Students who have trouble reaching their advisers can worry no more. A new service called Tiger Adviser has come to the rescue.
Tiger Advising is a program that offers after-hour advising services to students.
"This gives students one more opportunity to get advice on how to be successful at Auburn," said Provost Timothy R. Boosinger.
Tiger Adviser is a new program on campus provided by a collaboration of SGA and the Office of the Provost.
"Advising was one of Owen's big platforms," said SGA Chief of Staff Collier Tynes. "Making it easier for students to access advisers."
Along with Parrish's vision, Collier put her experience into the idea as well.
"I went on a COSGA retreat, and when I was there, there was another university that talked about having a kiosk of all this important information in it," Tynes said. "And I thought how that would be such a great thing for Auburn."
Many complaints have been filed about contacting advisers on time, so this would be a way to help get rid of that problem, said Constance Relihan, associate provost for undergraduate studies.
"The advisers we have are doing a great job, but some students have said that it is difficult to get appointments that will work around their class schedule," Boosinger said.
Tiger Advising's main purpose is to offer general process information for students, Relihan said.
"Students will not be able to get a pin number or specific advising on, say, which journalism class is best for you to take for your career plan," Relihan said. "This program will help students help themselves by getting information more easily. It's set up to make sure the students know who their advisers are, how do they change they major, what does it mean to gap a course, how do they read their degree works audit and how do they go about taking courses at another school over the summer."
The questions students should ask should only take about five minutes to answer, said Julie Huff, special assistant to the provost for projects and initiatives
Tiger Advising is not a replacement for students' college adviser by all means, Relihan said.
"Students really need to talk to people in their department about that," Relihan said. "We really want the people who know the most about the specific questions students ask about to be the ones that are giving the students this advice."
Tiger Advising will be located in room 2143 in the library, near the learning commons. It will be open from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Monday through Thursday.
The time is perfect because most students are in the library around those times, Huff said.
"If you want to see true university learning taking place, all you have to do is go to the library around 7 o'clock at night," Huff said.
Relihan said if demand is heavy they will open advising Sunday through Thursday.
Two formally retired advisers will be coming back to Auburn's campus to help out at Tiger Advising.
Along with past academic advisers, Tiger Advising is also looking for peer advisers to help out as well, Relihan said.
"Peer advisers are people who have been here at least a year and have at least a 3.0 GPA and preferably people who have been Camp War Eagle counselors, student recruiters or peer advisers in their college," Relihan said. "Basically we are looking for someone with some sort of background in advising."
One academic adviser and one peer adviser will be on-call at all times during the respective hours.
"It'll be really nice to have our perspectives put in as students and then advisers," Tynes said. "It can only be done with the advice from a lot of people."
The advising will only be made by walk-ins.
"We are ordering restaurant-style pagers because there is really no dedicated waiting area right there, but students will be in the library, so there are plenty of places to sit," Relihan said.
As well as the advising in the office, Tiger Advising hopes to have a fully stocked website of information available to the students, Huff said.
If Tiger Advising becomes really popular, the service may look into online chat opportunities.
Relihan cannot stress enough the importance that knowing Tiger Advising is not there to replace a student's real academic adviser.
"I don't want students to get frustrated because they can't get all their questions answered at the library center, because that is not what it is set up to do," Relihan said. "Part of what will be going on in this center is teaching. This will be a place where you can go to learn where to find academic policies, how to find your curriculum model or where tutoring is."
Tiger Advising will be open Oct. 1.
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