The start of the school year marked the grand opening of the University of Oregon’s Tykeson Hall, launching an advising model that combines career and academic aspects, called “flight paths.” Six flight paths make up the Tykeson model, and all six contain anywhere between 10 to 20 majors.
Tykeson Hall is also the new home of the career advising center, making it the epicenter of all advising on campus. This shift was made to centralize advising and ensure that students seeking career and academic advising had a one-stop-shop for all of their advising needs.
Tykeson Hall currently employs 24 full-time advisors spread across the six different flight paths that contains over 60 different majors.
“When deciding how to allocate advisors, the UO looked at three years of student enrollment data to aim for equal access to advising across flight paths,” said Kimberly Johnson, assistant vice provost of advising.
“Additionally, data on how students are accessing flight path advising over the first year is and will continue to be examined so that adjustments can be made based on student needs,” Johnson said.
Tykeson Hall is working on improving this term. Gene Sandan, director of Tykeson College and Career Advising, discussed the new initiatives that Tykeson plans on following this term.
Sandan discussed a new targeted advertising outreach initiative that would be going into effect at some point in the winter term. The new campaign intends to reach out to students who may not have ever met with an advisor. Sandan said this campaign’s platform will primarily be via email with said students.
“We are also investing time and resources to advance our advisors’ skill sets and approaches to help students craft and implement action plans for academic success and career exploration,” Sandan said.
Sandan said Tykeson will also be launching work groups to improve their specialized advising program. Using professional literature and data, Sandan hopes that these work groups will improve student success at UO.
“Lastly, we are strengthening our collaborative advising, programming and referral processes with our Career Coach partners at the University Career Center to ensure that students are optimizing their career development plans with the experiences and skill sets employers are looking for,” Sandan added.
Tykeson Hall is currently open for all students seeking career and academic advising. Students can take advantage of drop-in hours between 10a.m. and 3p.m. Monday through Friday.
