[16113] in APO-L
Advisor's Role - please respond
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lisa M. Covi)
Wed Jan 29 08:43:31 1997
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 08:41:34 -0500
Reply-To: "Lisa M. Covi" <covi@CREW.UMICH.EDU>
From: "Lisa M. Covi" <covi@CREW.UMICH.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
I'm going to come out strongly against "the best use of advisors is to
serve as a resource." First of all, that is not the BEST use of
advisors. And secondly, people who are only "used as a resource" have
a tendency to disappear.
Instead I propose that your advisor's (especially your faculty
advisor's) most important role is the curator of your charter. The
charter is granted to the school, not the group of people that form
the chapter and with this arrangement, the faculty advisor can do a
lot to help you maintain that charter.
1. Advisors serve on your chapters "Advisory Committee." You and your
advisors should determine how often this committee meets, but they
should meet regularly, especially during ths school year. The Chair
of the Advisory Committee (which doesn't have to be a faculty advisor,
but does have to be an advisor registered with the National Office) is
the only advisor with voting priviledges in your chapter (This is in
the National Bylaws) and should be attending your Exec Board
Meetings. The president of the chapter should be an ex officio member
of the Advisory committee.
2. How can your advisor curate your charter? Well, they need to know
the rules within APO and they need to know the rules of your school.
All advisors should have a copy of APO Bylaws, Standard Chapter
Articles of Association, a current copy of your chapter bylaws and
know what the procedure for recognition or good standing with your
school is (this is usually handled at least once a year). However,
these are simply the tools of the trade. Active advisors need to
participate at least enough in the chapter to know what's going on.
Is your chapter following the rules you've set for program, order of
business, the rules of the school? They can then proactively serve as
a resource because sometimes you don't know when you need an advisor.
When the advisor is there, they know when to speak up.
3. Advisors are members of your chapter. As such they should be
attending your events (besides ceremonies). However, most advisors
cannot be there all the time. When you have a 40+ hour work week, a
family and other community involvements, APO can't be your first
priority. However, you should discuss what some good requirments for
advisor participation could be, for instance attendance at certain
service projects, key chapter meetings (advisors love to count votes
and be the impartial mediator or extra hand), some fellowship events
(especially those that don't involve alcohol - most advisors hate to
be put in the position where you ask them to enforce the rules and the
chapter is breaking them) , and of course ceremonies and banquets.
4. As members of the chapter, the chapter should make a special effort
to make advisros (especially new advisors) feel welcome. Since most
advisors do not go through pledging, they have lots of questions about
the acronyms and abbreviations you use, how to get to where you meet,
who different people are, etc. Some chapters assign Bigs to advisors
so they can get oriented to the chapter and meet everyone.
What do you think about all this? I welcome open discussion or
private feedback on this since I want to work with Sectional Staff to
enhance the value of advisors to the chapter and enhance the
experience of advisor membership.
YILFS,
Lisa
