As students prepare to transfer to universities in the fall or to register for their next semester of classes here at Diablo Valley College, many are lining up to meet with counselors who can help plan their next steps.

But some students are noticing that it’s easier said than done to grab an available counseling appointment — and sometimes, they say, it isn’t worth the effort.

“I would rather use Assist.org than the counselors here,” said Genaro Cervantes, Jr., a 20-year-old architecture major. “I’ll get the same information without having to struggle to find an appointment.”

“I’m not against the counselors… I don’t think it’s their fault,” he added, since, “ they don’t have as much help or as many tools provided by the school to truly help the students.”

Cervantes, who transferred from San Francisco State University before attending DVC, said he had a more productive experience working with counselors across the bay — partly because they were easier to access and more consistent with their messaging..

“[The counselors] at SFSU gave me more personal meetings, they lasted for sometimes an hour,” he said, while, “it feels like the [general] counselors here don’t take the time to understand our paths that lead us in the right direction.”

Cervantes is not alone in his criticism. As The Inquirer reported in the fall, many DVC students have expressed frustration finding counseling appointments due to high demand during the start and end of each semester — with only 10 general counselors available to serve some 17,000 students, according to counselor Justin Wembes.

Wembes confirmed that the number of students seeking counseling spikes towards the end of each semester, forcing him to take measures to help ease the bulk load of visits.
“Usually I would take 90% scheduled appointments and allocate 10% of my time to drop-ins,” Wembes said, “but during the busy times, I might only do drop-in appointments to help more students.”

Wembes also said counselors aim to ease the pressure from the end of semester surge by “better advertising the off-season” — encouraging students to schedule appointments during less busy times — and recommended students take advantage of online counseling appointments that re-open every two weeks on Mondays.
He added that while the Counseling Department has around 30 employees in total, only 10 are available for general counseling, which puts additional pressure on Wembes and his colleagues to meet rising demand.

“If I wake up and I’m too tired, I still give it all I got, because I know that if students didn’t need help, I wouldn’t have a job,” he said.

According to athletics counselor Jamie Bailey, counselors across DVC are making an effort to focus their attention and “meet students where they are.”

Bailey said she and others try to give personalized counseling to students by working in areas where they have greater expertise. For example, some counselors work as liaisons to specific departments, usually within the five interest areas: Arts, Communication & Language; Business, Computer Science & Culinary Arts; Math & Engineering; Science & Health; and Social Sciences.

This focused approach allows counselors to tailor their advice to the needs of students in specific fields, while also putting them in closer proximity to the students they can help the most.

For example, explained Wembes, counselors who work with liaisons can work more closely with a program and stay up to date with information about transfer agreements, scholarships and other relevant information to students in that field.

This strategy also addresses part of a larger issue that counselors face: the frequently changing information within programs and four-year institutions.

Responding to the critique by Cervantes and other students who have claimed they received different, sometimes conflicting advice from different counselors at different times, EOPS counselor Paula Stanfield offered an explanation.

“Sometimes [students] present different information to different counselors,” she said.

For instance, Stanfield said some students might say they have AP credits from high school, but only mention it to the second counselor they see — resulting in what seems like a second opinion when, in reality, the counselors didn’t necessarily receive the same information.

“No one gave wrong information,” said Wembes, it’s “just a different perspective, especially if we’re talking about required classes versus recommended ones.”

Students’ concerns about the rapid change in information can often be attributed to the fact that four-year institutions and program transfer requirements change as well — making it hard for community college counselors to keep up.
“I’d be an expert if everything wasn’t changing so much,” said Stanfield.

For that reason, suggested Wembes, having counselor liaisons in each department could help counselors stay current when classes are added or removed from requirements — or changed from a status of required to simply recommended.

“I like to know everything I can possibly know,” he said.