Students should expect changes in next year’s counseling process. With Ventura College introducing counseling workshops for incoming students, Moorpark College and Oxnard College are still working to overhaul their respective departments.

The possibilities of seeing serious cuts in the Student Services Department are not unlikely. With next year’s budget cuts, the potential for adjustments to the counseling department and Extended Opportunity Programs and Services, or EOPS, is growing.

According to Oxnard College President Richard Duran, if cuts are required in these areas, the district will maintain its focus on student needs.

“We are constantly looking to see how we can be more efficient,” said Duran. “With the budget cuts, we are starting to draw to how we can best accommodate students should these other budget cuts come to fruition.”

The current counseling model includes meeting with students one-on-one, either by drop-in or appointment. According to Duran, if funding for this model is lost, then there will be an uncertainty within the district as to how to approach student needs.

“All of us as at the district are looking at all this,” said Duran. “We just don’t know what is going to happen next year. We know we are going to get cuts, we just don’t know where and how much.”

According to Victoria Lugo, dean of student services at Ventura College, certain actions are already being taken to create an easier atmosphere for students in which they can receive the assistance required in a more efficient manner.

According to Lugo, recommended counseling workshops in Ventura College will be introduced next year, in which groups of 10-12 incoming students will meet with a single counselor to discuss what classes to take and to clear away any confusion a new student may have. This way, when the student decides to meet with a counselor one-on-one, he or she will have a better idea of what to ask specifically.

Lugo believes that this preparation is necessary and helps counselors just as much as it helps students.

“I think it really helps the interaction between the student and the counselors,” said Lugo. “When new students come in without being registered in our systems yet, and they make appointments with our counselors, the counselors can’t really do much.”

According to Duran, emphasis on increasing the efficiency of the counseling department is related not only to budget cuts, but also to an increased student population. This year’s student enrollment is the largest in district history.

Duran says that the changes in the size of the student population can be explained by a rise in incoming students choosing to attend community colleges over four-year universities. Such changes have caused the Ventura County Community College District to alter the emphasis on its goals.

“Right now, we just take everybody on a first come first serve basis,” said Duran. “Incoming freshmen might become a priority in order to get them into smaller sessions.”

According to Moorpark College President Pam Eddinger, there is a large focus on incoming students because these are the students that arrive to the colleges with the most confusion.

“In community colleges in general there is a great deal of churning at the front door,” said Eddinger. “The students come in when they’re not ready, they take something that they’re not suited to take and they go out and then they come back again and it churns and churns. The key is to get the student to enter college and to achieve and then leave as quickly as they can so that first of all they achieve and then they make room for someone else.”

With Ventura College creating workshops for incoming students, Moorpark College and Oxnard College have yet to figure out what changes they will need to make in order to accommodate students.

According to both Duran and Eddinger, college administrators have been discussing, and will continue to discuss, what steps to take to revamp the counseling process. However, it remains uncertain as to what these changes will be or what they will entail.