With a staffing complement of approximately 55 people (41 ES Advisors, 3 Associate Advisors, 3 ES Coordinators, 3 Associate Directors, 1 Associate Registrar & Director and 3 student workers), the SSA unit provides support and services to prospective and current students regarding financial advising, admissions advising, tuition and registration issues, and effective campus partner referrals.

Associate ES Advisors and Enrolment Services Advisors offer one-on-one advisory services to students and we are trained and authorized to provide a comprehensive range of ES services, where relationships can be cultivated between staff and students to ensure individualized, holistic, student-centered service is offered. 

Enrolment Services Coordinators offer primary administration support to ES Advisors and the management team. They help to ensure processes are efficient and not repetitive so that students are not bounced around due to administrative processing. They support our team with multiple financial and HR-related administrative processes including part-time loans, sponsorship, payment reconciliation and more. We couldn’t do our jobs without the support of our ESCs!

Associate Directors act in key roles in the short listing and hiring of new staff. Each AD has direct staff reporting lines, but is accessible to the entire team for consultation on complex situations. They provide learning opportunities to staff either on an ad-hoc basis or can help identify opportunities where a meaningful partnership can be built. Project teams are managed by the AD group so that staff strengths can be developed in addition to matching skills to meet expectations. 

 The scope of our unit’s work is broad and covers across all areas within Enrolment Services and across campus The day of each advisor can look completely different depending on which project they are working on, what shifts they are scheduled for and how many of their assigned students are contacting them for support. Our work is typically broken into three main areas. 

ADVISING SERVICE POINTS:

Each Advisor is scheduled for 3-5 advising shifts a week, which take place in the morning or afternoon with a shift change occurring between 12:30pm-12:45pm each day. The service points include answering incoming inquiries through the ES general phone line, the Advising Centre (for current students) and the Welcome Centre (for prospective students). Our Indigenous Student Support team also works out of the First Nations House of Learning on Tuesday afternoons.

STUDENT COHORTS:

Each Enrolment Services Advisor is assigned 800-1100 undergraduate students, which we call our ‘cohort’. These student cohorts are supported in various ways throughout their time at UBC through regular monthly e-newsletters, regular email exchange, phone calls and in-person meetings. Enrolment Services Advisors advise on all topics related to their degree at UBC, but specialize in financial aid and award advising. 

PROJECT TEAMS:

The area that provides the most flexibility and variety in the day tends to be through our “behind-the-scenes’ work that happens on the various project, financial or faculty teams that we work on. Each ES Advisor is assigned 3-5 teams which carry various degrees of complexity and volume, depending on the time of year. 

Our project teams tend to fall under one of these themes:

  • Financial Aid & Processing (e.g. US Loans, Financial Management, Bursary Teams, Award Appeals, etc. )
  • Award Management Adjudication (eg. Merit and Hybrid Entrance Awards, Awards for Students With Disabilities, Premier Wesbrook, Rhodes, etc.)
  • Student Programs (e.g. Youth in Care Alumni Program, Financial Wellness Peers, Scholars Community, ES Student Advisory Committee, etc.)
  • Campus Partner Liaisons (e.g. Non-Degree Studies, Faculty Teams, Housing, Wellness, Equity & Inclusion, Admissions, Sustainability, etc.)
  • Specialized Student Support (e.g. Indigenous Student Support, International Leaders of Tomorrow, World University Service Canada (WUSC), Mastercard Scholars, etc.)
  • Office & Team Management (e.g. Back to School, Onboarding, Scheduling, Information Management, Communications, etc.)

We connect with students in many different ways at UBC. Student support and advising is a practice that occurs at all points of the A/ES Advisor role. Flexibility and responsiveness are two core tenets of our work as we engage with prospective and current students, both domestic and international. There is a great deal of autonomy in the work, wherein staff are provided with guidelines on how to advise students and best support them through the policy frameworks we work within, but are also provided with the bandwidth to support students in a way that recognizes the unique needs of the student in front of them.