A recent survey of their peers conducted by students in the human development program showed pervasive discontent with advising and course scheduling in the College of Community and Public Affairs (CCPA).

Rachel Serwetz, a senior majoring in human development, created the survey with several other students within the major after hearing the complaints of fellow students.

The students created an anonymous Gmail account and sent out a SurveyMonkey survey to the listservs from about 15 of their human development classes, receiving 132 responses total.

On a five-point scale, one being “not at all satisfied” and five being “extremely satisfied,” 84.8 percent of respondents gave the overall quality of CCPA advising a three or below and 82.5 percent of students gave the number of advisers a three or below.

“A suggestion we heard that might be useful is for our adviser to have walk-in hours,” said Jamie Loren, a junior majoring in human development who helped Serwetz with the survey. “A lot of students find it hard to actually meet with the adviser because she has so many responsibilities that it’s hard for her to answer everyone’s questions.”

Though the majority of students who responded to the survey said it was “somewhat” easy for them to get into their required classes, Serwetz said a number of students have raised concern over course registration.

Beginning junior year, human development majors are required to take four classes — HDEV 200, HDEV 300, HDEV 400 and HDEV 475 — which they cannot take in the same semester, and students must get the adviser’s permission in order to register.

“With a limited amount of spots in classes, people aren’t graduating on time,” Serwetz said. “That’s the worst for me to see, when someone’s paying thousands of dollars and they don’t have to.”

Serwetz contacted administrators to present the survey findings along with Loren and human development students Allison Cohen and Eve Wool, as well as Aaron Ricks, Student Association vice president of academic affairs.

“I’m just calling for the attention to this because it was just scary to me that all this was going on without anybody saying anything about it,” Serwetz said.

The group met with CCPA Department Chair Leo Wilton, Provost Donald Nieman, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Donald Loewen and Binghamton University President Harvey Stenger to discuss the survey’s findings.

“It seems that the higher administration wants to work with us as well,” Serwetz said. “They’re not menial issues.”

Nieman said the issues brought up by the survey bear more investigation, but that the students did a constructive job of expressing their concerns.

“I was impressed with the way in which the students went about trying to identify the concerns that they and other students had, and providing us with that information,” Nieman said.

CCPA Dean Patricia Ingraham said that transitioning from curriculum changes to the human development major instated two years ago might have caused some of the problems students have.

“There’s been a lot of discussion about student advising across campus,” Ingraham said. “It’s something that we’ve all been thinking about and discussing off and on in a whole set of meetings over the last year.”

Ricks, who Serwetz said was instrumental in helping the human development students’ efforts, said he was excited by the dedication Serwetz showed.

“If every student on this campus were half as dedicated to improving this campus as Rachel was, this would be a utopia, basically,” Ricks said. “She’s been really incredible with how she’s pursued this.”

Nieman said his next step is to look more closely at the survey’s results and discuss them with Ingraham and human development faculty.

“That’s something that, as administrators and faculty, we have a responsibility to do,” Nieman said.

He plans to meet with Serwetz and other students, as well as faculty members, at the beginning of the spring semester.

“You really do need to have a dialogue,” Nieman said.

Loren said overall, CCPA students are looking to be held to a higher standard.

“Human development has a reputation for being an easy major,” Loren said. “But that isn’t what the students want. We’re looking for a challenge and some of our courses do not reflect that challenge.”

She added, “The biggest problem a lot of students have I think is that it’s hard to have a voice in the department. Which goes for a lot of departments but ours is so small and it just feels like the students are out of reach from what they’re trying to accomplish.”