University Times

Closer cooperation between placement staff and academic advisers. A new telephone hotline enabling instructors to alert advisers of students' tutoring needs. Plans for a new information system that will make it possible for students to register for courses electronically within the next two years.

Provost James Maher described those and other initiatives to the trustees Feb. 20 in a report on efforts to improve Pitt undergraduate programs. Raising the quality of undergraduate education here was one of several high-priority goals that the board set in February 1996.

Since then, Maher said, "we've redoubled our efforts to focus on what our undergraduates need in order to become very productive members of society." Maher said Pitt's administration has reviewed its undergraduate programs and services in terms of three questions: Are we advising students in such a way that we optimize their educational experience and their subsequent successful performance in American society? "Addressing this issue has created bonds among placement officers, advisers and academic deans across traditional barriers," the provost said. "Placement Service staff have been put in touch with the College of Arts and Sciences Advising Center to help undergraduates start thinking about their objectives in life the very first time they register." The internship programs in CAS and the Placement office have begun working together to encourage more undergraduates to pursue internships, Maher said.

"Parenthetically," he added, "the University Placement Service has attracted more potential employers than two years ago and has also benchmarked very well against other schools in the area." Are we recruiting students who are appropriate for the academic strengths we have? SAT scores and high school class rankings of Pitt freshmen have been increasing steadily in recent years and should continue to do so, Maher said. But he added that Pitt is not abandoning its commitment to serving minority students (the administration is reviewing its various programs for recruiting, retaining and graduating minorites, he said) and "non-traditional" evening students and part-timers through the College of General Studies. The University also will continue to serve students who may not meet Pitt's enrollment standards immediately following high school graduation, Maher said.

"Two years ago, we eliminated a 25-year-old problem by signing an articulation agreement with the Community College of Allegheny County. We are currently in discussions to extend that agreement to all of the community colleges in this part of the state, and we have added to our Admissions office a specialist in transfer students. It is our intention to make it possible for qualified community college students to move on to the University as juniors and to graduate [with a Pitt degree] four years after they began their higher education careers," Maher said.

The provost also noted that Pitt has hired scholarship consultants to work with staff in the Admissions and Financial Aid office on strategies for using the University's financial aid dollars to best effect.

And for the last several years, he pointed out, Admissions and Financial Aid staff have worked with Pitt's Alumni Association to form alumni teams to recruit highly qualified students. "Last year, 368 team members contacted 2,422 high school seniors; 1,045 of those seniors applied to the University and 434 of them are a part of the Class of 2000," the provost said.

Do our physical facilities, our campus life systems and our program curricula all match the goals we've stated for our programs? Pitt's long-range capital improvements plan (currently being reviewed by Chancellor Mark Nordenberg) and the new line item funding requests that the University submitted to Harrisburg this year all focus on meeting the needs of Pitt academic programs, Maher said.

He cited several new programs to improve the quality of student life, including Freshman Studies courses to help first-year students adjust to Pitt; a new faculty lecture series in the residence halls; and a new phone hotline through which faculty can alert the Advising Center of students having difficulty in their classes. Speaking of this last service, the provost said: "Already, we've found that our first-year teachers in English and mathematics have been able to alert advisers to problems that the advisers would not otherwise have learned about until much later in the semester." Within the next two years, Maher said, students here will be able to register for classes via their computers, through the University's planned Student On-Line Academic Resource System. The SOLAR System will replace Pitt's current student information system.

Last summer, Maher asked Pitt deans and regional campus presidents to submit reports to the Provost's office describing recent and planned improvements in their units' curricula, along with descriptions of their programs' strengths and weaknesses. The provost said summaries of the deans' and presidents' responses will be distributed to trustees prior to the board's June meeting, as part of a detailed, written report on Pitt's various efforts to improve undergraduate education and student life.

As part of undergraduate recruiting, the administration is studying comparative advantages that Pitt enjoys over other schools, such as the strength of Pitt's graduate research programs, the provost said.

"We have an unusual opportunity to integrate undergraduate students into our research programs," he said. "If you study what is going on in the College of Arts and Sciences, you find that the research groups there are accommodating a significant number of undergraduate students. During one semester last year, there were 32 undergraduates working in biology research groups, 41 in chemistry, 10 in geology, 28 in neuroscience, 52 in physics and two in psychology." — Bruce Steele