CUE should start from a proactive position with regard to advising. It should endorse a statement such as the following:

Every undergraduate student has right to adequate advising. Advising must be provided by timely access to faculty, staff, and peers who are knowledgeable and committed to help, as well as to well-organized and accurate electronic resources.

We could conceptually divide this advising into reasonably comprehensive "content" components:

1. rules and regulations (help in navigating explicit program, college, and university requirements)

2. personal problems which affect academic life (help in coordinating personal concerns with academic success)

3. career planning (help in planning for life after college)

4. major/curriculum planning (help in selecting required and elective courses, and in planning a coherent course of study)

We could conceptually divide this advising into "modes of delivery" components:

1. personal contact with faculty

2. personal contact with staff

3. personal contact with trained students

4. electronic access to information useful in formulating academic plans (catalogue, schedule of classes, the whole matrix around tele-bears, etc.; course web pages, DARS, other things in place or planned?)

5. access through the written word (e.g., the Catalogue, L&S' Earning Your Degree)

We could urge that these advising for students be distributed:

1. Professional Schools and Colleges operate their own advising programs (e.g., Engineering, Haas)

2. staff advising for all other students be served in a single, central place on campus. This would be a core component of a Center of Undergraduate Life to be housed in Moffitt (by kicking out everything except the Library and using the space for the Center). Here would be housed:

a. academic support services (now the Partnership for Academic Excellence)

b. L&S Advising

c. Moffitt Undergraduate Library/the Teaching Library

d. an outpost of the cashier's office

e. CalSo

f. other services?

3. faculty advising for all students be put in place using the following mechanisms (and others!)

a. departments must assign every major to a faculty adviser

b. departments must assign faculty to be available to meet with intended majors

c. faculty listed as undergraduate advisers with at least 30 advisees are relieved of all other departmental and university administrative duties (departmental committees, academic senate committees, service on ad hoc committees, etc.)

d. in order to be declared advisers, faculty must attend a 2 hour orientation each semester, meet with each advisee at least once a semester at the time of tele-bears enrollment, and agree to report each semester to their chair the students who have been advised and the time spent with each student.

e. a stipend of $1000 per semester is added retroactively to the faculty's research account if conditions in (4) are certified as met by the chair

4. departmental staff advising for all students

a. every department or cluster will have a staff undergraduate assistant at least .25 FTE; staff support will increase at a ratio of .25 FTE : each 125 majors (e.g., 375 or more majors = .75 FTE staff)

5. provision of student evaluation data for ug courses on a campus-wide scale and in a consistent format be made available at University expense to all students

 Last updated 4/29/99 by CS