In an attempt to address long-standing concerns about weak and inconsistent advising for student organizations, administrators have established a task force to examine the current system.
Zoila Airall, assistant vice president for campus life, organized the task force to continue efforts by both Duke Student Government and the Office of University Life for several years to improve advising--specifically the connection between advisers and their student groups.
"It's not like people were saying that we had terrible advising," Airall said. Rather, she added, many people feel the advising system is inequitable.
"Some organizations get very good advising, some organizations get average and some get none, and [students feel] that the reason that might have happened is that a set of expectations has not been established," Airall said.
Brian Denton, assistant dean of university life, coordinator of advising and an adviser for a variety of groups--including DSG, Cable 13 and the East Campus Coffeehouse--said that although the Office of Student Activities encourages student groups to find an active adviser, the groups are not always successful.
"The idea for getting the adviser is to find someone interested and connected with the organization, and in many cases it is, but many times it's just a name on a piece of paper," Denton said.
Sue Coon, director of the Office of Student Activities, wrote in an e-mail that another weakness in the advising system is the lack of advising guidelines. "There is no formalized training for advisers, and no clear expectations," she wrote. "Some of this stems from the incredible range of student organizations, from those
Some students have also expressed concern over the advising system in the past. Senior Richard Rivera, Mi Gente co-president, said the group stays in close contact with its adviser, Julian Sanchez, director of the Office of Intercultural Affairs. "He's been really good; we go to him with any questions we have," Rivera said. "I think you have to be very proactive with advisers on this campus. There's a lot of keeping them updated on things you're doing... but a lot of students get stuck in a rut where they don't use them as best as they can."
However, as a member of Phi Sigma Pi, a national honor fraternity, Rivera said that group had lost touch with its adviser. Though he did not think having an adviser should be required, Rivera thought the task force should highly recommend both advisers for every group and a central location where groups can go for advice.
To more systematically assess advising, the task force e-mailed a survey to the presidents of organizations and their advisers last week, asking them to critique the advising system and suggest improvements.
Additionally, Airall said the new task force has looked at about 30 other schools' advising systems as possible models.
"We found some schools that were like Duke and said that things needed to be improved, and then other schools had parts of their advising system that we thought looked interesting," she said.
Some schools only required advising for groups that had a great deal of funding. Many schools without advisers provided orientations for student groups, while others provided instructive orientations or manuals for advisers with a list of answers to frequently asked questions by student groups.
Eventually, Airall said, she hopes the task force will move toward recommending a one-stop center where students will be able to go for all of their advising information. "A lot of times, it's not so much that you need to have the answer, but you need to know where to send the students," Airall said.
Currently, Coon wrote, each student organization is required to have an adviser to be recognized. "Most groups approach either faculty or staff with interests similar to the organization and request that the faculty member or staff person become their adviser," she wrote.
Because administrators and faculty both advise student groups, Airall said she wanted to take those different roles into account.
As the task force examines the current model, Airall said she also recognizes that there are different levels of advising. "We don't want to make the expectations so stringent that people will say 'Well, I can't be an adviser,'" she said. "For example, the Chess Club isn't going to need the same advising as the Union. We don't want an advising system that's cumbersome."
After compiling their research, the group plans to submit ideas for an improved advising system to the Office of Student Activities, which would fine-tune and implement those suggestions. Any changes would go into effect at the beginning of the next academic year.
"This is a critique of the advising system as we know it," Airall said. "This is certainly not to say that what's happening now is bad because it's not.... This is only to strengthen the system."
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