Matt Cooper
Lantern Staff
Currently, Butler student advisers are required to match students’ schedules with their majors until the time comes to graduate.
During the course of the past two months, the Board of Trustees has been laying out the blueprint for a new enrollment system that would ensure that students stay on more effective scholastic tracts.
“We currently have what is a cafeteria model,” Vice President of Academics Lori Winningham said of the current system of enrollment at Butler in front of the Board of Trustees on Tuesday, Sept. 13.
“This will really change how we view our programs of study,” she said of the new student advising plan.
The solution, according to Winningham and others on the board, is to redirect students to more effective course studies by giving them the option to opt for taking part in meta-majors.
This would include aiding in enabling students to enroll in more specific electives that could be used later on in the course of their education.
An example of this would be having freshman enroll in multiple classes that fall in line with more than one major. Thus is the usefulness of the so-called meta-major.
Dean of Academic Support and Effectiveness Phil Speary discussed plans that will go in place involving Guided Pathways.
“We already have a draft of six possible meta-majors,” Speary said in addressing the Board of Trustees in October.
Speary has gone on to say that some might find the Guided Pathways system to be more hands-on in terms of advisers’ involvement in class selection.
“None of us really like the word intrusive,” he went on in reference to the idea that Guided Pathways might in some ways be a hindrance of students’ involvement in choosing their own classes. “Maybe some of us will start calling it proactive.”
Speary made a compelling point, in that some students do tend to enroll in electives that are not essential to their majors.
He went on to refer to these as wasted and dead electives that ultimately end up wasting both a student’s time and money.
With Guided Pathways will come a slight downsizing of the academic departments on campus. At least one administrative assistant position will be cut, according to Winningham.
As far as an allotted timeline on the roll out of Guided Pathways, Winningham has stated publicly that Butler will see its implementation in the fall of 2018.
She did however state in October that the course curriculum at Butler will remain unchanged during this time.
“The current catalogue we are running under will be the status quo for the next year,” she said. “We are going to kind of remodel this house and live in it at the same time.”
