Vice Chancellor Genaro Padilla, Co-Chair
Dean Carolyn Porter, Co-Chair
Present: Carolyn Porter, Alice Agogino, Mark Tanouye, Catherine Koshland, Robert Knapp, Robert Brentano, Alexei Filippenko, Alix Schwartz, Gail Kaufman, Cynthia Schrager, Susan Wells
Absent: Genaro Padilla, Vincent Resh, Robert Middlekauff, Alex Pines, David Kirp, Arian White, Yvette Flores
Committee Chair Porter briefly reviewed the discussion of the previous meeting related to advising. She asked the committee what we still need to know about advising and how we might develop a plan of action.
Action: The group reviewed the letter from Herb Strauss. Dean Porter will talk to Dean Shun about the letter and Alix Schwartz will check with EVC Christ's office to see if there was something that prompted the letter.
Although Strauss's letter mentions staffing, it does not sufficiently emphasize the problem. It also requires that a student select, at least provisionally, whether he or she will be in the humanities or the sciences. The benefit of being undeclared is that it allows some time for exploration, and the committee feared that this benefit would be compromised if the students were forced into an early decision.
Recommendation: That L&S Advising staff be augmented. Dean Porter will consult with Dean Shun to determine resource needs for his unit.
The committee agreed that there were two general kinds of advising: the first includes enforcement of the rules, information about requirements, etc. and the second is a coherent four-year course of advising that is related to the intellectual endeavor. What seems to work best is staff providing the rules advising and faculty providing the academic advising. The Commission discussed some problems in the current advising climate, including consistency among advising services, the varying ability of advisors to be helpful/knowledgeable/empathetic, and the overwhelming numbers of students who need advising. In addition, students are often driven by what is most immediate, which means they don't seek advising until they perceive they are in trouble. Advising needs to be more integrated into classes or into other aspects of their student life.
Some improvement of technological systems might help with regard to students meeting the rules requirements without burdening the staff. DARS is one positive step in this direction. We might also want to look at "push" technology and how it most effectively be used.
Recommendation: The committee recommends that the information contained in DARS be "poured" into the skeletal course web sites for each class, so that these sites would provide easy, readable access to information on the requirements that each class fulfills.
A question was raised about the survey of recent graduates: could their level of satisfaction be measured major by major, so that we could determine whether departments that assign each major to a faculty advisor earn higher satisfaction ratings?
Action: Alix Schwartz will pursue a breakdown of the student survey results and compare it with the results of the informal survey of department chairs.
Faculty teaching Freshman Seminars might be mobilized as a group to help students in a manner that is more integrated into their academic lives. We might be able to build some community around this subset of faculty. Another area where we might integrate advising is in English 1A and 1B. One class session devoted to questions related to survival on the Berkeley campus might be of significant help. We might also want to follow UCLA's lead in creating a course that is required for freshmen, focussing on building skills such as writing and critical thinking in the context of a common thematic strand.
Action: Alix Schwartz will work with the faculty who are doing freshman seminars to set aside a week in which students could get advice from any of these faculty members.
Action: The committee support staff will look at how other schools 1) solve the problem of mentoring and 2) use technology (especially "push" technology) to inform/advise/assist students.
The real goal is to forge a different relationship between the students and campus faculty and staff. Students may be taking all of the courses required to graduate, but may also feel that they could have had a more rewarding experience if they had done something else or taken different classes. Vertical structures across campus prevent communication and make it very difficult to advise students about the vast array of possibilities.
In addition, there is no way to share effective pedagogy or practices. Interactions between faculty who don't normally interact seem to create wonderful synergy. Professor Agogino is working to establish a Center for Teaching and Learning, to facilitate the sharing of good pedagogical practices.
Professor Knapp argued that incentives are needed to get faculty and others involved in advising and that only a fundamental change in the way the campus views advising will bring improvements. We don't value service on this campus in tangible ways, and this is a problem.
Other Actions: The committee will
Announcement: Professor Brentano encouraged the CUE members to attend an upcoming forum, hosted by the Vice President of the ASUC, Executive Vice Chancellor Christ, and Chancellor Berdahl, on the topic of what's good and bad about undergraduate education. The main focus will be the idea of year-round education. This will be held on April 5, from 12:00-1:30. The location has yet to be announced; call 642-4226 for updates.
Last updated on 3/25/99 by CS.