2002-2003 Student Advising Resource Allocation Plans
Resources Allocated by The President's Student Advising Initiative

School of Business Administration
The School of Business proposes to use its limited funds allocation for the estimated 3,500 declared business majors in the following ways:

• Provide greater advising services to freshman-level business majors
  
• Improve web-based advising tools/information for all undergraduate and graduate level business majors
  

Freshmen level Advising:
Approximately 900 freshmen in the fall of 2002 identified business as their first or second major. The School of Business has instituted a pilot project in Fall 02 to provide on-going advising services for this new population, and track the group’s progress through the major to graduation. The purpose of the pilot project is to determine the role of advising in student retention and success in the major. As such, a number of special events, and routine contacts are anticipated, which will require staff time to serve this population, and then track data for later analysis.

Improve Web-based Advising Tools and Information
The School of Business website is currently under revision, and the pages devoted to student advising are being completely overhauled to provide students with better, more complete information to help manage their own academic programs, participate in student organizations, seek scholarships and take advantage of career building services such as internships, mentorships and career skills workshops. This revision requires the services of a staff person to accumulate and organize the information, with an estimated time allocation of approximately 250 hours.

Graduate School of Education
Recently the Program and Policy Committee in the Graduate School of Education discussed the need for more current advising materials for students and faculty. Student handbooks are currently their most appropriate documents for students to gain information about their programs.

Although advising handbooks for faculty would also be appropriate tools (their most recent edition is from 1997), they feel they would be similar enough to the student handbooks that, given time and budget constraints, it makes more sense to put their time and energy into making sure student handbooks contain the information and materials needed for both audiences.

Therefore they are using their advising funds to update student handbooks for all programs and put them on our website. The funds are being used to hire someone to work with faculty on updating hard copies and getting these on their GSE website. These handbooks will be reviewed as part of the ongoing curriculum review process, providing the Program and Policy Committee with background information for their reviews, and providing programs with an ongoing process for updating the handbooks.

College of Engineering and Computer Science
The College of Engineering and Computer Science is using the funds to support the stipend of the new CECS Graduate Assistant in Advising. This is a new GA position in the CECS Dean's Office, developed to meet the increased demand for advising services for their entering freshmen and transfers, as well as lower division CECS students.

Fine & Performing Arts
The following is submitted in an attempt to summarize SFPA departmental goals and objectives for use of funds to develop a "holistic" approach to academic advising. This summary, in outline format, attempts to highlight each department's focus as succinctly as possible.

Architecture

• Update all existing advising materials for curricular and degree requirements; materials include advising handouts, department student handbook, department Website.
  
• Provide stipends for two full-time faculty to participate in new student advising sessions during summer terms.
  
• Provide a stipend to one part-time faculty to conduct weekly general advising during traditional academic year and to participate in new student orientation sessions.
  
• Will develop an outreach program with regional high schools and community colleges.
  

Art

• Create an "advising position" so one faculty person oversees advising responsibilities for the entire department.
  • The adviser will be responsible for reviewing all transfer student's portfolios and recommend placement within the program.
    
  • The adviser will be responsible for hiring students to work with groups of students and assist the faculty adviser with academic advising.
    
  • The adviser will hire students to assist in maintaining the department's Web site as it pertains to university advising guidelines, general departmental information, advising handbook, etc.
    
• Create a comprehensive departmental brochure, handbook, Web site, similar to the Architecture model. Align all with university guidelines. Create concentration sheets that explain precisely what students within respective concentrations must take from term to term and year to year.
  
• Provide stipends to students for peer mentorships and to aid in orientation programs.
  
• Will develop an outreach program with regional high schools and community colleges.
  

Music

• Provide a stipend for an adviser to work two weeks before classes being...an important time for students to find answers to questions. Past summer expenditure of resources proved very successful.
  
• Provide stipends to two faculty members to visit three primary community colleges for recruitment purposes during the Winter and Spring terms. Faculty will spend a sufficient time at the community colleges in an attempt to aid students who want to transfer to PSU. All in all, this represents a step forward in public relations and ease of transition for music majors.
  

Theater

• Theater Arts states they are "largely self-sufficient with regard to advising during the academic year. They are "holistic" now! They do not send students to IASC now! The existing "faculty is less inclined to endorse the concept of a single individual who is an FPA Advisor, rather (they) would be interested in supplemental funding to improve (their) current services".
  
• Provide stipends to 9-month faculty to cover special activities. Orientation Special activities organized by the Office of Admissions.
  
• If #2 is not workable, provide a stipend to an adjunct faculty person to do what they would pay a 9-month faculty member to do.
  
• If #2, and #3 are not doable, provide release time to a full-time faculty member to oversee advising across-the-board.
  
• Provide stipends to students for peer mentoring in the orientation and advising processes, and for related activities, for example, facilitating internship placements.

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
They have determined that the best use of the funds available to them for advising initiatives is to utilize half of the funding to support centralized advising in the CLAS Advising Center. Last year, in response to growing needs, they added a new advising position with responsibility for a national scholarship mentoring program. Funding from SAIT will partially fund that position. They intend to use the rest of the funding in the same manner as they did with their summer allocation. They will ask departments for proposals which respond to the advising goals as set out in the SAIT plan. They will fund as many of the worthwhile projects as resources permit.

Graduate School of Social Work
The funds from the President’s Student Advising Initiative have allowed us to continue our efforts to reach out to undergraduate students during the summer months. Included in our activities have been advising meetings with individuals who are currently undergraduate students at PSU; those interested in transferring to PSU from community colleges; and individuals who are graduates of PSU, and other four-year institutions, who are considering returning to school to receive an MSW. Over the summer our Director of Student Affairs has met with over 60 persons to discuss the social work field, the MSW program and the application process. In addition to these face-to-face contacts, many phone counseling sessions have occurred throughout the summer months.

Two GSSW Ph.D. students have been involved in reaching out to both current undergraduate students and community members who are interested in pursuing an MSW degree. Also, ten undergraduate students participated in an MSW summer course led by these students.

Additionally, we have undertaken a review of our admissions process to help determine which parts of the application process provide the greatest challenges to our applicants. In particular, we are looking to see if students of color have difficulty in being competitive in particular areas of the admissions process. The additional dollars we received have allowed us to devote time to this research so that we might better assist interested applicants with the admissions process.

The funds available for the 2002-03 academic year will allow us to hire a graduate assistant to work in the area of recruitment and advising for prospective MSW students. This person will work in tandem with a second graduate assistant whose time would be split between recruitment and retention activities, specifically with individuals of color. The efforts of these two graduate assistants will include outreach to the PSU undergraduate community as well as to local community colleges and the larger state and metropolitan community. Participation in campus events such as the Party in the Park and Bridges will be included in their activities. In essence, our ability to continue these efforts would be severely compromised without the Student Advising Initiative funds.

College of Urban and Public Affairs
The College of Urban and Public Affairs has decided to focus the allocation in support of student advising within the Hatfield School of Government, to support initiatives undertaken by the divisions of Political Science and Administration of Justice. Both units have large numbers of undergraduate students, Each has expressed a willingness to share with each other and the third academic unit of the School, their experiences and lessons learned from an improved student advising program. Concentrating the limited resources in support of advising within the two selected units will enhance the breadth and quality of advising services provided students.

Program Purpose: To enhance the quality of academic advising provided undergraduate students in Political Science and Administration of Justice, through the exploration of new and improved means of delivery, access to new information (DARS), and assessment of advising services.

Activity Efforts

• Provide peer advising 7-10 hours per week;
  
• Extend the role of peer advisors to include attendance at PSU Preview Days and other University orientation programs, including the summer orientations;
  
• Develop peer advisor and faculty capacity to effectively use DARS;
  
• Begin use of an exit survey of graduating seniors to evaluate satisfaction with division/school advising efforts, and relate back to University assessment program.