.
Barr is not alone in her frustrations with the academic advising at WSU. Many students have been left misled and uniformed by incompetent WSU advising, causing them to take unnecessary classes, graduate late, and even drop out of school. In fact, student dissatisfaction with academic advising has gotten so bad in the last five years that the school is revising its advising program by looking into what is wrong with the system and what could be better.
It turns out there is a lot wrong with the system, according to a report provided by the academic advising committee at WSU, which reveals there are no proper guidelines set out for advising and even worse, no formal training required for advisors. The report shows that any faculty member is permitted to advise students, even though they have no proper training or prior advising knowledge.
This shocking revelation definitely explains why there has been so much inconsistency in advising at WSU, but the explanation makes the situation even more disturbing. Not only are the people advising students at WSU not qualified to do that job, they didn’t even get the chance to be. The report shows that many teachers at WSU are required to be advisors as part of their teaching career, but these teachers know nothing about advising and don’t care much about it either.
Students’ reactions to this information were very powerful. Junior communication major Erin Leong was not surprised advisors had no training, and yet astounded WSU has let that system fly for so long.
“It’s ridiculous that I pay thousands of dollars to come to this school and they can’t even have professional advisors to help me graduate on time,” Leong said. “World class face to face? I don’t think so.”
Leong also had a bad experience with her advisor, who didn’t inform her of all the required classes she needed to take in order to certify in communication. Leong will have to stay an extra year just like Barr because she wasn’t able to certify on time, through no fault of her own.
“When I used to talk to my advisor I assumed she knew what she was doing so I never questioned what she told me,” Leong said. “Now I wish I would have.”
Faye Vowell, an academic affairs consultant who wrote a report on advising at WSU found yet another problem with the advising system. With an advising appointment required to take students’ holds off before they can register for classes, advising has become a rushed process seen by both students and advisors only as a means to an end, instead of an in depth discussion.
“We are not sending students the right message when we equate advising with
getting their holds lifted,” Vowell said.
Vowell says that advisors should play an important role for students in making very important academic and personal decisions in college, and WSU has lost that definition of advising. She suggests that the school rethink what advising means and how it can affect students’ lives.
The Faculty Senate Academic Affairs Committee at WSU has just recently proposed plans to revise academic advising which will require staff to undergo training and provide them more advising knowledge and guidelines. Though the proposal should have come years ago, hopefully it will prevent future students from meeting the same fate as Lauren Barr, Erin Leong, and so many other WSU students who were wronged by poor academic advising.


Contacts: Lauren Barr- 206-922-6196
Erin Leong- 206-669-3183
Faye Vowell- vowellf@wnmu.edu