This week’s Legislative Body meeting discussed changes to the university’s advising department, new clubs and other advisor updates.
Angelo Gargaro opened this week’s meeting on Monday with a discussion on major changes coming to the University Advising Center, previously called the Center for Student Success.
Gargaro previously held the position of coordinator in student conduct.
He remains in Student Conduct in a different position, and said that any new coordinator will be trained to uphold his vision.
Gargaro discussed the changes he plans on bringing to the University Advising Center.
“I was really big on a name and brand change,” said Gargaro. I think that there were a lot of things that could’ve been done better by the Center for Student Success. I feel like we spread ourselves too thin and lost the vision of what the Center stood for.”
Gargaro also covered the issue of missing advisors.
“I’m gonna start this search from the ground up and find the right people to be efficient and consistent,” Gargaro said.
He noted that the university had secured an advisor for the School of Communication for five days, before she was offered an opportunity at Carnegie Mellon University.
Point Park will begin interviewing for a new School of Communication advisor next week.
Besides filling missing advisor positions, Gargaro also said he wants a new emphasis on in-person advising.
“Customer service level has to increase immensely, and that starts with people being physically available for students,” Gargaro said.
Gargaro said that any new hires for the Advising Center will be fully in-person five days a week.
The University Advising Center is in the early process of utilizing a new scheduling model for class registration.
Their new program, called J1 Web Advising, will block classes by major requirement in an automatically-generated course sequence.
Instead of existing in one large group, the cours- es will be streamlined so students need only to be concerned with the dates, times and modalities of their courses.
There is not yet a set date on when this program will roll out for student use.
Following Gargaro’s presentation, SGA approved Pre-Spring 1 Emergency Funding, a motion
to provide student organizations money for events they scheduled in the Fall Semester.
The motion passed 7 votes yes and one abstention, providing four clubs with $809.08.
Anyone is welcome to come to the Finance Committee’s meetings on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:00 PM
The Pioneer Tech Innovators Constitution was approved unanimously. It will create a student organization to represent computer science majors at Point Park.
The next SGA meeting will be held in LH 200 on January 29 at 3:15 PM. Anyone is welcome to attend.
