Computer Science Students Struggle with Limited Advising Help
With only one advisor serving the entire program, many students are unable to get the help they need.
A Little Background
According to the November 1st, 2021, headcount there are 970 full and part time students in the Computer Science (CSC) Department. And to assist those 970 students is an Advising Officer, an Undergraduate Studies Program Coordinator, and an Honours Advisor. In other words, 970 CSC students must direct all their degree inquiries to a single advisor1.
If you have ever looked at the CSC Departments website (and let's face it - you probably haven't) the academic advising page reads like a big business support line. You can feel the "Your call is important to us, please stay on the line..." vibe.
To add to the big business support line experience, the following message is permanently displayed on the academic advising page:
We are currently experiencing a high volume of queries and are responding as quickly as possible. To assist in managing volume, please do not submit the same question multiple times. Thank you for your cooperation and patience.
The message above doesn't provide much hope for students needing access to timely and accurate advising. A large portion of academic inquiries are time sensitive and not being able to resolve them in time can have serious impacts on students' degree progression. You can view the page yourself here.
The Running Joke
The running joke in the Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) Discord has been the pingable role @CSC Advisor which as you might have guessed doesn't ping anyone.
Searching “CSC Advisor” in the ECS Discord also yields about 200 pages worth of results. Sadly, most of these mentions are from students voicing their frustration or laughing at the inaccessibility of CSC Advising.
Below is a few of those ECS Discord messages from fellow ECS students.
Am I the only one that finds it completely absurd that [Irene Statham] is the only CSC advisor for how many CSC students? A couple hundred? A thousand? I'm going on 6 weeks without a response. How is anyone supposed to make timely, informed degree planning decisions? I feel like I'm dealing with Air Canada or one of the big telecoms. - Tim
I'm still not convinced the CSC advisor exists. I mean, I've gotten emails from a CSC advisor, but really, that may have just been an AI. - Ectris
I emailed the csc advisor 17 days ago and haven’t gotten a reply. Is that pretty normal or should I send another email? - Aaron
Did you ask any of them if they have met the csc advisor? - Qualicum
That’s gotta be a phishing email, the csc advisor doesn’t know how to use email. - Qualicum
I volunteer to be the csc advisor for 1 day a month so I can sort all my stuff out. - Josho
The list goes on, but these are my most recent favourites.
Personal Experience
Unfortunately, I have unsurprisingly also had trouble accessing academic advising2. Recently, I needed my CAPP report corrected to stay enrolled in a course with a pre- requisite3. I sadly had to respond back to the course coordinator and ask to not be dropped. In the email I informed them that I had contacted the CSC Advisor but wasn't expecting a timely response. At the time I just hoped that the course coordinator would take pity on me and let me stay in the course until the situation was resolved.
In my case I did receive a message back, but by that time I had already supplied the course coordinator with unofficial proof that the pre-requisite was satisfied.
One time I sent an email in early September and in early October I received the following email back, "Sorry for the delay in response, but I have just returned from vacation." Honestly, I don't know how the CSC Advising team thought this was appropriate. Everyone deserves vacation time, I am not angry at the CSC Advisor, but the CSC Department should have provided a temporary replacement4. We all know that the beginning of the term is one of the busiest times of the year.
I acknowledge that I am lucky to receive any emails back from the CSC Advisor. And most of the time they are helpful, but sometimes they aren't, and I just suffer the consequences.
The Frustration
Now you may be wondering why the ECS Faculty would purposely understaff the CSC Advising team. Wouldn't they want their students to have access to adequate advising and degree planning services? Wouldn't they want to increase student retention? Wouldn't responding to student inquiries prevent student frustration? Wouldn't the Undergraduate Studies Program Coordinator want to stop receiving messages from CSC students trying to escalate their CSC Advising inquiries? These are all good question. And honestly, I don't have an answer.
At the end of the day, it's very frustrating, sad, and demotivating. I personally feel bad for the CSC Advising team. But I also feel bad for any student trying to contact the CSC Advising team. It is extremely exhausting telling fellow students that yes, their email will probably go unanswered or that it could take 6 weeks to get a response, or they may receive a canned response that doesn't answer their question.
Ultimately, my hope is for the CSC Department to adequately staff the CSC Advising team and serve its students. Perhaps one day CSC students will receive timely and helpful responses from the CSC Advising team...
The lack of support staff for CSC students is a real issue, but the blame should be only on the CSC department.
This may or may not be reason for this article.
This pre-requisite was mistakenly marked as Mutually Exclusive which means you don’t receive credit for the course completion.
The dream would be for the CSC Department to hire more CSC Advisors.
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It's also worth mentioning that the Engineering department as a whole also only has 3 advisors for around 2200 students (after removing CSC students and advisors from the headcount numbers), which breaks down to about 730 students per advisor. And yet, when I've had to contact my advisor in the past, I've always gotten a response within at shortest a day, and at longest a week. What a large difference...