Student and Academic Issues and Programs Working Group

A Case For Keeping- If Not Increasing- The Number of Counselors For The New Faculty.

Four years of University and each year I have visited the dear and wonderful advisors like Heather Smith-Watkins more than three times a year. My name is Jodie Nichols, I am in the Drama Program and I can contest to even sometimes going to Heather this last year: once a month.
Why?
As the university throws different curve balls at us, (changing graduation requirements, introducing the FASST system, etc.) I have gone to the counsellors for help in meeting the requirements for the university.

I feel that this resource is a life-line, not only for students but also the university. Without it the University would be mired down with students unable to meet their required credits in the alotted years, and thus also an influx of mail from disgruntled students and their families. Not only that, parents will also be less inclined to send their students to into the university of Calgary in this new faculty, particularly when their gifted children would be given the time and careful guidence they went for them at other institutions. Competition is mounting, particularly with the conversion of Mount Royal into a University. Who is to say they will not offer a better safety net and more personal experience than the University of Calgary, jeopradizing a Faculty that is only in its infantile state.
In short, to maintain efficiany, and enrollment the University will want to maintain and improve upon the existing infastructure it has when it comes to the invaluable resource that are counsellors.

Thank you for your time,

Jodie Nichols
4th Year
Bachellor of Fine Arts Student
Major in Drama

On track to graduate this year thanks to the Fine Arts counsellors.

I would like to add my support to the support that is already on this page for the advising that Fine Arts students currently receive through the FASST office. The FASST office has proved invaluable and it is my opinion that allowing their advising to continue in the same way as it's been provided would be the best option.

The FASST advising team is absolutely invaluable to the arts department. Students need guidance with their academic future, especially when entering a career as challenging and courageous as the arts. If they disappear, many current and future artists will too. What a shame that would be for our city, which desperately needs the arts to balance and keep business in check, and to allow our unique cultural spirit to flourish. The arts are extremely valuable, and I challenge the University to remember and value its students who dare to keep the arts alive.

Allison Lynch
3rd year, B.Mus.Performance

I am a student graduating this year from the Bachelor of Music (Performance) program and I am writing to voice my support for the maintenance of the Fine Arts Student Success Team (FASST) office as the primary resource for Fine Arts academic advising.

The FASST team is very familiar with the unique needs of the students they serve. The music degree programs are unlike any other found at the University of Calgary, and advising students who are trying to navigate through them requires more than a series official guidelines: such advising must be issued by people who are intimately familiar with the program. The FASST advisors understand the practicalities of our degree that are not mentioned in the university calendar. FASST advisors know how to get past the roadblocks music students constantly run into while trying to register for courses on PeopleSoft. FASST is conveniently located a short walk away from all of the Fine Arts' homes in Craigie Hall and the Art Building, and I have never to date encountered an academic problem that took more than ten minutes to resolve once I stepped into the FASST office.

The FASST advisors are there not only to help us when we run into serious trouble (such as a mandatory course that PeopleSoft will not let us register for days before the start of a new term) but also to sit down and talk with us about our degree requirements and answer our day-to-day mundane questions about independent study courses and whatever else we could want to know about. I am greatly comforted that I can walk into the office, talk to a human being and get a straight and accurate answer on any academic question at any time during office hours.

The FASST team has been a vital resource to me and my fellow music majors over the past four years, and I would highly encourage the university administration to maintain them as the academic advising body for the Fine Arts disciplines.

I would like to register my support for Heather Smith-Watkins and her colleagues in the Fine Arts Student Success Team. She has been helpful with a number of issues I've faced in my three years at the University of Calgary. I hope that with the faculty merger FASST will continue to operate in its current form. They are helpful,caring, and efficient, and elemental in our success as arts students.
Peter J. Vooys BFa (Drama)

I am in my fourth and final year of my fine arts degree at the University of Calgary and I can honestly say that without Heather Smith Watkins and the unique kind of counselling that the FAAST office provides, I would not have made it past my first year, or my second or my third and without whom I would probably not be in school currently. In Fine Arts you know your advisors are there for you and if there is a sticky situation they are not only on your side but will fight along side of you to rectify the situation. The advisors actually know me as a person and not just a student number. I know that in Fine Arts we consider the services of the FAAST office to be irreplaceable, and I think you would be hard pressed to find a person in our faculty who disagrees with this. We need our advisors!

The support that I have recieved from the FASST advisors has been unexplainably beneficial and the garuntee that they are there for me with my schooling questions has been a much needed assurance. The help they have given me concerning my future is vast. To deprive the students of their guidance would be cruel and, hopefully, the FASST advisors feel the same to be deprived of helping their departments.