UW-Milwaukee is home of one of the most ethnically diverse student bodies
UW-Milwaukee is home of one of the most ethnically diverse student bodies in the country. It is a melting pot of students from diverse, unique and interesting cultural backgrounds. UWM caters to students of all races with its variety of advising centers created for foreign and non-foreign students.
There is much question and speculation, however, about how UWM assigns certain students to certain advisors, where such advising branches originated from and why they exist.
There are several advising centers based on different racial classifications, such as African-American, Asian,
Hispanic/Latino and American Indian, to name a few. Most of these centers started off as organizations in the late 1970s to empower minority students and put an end to oppression and discrimination on campus.
“Wisconsin has a large Asian population,” Southeast Asian-American Student Advising Center Coordinator Dao Vang said.
Vang has seen a number of Asian students in his 14-year tenure as coordinator. According to UWM’s Cattrack, the number of Asian students has gone from 565 in 2007 to 798 in 2011.
He explains that refugees of the Vietnam War were sent to the U.S. decades ago, many of which lacked a strong background in education.
The Southeast Asian branch of the advising service originated in 1986. It was set in motion to recruit more students and offer academic advising for Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese students without the stress of language barriers. Vang added that it has helped to achieve educational goals.
But students aren’t assigned advisors by race. In fact, students of all ethnicities are completely free to choose whomever they please for academic advising.
“Students tend to gravitate towards who they feel comfortable with,” Undergraduate Advisor Tobiah Deutsch said. “It’s not uncommon for students to have a negative experience with advisors.”
Deutsch said that students are originally assigned advisors based on what race they may classify themselves as, but not strictly because they are a certain race.
For instance, if a student decides to leave his or her race undisclosed, he or she may be assigned to a different advisor than that of a fully identified student. Advisor assignment is also based on last name and declared major.
The Southeast Asian-American Advising Center isn’t the only branch that has empowerment and anti-discrimination origins.
“The African-American Student Advising Center began in the late ‘70s as an organization to facilitate African-American students and help fight discrimination,” Equity and Diversity Services Director Francene Botts-Butler said.
Originally called Minority Affairs, the advising center began with the goal of equality and giving African-American students all the same opportunities as other students.
Over time, the name changed drastically – and so did the center’s goals. The focus was to have a positive effect on the recruitment, enrollment, graduation and retention rates among African-American students.
Although the center wants to garner the attention of black students, they make it clear that the choice is ultimately up to them when it comes to advising. No student is forced to stay with any advisor.
There are certainly factors of a student’s identification that determine what advisor facilitates what student. Among those are: year, academic status, major and, sometimes, race. Race is not a dominant determining factor, but it is a factor.
There’s a difference, though, between being assigned an advisor due to ethnicity and being assigned an advisor due to country of origin.
The primary reason such academic advising centers exist is to facilitate students of different nationalities to overcome obstacles like language barriers and discrimination.
“The question of whether such centers are still necessary often comes up,” Butler said. “When you look at the retention rates, graduation rates and recruitment, the answer is yes.”
http://www.uwmpost.com/2011/10/10/diversity-and-uwm%E2%80%99s-advising-centers/