October 25, 2007
ArtsLink: Helping students connect
When students come to the UW, many have general ideas about what to study and how to prepare for future careers, but they are often unaware of which University major, program or classes will best help them reach their educational and career goals. A new pilot program launched this fall in the College of Arts and Sciences is designed to help match students with programs more quickly.
Called ArtsLink, the program provides funding so that advisers in 10 units — art, music, digital arts and experimental media (DXARTS), English, drama, dance, architecture, landscape architecture, comparative history of ideas and comparative literature — can collaborate more closely and reach out collectively to students who might want to major in some area of the arts.
The group has existed informally for several years, but the funding allows Judi Clark, director of advising for the School of Art, and Cynthia Caci, assistant director for academic services in DXARTS, some release time from their regular duties so that they can coordinate ArtsLink’s activities. There is also a small operating budget that will be used to finance outreach programs. Clark and Caci are enthusiastic about what they’re doing.
“If students can connect with a program earlier, they get a better education, they’re happier about the education they get, they’re more comfortable being here and they participate more,” Clark said.
One of the first things she and Caci have done is to put together a student advisory board to help them figure out how best to engage students. Caci said the students on the board are excited about the project and that one of them told her he thought “the institution could do more to help provide the sort of supported, intentional exploration” that the program is intended to facilitate. “For him it’s about righting a wrong,” she said.
The ArtsLink advisers intend to identify new students who show an interest in the arts by working with admissions, First Year Programs and other offices and then send the students general information about the arts, along with a regularly updated arts event calendar. They’ll also do outreach at events such as Dawg Daze, Career Week and Washington Weekend.
Arts advisers have already been running a special orientation program for students interested in the arts, which they intend to continue. “It’s very different in many ways from the general orientation,” Caci said. “We have all the directors and chairs from the arts departments come to meet the students at the Henry auditorium, so it’s in a space where it’s stimulating. The directors all welcome them, the arts advisers are all present. We take them back to our spaces so they can get a sense of what a dance studio looks like, or the cabaret theater in Hutchinson where student productions are mounted.”
One idea the advisers have been discussing is having a program similar to Freshman Interest Groups in winter and spring quarters. “We’d like to put together some packages of classes that include, say, two five-credit classes from two of the arts divisions and a once-a-week seminar that would bring all the directors and faculty and advisers in to talk with students about issues in the arts,” Clark said “That way, students could get a sense of current research, what the issues are, what they might get involved in, and certainly to meet faculty. We really want to get students connected with faculty.”
ArtsLink is not the first adviser affinity group on campus. The Environmental Advising Group has been together since 1999, and includes the Program on the Environment; the Department of Community, Environment and Planning and the Department of Landscape Architecture from the College of Architecture and Urban Planning; the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences from the School of Public Health and Community Medicine; the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Department of Biology, Department of Chemistry and Department of Earth and Space Sciences from the College of Arts and Sciences; the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and the School of Oceanography from the College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences; and the College of Forest Resources. In addition to spanning several schools and colleges, it also includes participation from UW Bothell and UW Tacoma.
“At the time the group started, the Program on the Environment was relatively new and trying to build numbers and attract students,” said Michelle Hall, undergraduate program coordinator for POE. “At the same time, some of the other programs were struggling with attracting majors and wanting to get the word out that this is a fantastic place to study the environment.”
Hall said students interested in the environment often have a difficult time because there are so many programs that deal with it and they are located in so many different areas of the University.
The environmental advisers’ major activity is the Environmental Opportunities Fair, which they have staged every fall since 2001. The event is not just about jobs, Hall said. Many employers attend, but so do agencies looking for volunteers and offering internships. And all the environmental programs on campus are represented too.
The environmental group coordinates a second fair in January that is more about jobs and internships, and they participate in many outreach activities sponsored by others. They have also enlisted technology to improve their services to students, using a listserv to communicate twice per quarter with approximately 1,400 undeclared pre-majors who are interested in the environment, and online open houses sponsored by the Admissions Office to connect with UW applicants interested in environmental majors.
The environmental collaboration hasn’t been formally evaluated, but Hall said she sees the benefits all the time in her work. “It does make it easy for me to refer students to programs that seem to be a good match earlier because I know the other advisers, I know the programs. We refer students to each other all the time, and students seem to appreciate it. It’s anxiety provoking to choose a major, and I think it’s reassuring to hear, ‘I know this person, go talk to her.'”
Hall said her group is very excited about the expansion of the affinity group model. As for Clark and Caci, they hope ArtsLink will prove to be a model that spreads across Arts and Sciences, which they say is currently “lateral and decentralized.”
The pilot project runs until next summer.
