The Advising Enhancement Task Force was jointly appointed by Provost James Coffman and the Presidents of Faculty Senate and Student Senate in response to the Board of Regents Policy on Academic Advising. Among the charges given the Task Force was to develop a procedure and mechanism to "assess academic advising at the departmental level on a yearly basis." The Task Force developed a draft questionnaire, which was further refined by a committee of college administrators and faculty. This committee further recommended that, to ensure student participation, the Advising Questionnaire be incorporated into the University's KATS enrollment process.
Beginning with the enrollment process for the Spring 2002 semester, each student logging in to the KATS Enrollment System was first presented the Academic Advising Questionnaire. (It should be noted that the student could log into the enrollment system only after the advising indicator was set to indicate that the student had met with his or her academic advisor or had waived their academic advising.) The students were first asked to verify their academic advisor and to indicate whether or not they had conferred with their advisor during the current semester. Further, they were asked to indicate whether or not their advisor had been consulted when the student selected courses for the Spring 2002 semester. Students indicating they had not conferred with their academic advisor were asked to indicate a reason or reasons why they had not done so.
All students indicating they had conferred with their academic advisor during the Fall 2001 Semester were asked to respond to nine statements about the advising they had received. The questions, which are listed below, were designed to address the Regents' five advising criteria (goal setting, information, transitions, accessibility, referral to campus resources). In addition, the students were asked to rate their overall satisfaction with the academic advising they received and to indicate the extent to which they entered their advising session well prepared.
The students were asked to respond (using a four-point Likert scale or Can't Judge) to each of the following nine questions:
Students who enrolled for the Spring 2002 semester without using the KATS system either completed a paper/pencil form of the questionnaire or received an e-mail asking that they go to a website and complete the questionnaire. The student responses to the questionnaire are currently being compiled and will be presented in a series of three reports: an overall university summary, a summary for each college, and a summary for each department. These reports will in turn be provided to the appropriate university administrators and the Board of Regents.
Once these initial results are compiled and reviewed, it is anticipated that both the questionnaire and the collection mechanism will be further refined for continued use on an annual basis. The Associate Vice President for Personal Development, Dr. Michael L. Lynch, is coordinating this project.