Improving Campus Life

Written by: Red Williams

A questionnaire was created that asked questions both about freshmen advisors and advisors once a major was declared. A total of 120 Vanderbilt students were randomly sampled throughout the campus and asked to fill out the questionnaire. Each individual was told that the survey was for a communication class. After a student returned their survey, he/she was asked what school they were in. A "P" was placed at the top for all Peabody students (of which there were 14) because the advisory system at Peabody is so different than at all three other schools. For the first two questions, the answers were looked at as a whole, not taking into account what school or grade a student was in. Then, for question 4 both Peabody students and undeclared major students were omitted because their answers were not applicable. For question 5, only the Peabody student were omitted for the reason stated above, but the undeclared major students' responses were counted once again. For question 7, all survey responses were counted because a student could still have an opinion on an upper-class student advisor whether they had a positive or negative experience with their advisor. Question 3 was dropped since the survey did not take into account what year the student was which would make an impact on how many times a student would have seen their advisor. Question 6 was dropped as well as it had no bearing on the problem or solution at hand.

The Problem

The faculty advisor program was established in 1981 to help organize the newly developed CPLE program in Vanderbilt's core curriculum requirements in the College of Arts and Sciences. A special committee constructed the program to aid students in their first year choosing courses to fulfill the requirements as well as direct them toward their overall four-year plan. However, the program as it currently operates has failed to aid students in its fundamental purpose.

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