Starting in late March, the undeclared office located in Salazar 1070 will be hiring student peer advisors to join their team. 

The job is a year-long commitment with biweekly meetings. The academic advisors are looking for people to join their team in any academic year and age. 

Once hired, peer advisors will  make above minimum wage. The longer you work there the more your pay gets increased. After being hired, training is one-to-two days long and  takes place a couple days before the start of the fall 2019 semester. Student peer advisors only work during the academic year and their hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m- 3 p.m.

Located in the Advising Center, different than other academic advisors, student peer advisors focus on transactional academic advising.

As a student peer advisor, they help students with anything that has to do with the My SSU portal. This includes helping with GE advising, registration, Academic Reading Requirements (ARR), declaring majors, academic advice, transcripts, transfer credits and holds/To-Do’s information. 

“I’ve been working in this job for three years and it’s a rewarding way to work as a student while also helping other peers on campus understand what it takes to graduate.” said Simberlee Prime, a senior and psychology major.

Student peer advisors don’t only help undeclared majors, they help any major with any question on academic advice. Right now, there are currently five student advisors working in the office.

Lana Harris, junior student and Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies major, started her job as a student peer advisor recently.  

“I worked on the student peer advising team for the first time last year, and now I’m the team lead. I love getting to work with different students, and now I’m thinking about becoming a professional academic advisor after I graduate,” said Harris.

“Working with student peer advisors has been an amazing experience. I love seeing them everyday and working with them,” said Micahel Balasek, the director for the Advising Center at Sonoma State. “Being a student peer advisor is a really good opportunity, especially if you want to go in professional academic advising one day.”

If you go to the peer advising website for Sonoma State, it gives more advice on what a student peer advisor is and what other services they offer. 

Student peer advisors also help with Seawolf scheduler, degree planning, What-if Reports, Assist.org, referrals to professional academic advisors and also offer lead group presentations and workshops. 

Student peer advisors help over 3,900 annually with workshops, presentations and drop-ins. According to its website, “Over the last nine years (fall 2009 to spring 2018) the program has served 34,625 students!”

“Over 20 academic advising professionals are here on campus. Professional academic advisors will meet to plan out what they want to do and then students will come to peer advisors on how to actually do those things.” said Prime. “They’re the thinking and we’re the doing.”

The student peer advisors are advertising for the opening jobs. There will be flyers and stickers about the job opprotunity coming to campus soon.