Advisors Help Students Finish Community Colleges

Advisors² Help Students Finish Community Colleges

Ten years after suspending her studies, Briana Mathis, a 30-year-old mother of two children, is in her first year back at Wallace Community College.

Support staff at the school in Dothan, Alabama, suggested she return to finish her studies. A school advisor¹ checks regularly on her progress and also has helped Mathis with a financial aid issue.

"I definitely needed the guidance, and I probably wouldn't have gotten this far without the guidance," Mathis said.

Two-year community colleges have the lowest completion rates of any kind of university or college. They also serve many of the students who need the most support. Nationally, about 36 percent of community college students who began in 2018 graduated within three years. In Alabama, the rate is about 30 percent.

Students say that having advisors who can help them is often the most important influence on those who succeed.

In Alabama, several community colleges are trying new ways to help students through difficulties until they graduate.

Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phenix City has started the Strategies to Enhance³ New Student Engagement⁴ program, or SENSE. Advisors contact students who are in remedial classes, in academic trouble, or in need of extra support for other reasons. The program is supported by a five-year, $1.8 million federal grant.

"We lose a lot of students because they don't think they have solutions to their problems," SENSE project coordinator⁵ Alisha Miles said.

Miles said the goal is for coaches to stay with students until they get a job or transfer successfully. They try to help students get past problems. Such problems can include lack of transportation, lack of money for books or a lack of family support.

"We're trying to...put ourselves in the middle of those obstacles so that we can see higher completion rates," she said. "But it's still a difficult task because we're fighting against a lot of things."

Not all community colleges offer so much support, said Linda García of the Center for Community College Student Engagement. A 2022 CCCSE report found that nationally, 53 percent of students said an adviser⁶ helped them to set academic goals and create a plan for reaching those goals.

Jahnelle Congress, a first-year student at Lawson State Community College, said she needed help deciding on a major. However, her school's advising program never answered her emails or requests.

"You need an adviser to help you figure out those things, and to not have that is kind of tough," she said.

Deryl Hatch-Tocaimaza, an associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said funding is the biggest problem to "quality community college advising." He added that it is difficult to find advisors who can work weekends and evenings. Those are the times many community college students attend classes.

In her first year at Chattahoochee Valley, Oryanan Lewis failed three classes as she struggled with a long-term illness.

She nearly lost her financial aid and likely would have had to quit, she said, without help. The new team of success coaches made a plan to help her keep her grades up. These grades would permit her to keep her scholarship. She is now close to graduation.

"If I didn't go in there and get the information and the support that I had, I don't think I would be where I'm at now," she said. "I most definitely don't think I would have been in school still."

Words in This Story

graduate –v. to complete a course of study and to receive a document stating that fact from a school or college

remedial –adj. related to special help for students who need it

transfer –v. to go from being in on place or organization to another

obstacle –n. a barrier

figure out –v, (phrasal, idiomatic) to find out by thinking

1 advisor   

n.顾问，指导老师，劝告者

参考例句：

• They employed me as an advisor.他们聘请我当顾问。
• The professor is engaged as a technical advisor.这位教授被聘请为技术顾问。

2 advisors   

n.顾问，劝告者( advisor的名词复数 )；（指导大学新生学科问题等的）指导教授

参考例句：

• The governors felt that they were being strung along by their advisors. 地方长官感到他们一直在受顾问们的愚弄。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• We will consult together with advisors about her education. 我们将一起和专家商议她的教育事宜。 来自互联网

3 enhance   

vt.提高（强度、力量、数量等），增加（进）

参考例句：

• BBC backing for the scheme will enhance its credibility.英国广播公司对这一计划的支持将提高其可信度。
• Good secretarial skills should enhance your chances of getting a job.出色的秘书工作技能会增加你找工作的机会。

4 engagement   

n.订婚，婚约，约定，约会

参考例句：

• I can't see you on Monday because I have a previous engagement.星期一我不能见你，因为我有约在先。
• It was my mother's very own engagement ring.这正是我母亲自己的订婚戒指。

5 coordinator   

n.协调人

参考例句：

• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, coordinates all UN emergency relief. 联合国人道主义事务协调厅在紧急救济协调员领导下，负责协调联合国的所有紧急救济工作。
• How am I supposed to find the client-relations coordinator? 我怎么才能找到客户关系协调员的办公室？

6 adviser   

n.劝告者，顾问

参考例句：

• They employed me as an adviser.他们聘请我当顾问。
• Our department has engaged a foreign teacher as phonetic adviser.我们系已经聘请了一位外籍老师作为语音顾问。