Some Advice Please

At a Glance
What: New ideas from student services to help keep students on track for graduation as enrollment hits record numbers.

Where: Find the Career Center in Takena Hall and faculty advisors.

When: Drop-in hours are, 1:30-4:30 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday and
9 a.m.-noon on Tuesday and Thursday. Faculty can be found during their personal office hours.

How: Drop in at the Career Center or talk to faculty advisors and make an appointment with them now. Don't wait.

Contact: Students can contact the Career Center by calling (541)-917-4782




Ten minutes. They said she'd be available in ten minutes, but after 40 minutes had gone by it was time to go. No counselor seen. No advisor found.

Sound familiar?

The Career Center has turned into a hustle of employees working to make the student happy, but with so many students to please, this job may be more and more difficult to accomplish.

While other advisors throughout the campus feel no stress over their jobs, one look into the Career Center tells a different story. How does the school keep so many students on track for graduation?

Bruce Clemetsen, vice president of student services, says that the area of counseling has not been worked on in awhile, but it has come up in meetings and become a focus area in need of immediate attention. "We have a lot of work to do."

Clemetsen leans forward in his chair, enthusiastic about the topic at hand. A vision is cast. Not something wild and crazy, but safe and predictable. He calls it the "Pilot Program."

In this plan, staff are serving as "academic planning assistants" or APA's.

APA's are your friends.

APA's work to help get students the perfect personalized schedule, follow up on newbies by calling them if they miss a certain number of classes, making sure the student remembered to drop classes

"Generally," Clemetsen remarks with a smile, "students have really appreciated someone following up."

This has been very helpful to college kids who need a little nudge in the right direction and to those who are new and unsure how to go about this whole "college thing."

Clemetsen is hopeful that the number of APA's will rise and become a part of all departments. Sadly, Clemetsen admits that "they're very overwhelmed.

It's a lot of students to connect to," his dark blue suit parallels his standing on the future of LBCC advising: professional and solid."Our long term goal is (that) there is at least one or two APA's per division."

Last term over 200 students were helped by the Pilot program. It's pretty apparent, though, that in order for the program to grow, so does the number of APA employees. The more employees LBCC hires, equals more money needed to pay them.

With budget cuts, this is a hard situation to tackle. So what's a student to do while waiting for help to come to their specific program and where do these new students go once they are no longer "new?"

Not only Clemetsen, but every faculty member interviewed, quickly agreed on this one thing.
"They need to be connected to faculty advisors."

Faculty advisors in the departments around campus feel pretty confident in their ability to handle new student numbers.

Stepping into the homey office of English instructor, Linda Spain, prepared me to witness the relaxed and yet organized job she commits to. Spain did not feel affected at all by the influx of new students.

Instead, Spain thinks the hardest part of advising is getting students into classes before they fill up. With this in mind, she seriously wants to encourage students to connect with a teacher. The earlier the better.

"They might not come until they've got a couple of quarters left," She explained. Several other teachers agreed that students would often wait or come in at inappropriate times.

Engineering instructor, David Kidd noticed this as well. He points out that popular times for students to drop in come during finals, tests, or at the beginning of terms - not always a good time for instructors.

Kidd pointed to an Engineering web page for students to visit in order to stay on track for transferring to a four-year school. "I think that's one of the things that's helping us," he proudly states.

The biggest advice given by both advisors and the vice president? Go see a counselor now. Don't wait until graduation, the beginning or end of the term.

In the words of Clemetsen,"They want to give you information. Take advantage of that."