SLC voices students’ academic advising concerns at Ahead of Tomorrow Academic Advising Impact Initiative consultation
By Elaine Liang, March 24 2026—
At the March 3 Students’ Legislative Council (SLC) meeting, a consultation on the Ahead of Tomorrow Academic Advising Impact Initiative was held with Vice-Provost (Student Experience) Verity Turpin and Institutional Effectiveness Specialist and project lead Tanille Butler.
After an introduction from Turpin, Butler presented details on the purpose and overview of the project.
Butler said there are three main components for why academic advising is outlined in the Academic Innovation Plan of Ahead of Tomorrow.
“The first is always looking at advancing a culture of improving the student experience,” said Butler. “The second is making sure we’re improving advising supports to reduce the delayed completion of students through their programs, and the third is really about the back end data that we can use to better anticipate the demand of courses.”
Butler emphasized that the university is using a different approach than a typical review.
“A typical review is an investigative, consultative component that then feeds into a document of recommendations of change…and we want to avoid that for…this project,” said Butler. “We’re trying to do a different approach that some people might know is more of an entrepreneurial, iterative approach, where we are going to be looking at opportunities as they arise and try different solutions in the moment.”
“The scope of this Academic Advising Impact Initiative defines academic advising as the process by which students receive advice to promote academic progression and ensure timely completion of their for-credit academic program requirements,” said Butler.
Butler also noted that the university recognizes that modern post-secondary education includes activities for students to get involved with beyond traditional classes.
“There’ll be a lot of conversations that also wrap around…complementary advising, so that’s things like student accommodations [and] career advising,” said Butler.
Butler then reviewed the university’s three-pronged approach to undergraduate engagement in this process so far.
The first prong involved visiting the Science Theatres on main campus, the Foothills campus and the downtown campus to host a dot-mocracy activity where students voted with stickers on different issues important to them.
The second prong is an online survey for students to participate in that includes questions on academic advising.
The third prong is the co-validation workshop that Student Experience and Support will be running to host a focus group with students about the results of the first two prongs.
The floor was opened to SLC for questions and comments following Butler’s presentation.
Faculty of Nursing Representative Taylor Strelow said that navigation is a large concern for many students, especially for those in dual degrees.
“[Dual degree students are] not sure where they should go for advising questions and oftentimes, they’re sent back and forth,” said Strelow.
Butler said that after doing a comprehensive review of the website, she has found many broken links and noted that students need to have the tools available to help themselves when they need it.
Butler added that advisors do not have the best technology for handoffs.
“What we’re hearing from advisors is the technology that they have accessible to them is not really conducive to handing students off in a good way,” said Butler. “Warm referrals … handing it off in a nice way where you can give it to a different faculty or different unit with the information so that the student doesn’t have to relive their experience over and over again … we’re looking at different technologies to support that and also alleviate students having to go to the back of the line each time.”
Turpin added that advising when students are transitioning between programs is also a challenge.
Faculty of Arts Representative Simchah Atanda commented that as the Faculty of Arts moves towards more interdisciplinary programs, students would benefit from speaking to an advisor that is a jack of all trades.
Vice President External Julia Law commented on the benefits of the visual diagrams that the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape (SAPL) advising team provides.
“I hear from a lot of my peers that they might find out how their degree progression works but it’s not explained to them in the clearest and nicest way and very fortunately, at SAPL, we have these beautiful diagrams,” said Law. “Recognizing that faculties like Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Science, bigger programs, it’s harder to map something out like that, but visually having something nice to look at will also help students more.”
Faculty of Arts Representative Mahad Rzain noted that students may not be aware of all the different modalities of advising available.
Turpin said that one of the things that the university is working towards is a consistent approach to advising across faculties. Butler added that it is important to understand which modalities do and do not work.
Atanda later commented that it may be beneficial to create a centralized system where students can choose which faculty’s support and information that they need. He further added that using an AI chat box may be useful in answering straightforward questions.
Visit the SU website for more information on upcoming SLC meetings and agendas.