Located behind glass walls on the second floor of RBD, and conveniently a few steps away from Caribou Coffee, Tiger Advisor, Auburn's student-directed advising, is there to help.
"It's a way for students to come in and get the general advising questions asked," said Whitney Bonham, lead tiger adviser and senior in public relations. "We're not here to replace their academic adviser. We're here to direct them toward resources on campus that they may not know about, or if they don't remember how to do something, we're here to direct them to different places."
Tiger Advisor is a joint effort between SGA and the office of the provost.
"SGA approached the provost office saying that students desired after-hours advising opportunities," said Judith Sanders, retention programming coordinator.
Most of the students who seek assistance from Tiger Advisor ask questions about scheduling, but the tiger advisers are up for any question.
"They can come in with any question and we'll try our best to help them answer it or direct them to the resources to get that question answered for them," Bonham said. "It's not necessarily just for registration, but that's the biggest question we got last year."
Sanders said students come to Tiger Advisor before their academic adviser.
"[A student] just wanted to be able to ask lots of questions and not feel intimated or uncomfortable at all," Sanders said. "We sat down with her and went over DegreeWorks with her, so she had better questions to ask her adviser."
DegreeWorks, located under the Tigeri tab, helps students plan out their academic future.
"It's a way for students to kind of gauge to see how far they are in their degree, what classes have they taken and what classes they need to take," Bonham said. "They can pretend to change their major as well."
Bonham said the students-helping-students factor is very important to Tiger Advisor.
"They're not meeting with their adviser, so they feel like they don't have to be perfect in what they ask," Bonham said. "We can give them a student's perspective, but also give them accurate information and they'll go away knowing they'll be more confident."
Tiger Advisor gets a lot of freshman traffic, but juniors and seniors ask for help as well.
"They're a student, just like me, but I give my personal perspective as a student or maybe my personal experience," said Kesha James, tiger adviser and junior in communications. "They get a personal experience or personal relationship, where maybe they don't feel like that with their academic adviser."
Tiger advisers are recommended by nominations, which are sought during the summer.
"We worked really hard in the selection process," Sanders said.
Sanders said Tiger Advisor is just trying to make its presence known.
"We want students to know we're here and give them helpful and accurate information," Sanders said.
The Tiger Advisor office is open from 3-8 p.m. in Room 2341 on the second floor of RBD.
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
