The USC Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Programs is launching a brand new platform, called Advise USC, to help advisors and students work together more efficiently starting next month. The university says Advise USC is focused on the personal growth of students so they can reach their educational goals.
“The undergrad system that we have is really advisor focused and we’re very much of the view that if students are participating in their education, students are participating in their advisement,” said Sarah Holdren, Assistant Vice Provost of Academic Advising. “They need to have ways to communicate with their advisors and for advisors to see kind of what that perspective is for the student.”
Holdren said Advise USC will allow collaboration by consolidating the advising process, making it easier for students to schedule meetings with advisors, keeping student information in one localized webpage and providing easy access to advisors across different schools for students pursuing majors and minors across disciplines. Ultimately, the system is meant to encourage student involvement in the advisement process.
“One of the things that we really wanted to do was bring in this modern enterprise level system that would affect and impact advisors across the university, across the campus, but also bring in the students as well,” Holdren said.
Advise USC is meant to bridge the gaps that arose in the USC Advise Undergraduate Advisement Database, the program USC undergraduate students had been using for 15 years, according to Holdren. Additionally, she said graduate student advisors had been using Excel spreadsheets for course planning, making it particularly challenging for advisors to create relationships with their students since their appointments were often bogged down by needing to access different programs.
“I think what we heard from advisors across campus was, ‘We all got into these jobs as advisors to work with students and to support students and help students, and that’s not what we’re doing. We’re working with systems, we’re working with processes, working with trying to figure out how we make this work,’” Holdren said.
John Song, a senior majoring in health and human sciences, said he has experienced the challenge of connecting with his advisor firsthand.
“I think the [Advise USC website] is a good idea,” Song said. “I like the idea of just being able to contact them whenever you can or making it more convenient and more accessible.”
In order to find a more conducive system, Holdren said USC began reaching out last year to peer institutions, like the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan. They also conducted focus groups across campus to get student and advisor input on what they wanted in the new program.
Once the program, run through Salesforce, was chosen, Advise USC was piloted over the summer with graduate programs in the Thornton School of Music, Sol Price School of Public Policy and in the civil and environmental engineering programs in the Viterbi School of Engineering.
Viet Bui, director of Student Affairs at the Thornton School of Music, said that while the website is taking advisors some time to get used to, the change will be worth the effort.
“The reality is that it’s a big step in a longer journey, right? This is a very key change but the trajectory is still going to be a long one,” he said. “You have people who are used to doing things a particular way and [not] having to use this tool. It will be a work in progress.”
Additionally, Advise USC will also collect student data, which Holdren said she will allow advisors to work proactively to address student needs as they arise. For example, if the website were to see a trend in students requesting course planning meetings in the fifth week of the semester, Holdren said advisors may begin sending students emails answering frequently asked questions about course planning around that time.
Junior journalism major Maisy Whyte said she is looking forward to having a new advising system.
“It’s good that they’re making a program that’s actually catering to students’ needs,” she said.
Undergraduate advisors will be able to access the new platform at the end of October, with undergraduate students getting access by mid-November. Holdren said she hopes Advise USC will be up and running for all students by the end of the academic year.