Students with prerequisite course troubles may receive more structured advising starting next fall.
University officials are looking into developing a computerized tracking system – similar to that used at the University of Florida – to help students in every major follow a four-year program.
The system’s overall goal is to help students fulfill their key degree requirements on time by keeping them and their advisers informed and updated.
Similar to the Florida model, the system will review students’ academic progress and not allow them to register in advance unless they have met their major’s minimum academic standards.
 ”I think every freshman comes to LSU with the idea they’re going to graduate,” Provost Risa Palm said. “We’re not giving students the tools to make wise decisions about their own majors.”
Palm said the specifics of the new system are still being worked out.
Interest in the system centered around a committee of deans assembled by Palm and chaired by John Hamilton, Manship School of Mass Communication dean.
“We have students who don’t graduate quickly enough,” Hamilton said.
University records show the current six-year graduation rate is 56.8 percent, meaning that only 56.8 percent of the Fall 1999 freshmen – not including those that transferred elsewhere to continue their education – graduated within six years. The Flagship Agenda calls for a six-year graduation rate of 64 percent.
The percentage of the fall 2000 freshmen that graduated within five years was 49.7 percent with the Flagship Agenda calling for it to be 55 percent.
Hamilton’s committee submitted a list of graduation-increase proposals in the spring to Palm. The University chose to develop an academic-monitoring system.
Universal tracking, as UF officials call it, provides students with a recommended semester-by-semester plan for each major.
The system monitors each student’s GPA and completion of required courses each semester to see if he is “on track” for his major.
“We have seen an improvement in our graduation rates and our retention as well,” said Roxanne Barnett, an assistant in the UF Department of Undergraduate Advising.
UF officials implemented the tracking system in 1996, when the University carried a four-year graduation rate of 50.12 percent. In 2000, that rate was 52.76 percent.
In other words, 52.76 percent of UF’s 6,999 freshmen in 2000 graduated within four years.
“Graduation rates are like the dessert for the whole project,” said Karen Denby, LSU assistant vice chancellor for Academic Affairs.
She said the primary goal of a tracking system at the University is to improve general advising among the colleges.
The first step, Denby said, is to develop an eight-semester class outline for every degree program so incoming students can receive better advising on what classes to take each semester.
“The current degree audit that we have is hard to understand,” she said. “So we want an advising tool.”
Denby said the real cost of a developed system will not be financial but in man hours, as deans, faculty and counselors re-evaluate and restructure each academic program into manageable four-year plans.
Kevin Carman, LSU College of Basic Sciences dean, said the required 128 hours for science majors may be reduced to 120 as a result.
Denby said LSU hopes to have eight-semester paths for many degree programs online by Fall 2006 and an implemented system by Fall 2007.          
Zaki Bassiouni, College of Engineering dean, said prerequisite road blocks for engineering students tend to be basic engineering classes like statics, dynamics and thermodynamics.
“My impression is that students are held back most of the time because they drop classes. And they don’t realize that they’ll need that prerequisite for a class next year,” he said.
“If you have to take Math 1021 to take upper-level courses, then you should take it by a certain point to stay on track,” Denby said.
Leonard Hebert, horticulture science sophomore who is taking a required math course, said he worries about not passing.
;”I have a 3.5 [GPA] and I’m worried,” Hebert said. “I have a fear of failing.”
Hebert said talking to an adviser about an eight-semester degree path would be helpful. But it won’t change the difficulty of the prerequisite – a trigonometry class with 1000 students and all-online assignments and lectures.
“If it’s the same class, we’ll just have to get through it,” Hebert said.
Contact Chris Day at [email protected]