Volume of Students Puts Strain on Advising System
By Caitlin Clinard

The Office of Academic Advising is responsible for counseling roughly 13,000-14,000 undergraduates. With only 20 full-time advisers, the demands are tremendous.

UNC-CH student, Nate Adams, says you can’t blame the advisers for getting lost in the system.

“The thing about UNC is that it is a really big school, and it’s virtually impossible for any advising program to keep track of all their students, all their majors,” Adams said.

Andre’ Wesson graduated from Carolina. Now he’s an adviser and has seen both sides of the story. He thinks students forget what advisers are here for.

“The role of an academic adviser is to assist a student in developing and discovering what their passion is and what their major is, or what they want their major to be, or refer them to sources where they can do that,” Wesson said. “A lot of times we are expected to have a breadth and depth of information that our department was not set up to have.”

Jerome Lucido, vice provost for enrollment policy and management, says that because there are so many students to work with, sometimes the advisers get a bad rap.

“There have been historical complaints about advising,” Lucido said. “There’s also been a huge amount of improvement in the academic advising system over the past four years, and it continues to improve.”

So what do students think? Senior Katherine Graham thinks matching an adviser’s personality with a student’s is important.

“Perhaps if the Web site did a better job of profiling the advisors, maybe if they had a little bio page about what they’ve done, what they’ve studied, where they’ve studied, what universities they went to,” Graham said.

Adams had other suggestions for changes in the University’s advising system.

“Probably if I was going to make some changes, I would expand the advising department, make it much more personal,” Adams said. “I know it’s hard with funding being cut. But otherwise, you just have to take matters into your own hands.”

Wesson said it’s crucial for students to play an active role in their course of study.

“In the very end, as long as students can start to take control and initiative for their overall academic experience, they’ll be fine,” Wesson said.

Wesson also said if the system feels bureaucratic, it’s because of the demands advisers must meet. He says everyone who works there cares for the students.

And there’s a new DVD in the works that will help answer major questions so that students can be more proactive in their own advising process.