Students have circulated a petition asking the Communications and Journalism Department to offer an additional class in the spring because they will not be able to graduate on time without it.
Student Krystle Archibeque signed the petition saying students ought to have the chance to take the class. She said she would have taken it on time were it not for misdirection from an adviser.
Archibeque said her projected graduation date was fall 2009 but that she now has to reset it to accommodate the class, which will not be offered again until the fall.
"(The adviser) didn't tell me anything about that," Archibeque said. "Apparently, we're supposed to know about that from the Web site, but no one said to go to the Web site. I'm a transfer student, so when I transferred in, I just thought that all the classes were offered (each semester). They didn't tell me to research that or anything."
Student Lauren Abadie said she helped circulate the petition along with Archibeque.
"It was just mostly as a supplement to our argument," Abadie said. "We just figured it would be helpful if they saw that there was about 30-some-odd people with the same problem going on."
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Abadie said the petition had about 25 signatures on it when it was submitted to John Oetzel, chairman of the Communications and Journalism Department.
Oetzel said the number of signatures on the petition does not warrant the inclusion of an additional class in the spring semester.
"We only have enough students to offer that class once a year," he said.
Oetzel said the information on the department's Web site lists the required courses for a public relations bachelor's degree.
"It clearly states when courses are to be offered, so given the general information that's out there, I don't think students were ill-advised," he said.
Abadie said students shouldn't have to suffer year-long setbacks because of miscommunication.
ASUNM president Ashley Fate said she plans to assist undergraduates with their advisement problems.
Fate said ASUNM will petition the Legislature for money to expand advisement services in February and that she would also like to introduce triplicate forms in the advisement offices.
This would ensure students have a copy of what was discussed during their advisement sessions and allow them to hold advisers accountable for misdirecting them or inadvertently deterring their graduation.
Fate said the Engineering Department already follows this system.
"We would like to see, ultimately, the advisers being accountable," she said. "I mean, if you look at ultimately Engineering being a really good model for this - a student goes in and they see an adviser and they write it down on those carbon-copy sheets with the white and then yellow and then pink. So, they sit there and they go through the whole plan, and both the student and adviser sign it.. That way there's a record of what was discussed during advisement, and it will have both their signatures on it."
Oetzel said it may be difficult to institute a foolproof plan to hold advisers accountable for their advice. The triplicate forms are a good start, he said, but it will take more than that to reformat the advising process.
"I think it is - in theory - a good idea," he said. "But, you've got some problems of implementation when it comes to Banner."
Archibeque said she would like to see a triplicate-slip process for all advisers.
She said she'll be forced to choose between taking unnecessary classes to total the 12 credits she needs to retain her Lottery Scholarship or opting to pay for a few extra classes out of her own pocket.
"I'm going to be wasting another I don't know how many hundreds of dollars because I need to take extra classes," she said. "I have to take a full schedule."
Oetzel said the Communications and Journalism Department has done a good job of advising its students in the past but will strive to be more helpful in the future.
"There are ways that our department can provide more information to help students in the future," he said. "It doesn't help these students, though."
Abadie said she sympathizes with advisers but that something must be done to ensure students can graduate on time.
"If it was just me, it would be different, but since there's so many people in that predicament, it just seems like there's something wrong," she said.
Fate said it is imperative for the University to find the funds to expand advisement services so that more advisers can be hired or expansions can be made into the online advisement service.
"Right now, you go to University College and they have more than 700 students per adviser - that's astronomical," Fate said. "That's a huge amount of students for one adviser to help. So, we're trying to increase online advisement to answer the easy questions.. Hopefully, with that we can move toward advisement being accountable for what they tell students."
