College offers advising over electronic mail, Web

Students in the College of Arts and Sciences will not have to go any further than the nearest computer the next time they need academic advising. According to College Dean Robert Rescorla, there is a new electronic mail account set up specifically to answer students' questions. This account can be accessed directly by sending questions to "advising@mail.sas" or through the new College Web, a set of pages on the World Wide Web that provides information about the University. Rescorla added that the College has set up the direct address to make it easier for the average student. "A lot more students know how to e-mail than use the Web," he said. College Information Management Specialist Susan Quant said students can post questions in specific pages on the Web. "Questions of a general nature get automatically directed towards this account," she said. Diane Frey, director of advising services for the College, said the feature has been operating since last Wednesday. "We haven't gotten any messages yet," she said. But Quant said she is not pessimistic about the lack of initial response. "It is a work in progress and it is growing everyday," she said. Rescorla said he hopes the new advising system will be a time-saver for students. "Our goal is to be able to give students rapid response to questions," he said. "If the question they pose is simple, they get a rapid response -- if it is more complex, they will get a note saying to come in." Some of the questions may be answered by information posted on the College Web, Rescorla said. He added that the advisors will be encouraging students to venture into the Web. Under this system, the account will be monitored twice a day by one of the department's 10 advisors, Frey said. "We each take a shift to make sure we can answer [all of the questions] within 24 hours," she said. Rescorla said they will increase the number of times the account is monitored if they get a lot of queries. He added that this is not supposed to be a substitute for face-to-face meetings with advisors. "This is only intended to clear up minor confusions or answer small questions for students," he said. Quant reiterated this point. "I think it is really important for people to come in and see advisors in person," she said. "But if you have a quick question or you just need to be pointed in the the right direction, this is a feature off the College Web that will hopefully be useful to people." Frey said her department attempted to set up an advising system through e-mail last summer for incoming freshman. "We got a grand total of four messages," she said. "But we are more likely to get questions from Penn students [already enrolled]." Frey said the advisors are excited about using this new feature. "We are all waiting for the messages to come," she said.