The University of Wisconsin Green Bay’s New Student Advising Model

By Angela White, Kelly Schmitz, Will Kamps, and Emily Krause

 

The University of Wisconsin Green Bay has implemented a new student advising model just before students pick classes for the upcoming spring semester.

This new advising model pairs students with an advising professional that specializes in their major. These advising professionals were hired to keep the workload off professors, who were the old advisors for every major.

When students wanted to make advising appointments with their advisors in the past, they would have to log into their SIS profile on the UWGB website and get their advisors’ email. From there, they would have to email their designated professor who was assigned to them within their major to be their advisor. This then required students to make an appointment by coordinating times to meet with their selected advisor.

With the new model, students can click a link online and see all of the times their new advisor is available, and they can click and choose which time and day work best for them. Many options are given for the meetings: phone call, virtual, or in person. After the meeting is booked, a confirmation email is sent to the student’s inbox stating the time and meeting instructions.

“Overall, the booking process was way easier than before,” says Erik Elliot, UWGB senior, “it was so much less of a hassle to book online than go through the email process.”

When the advising model was rolled out, every advisor also sent an email to all of their new students with an online schedule. From this email, students were able to see what exact times their advisors were available and schedule a meeting with a time that coordinated well with their schedules.

However, even though the booking process was easier, for some students, the meetings were somewhat fruitless.

Elliot says, “They were neither useful nor helpful. My advisor was much more focused on cracking jokes about my difficult philosophy classes rather than helping me choose the correct classes.” Elliot adds, “I later discovered that she did not even recommend the correct classes, which only added to my stress and confusion. I ended up having to get an appointment with a different advisor who was able to help.”

Overall, the new advising model has proven to be much more efficient in scheduling meetings, but students are still struggling with the advising aspect.

Those in charge of advising at UWGB hope to have the new advising model more established in the coming weeks.