University of Virginia Library

'Soundings'

Registration Problems
Explained By Dean

Mr. Graham's office, a tiny
cubicle at the west end of the
Dean's suite, was suitably cluttered
with such things as an over-stuffed
chair covered with green vinyl,
several piles and boxes of books, as
well as books stored in bookcases
along the walls, and a collection of
notes to himself tacked and taped
to a small bulletin board behind the
door. Sitting in the big green chair,
Mr. Graham told us about the
process of advising first-year
students and other new students in
the College.

Finding the usual
pre-registration lines outside the
suite of offices occupied by the
Dean of the College on Cabell Hall
fourth floor one day last week, we
got to wondering just what all those
people were waiting for. So we
telephoned for an appointment
with Assistant Dean John Graham
and soon found ourselves talking
with Mr. Graham in his office.

"We've handled something like
1073 first-year men in the last
couple of days," he told us, "and
we've talked individually with every
one of them." "We" in this instance
means Mr. Graham and the four
other Assistant and Associate
Deans, and some fifteen other
"key" advisors, all of whom are
responsible to Dean Cauthen. "The
first-year people are generally easier
to advise because they have fewer
choices to make-most of them
take the basic courses and one or
two electives." We asked what
problem comes up most often for
first-year men, and learned that the
biggest single problem is choosing
proper course levels in such subjects
as mathematics and the languages.
"A lot of these men come to us
with good enough preparation to
move ahead pretty rapidly into
higher level courses, and we have to
decide just where they fit."

We nodded and asked what had
happened to upper class students.
"Most were pre-registered in the
spring. Our main problem here is
with those second year students
who were not pre-registered." The
Dean pointed to a stack of records
folders on which he had apparently
been working before we came in.
"They can be most time consuming
because we have to work them
around elective courses that have
already been filled or that have
been deleted in the past few weeks.
And, too, we have to keep watch
on each man's progress toward
completion of basic degree
requirements. Most of the other
upper class students are advised by
their major departments. We don't
see very many of them in here at
this time of the year."

Mr. Graham showed us the
listings of available courses that his
office uses in advising students. He
commented that the biggest
problem all around is slow
feed-back on which courses and
sections are closed and which are
open. "An advisor can assist a
student in developing an excellent
group of courses," he explained,
"and have it fall apart because of
closed sections."

We asked how well prepared for
University life this year's entering
students are, "Well, they are better
prepared than I was," he told us.
"There's an awful lot of popular
literature on what college is like.
Education is simply getting more
publicity all the time, and these
men are reading the right material.
Then, too, they've been through a
lot of orientation, some good and
some not so good perhaps, and
they've met with their deans and
their resident advisors and their
counselors enough to know what's
what here."

Finally, we asked Mr. Graham
to describe the typical first-year
student in the College. He laughed
at the question and said that the
first thing is that he is not typical.
"He could be from almost
anywhere-there's much less
regionalism here now than there
was just a few years back. And he
could come from almost any kind
of family or school background.
From what my advisees have old
me, I'd say that they are very
competitive, that they want to do
well, and that they are pretty well
prepared for what we expect them
to do."

***

Upstairs in the English
Department we learned from Mr.
Alan Howard, who serves as
departmental advisor to English
majors, that his office faces pretty
much the same problems that we
had heard about downstairs.
Handing a set of forms to be filled
out to a waiting student, Mr.
Howard, who speaks with a flat
Colorado accent, told us that "most
of the people who come in here
now are here because they missed
pre-registration back in the spring.
What we're doing now is setting up
programs for people who are late
for one reason or another. Some are
third-year transfers. Some are
coming to us from other
departments. And some were out of
school last spring."

Mr. Howard showed us a file of
completed program sheets and told
us that he had set up 25 or 30 new
schedules and that there are about
120 other third-year English
majors. "Mr. (Arthur) Kirsch and I
work together on all English
undergraduate advising, but right
now I am getting mainly third-year
problems." In answer to a question
about the kind of problems that he
solves, Mr. Howard said that "the
only big problem this year has been
that most students seem relatively
unaware of changes in the
departmental program. We made up
a new guide book for our majors,
but not many of them have read
it."

There was a knock at the door,
so we gathered up our things and
got ready to go. "The main thing in
advising students," Mr. Howard
added, "is to help them prepare
themselves to do whatever they
want to do after they leave here
without throttling them in their
development as people. Each one
has a different background and
different ideas about what he wants
to do."