Counseling Explained

Community colleges are distinguished by the personal attention given to students and the quality of guidance and counseling services provided. Counseling is an essential part of WCC, designed to complement and facilitate the instructional program and to aid students in academic, career, and personal planning.

Counselors provide services for helping each student:
  • Analyze aptitudes and interests and learn decision-making processes related to academic and career planning.
  • Determine the best educational program for achieving a chosen career.
  • Select courses and college activities to maximize the student’s opportunities and potential.
  • Develop a student educational plan that encompasses both the course work and supplemental needs of the student.
  • Plan a transfer program which leads to acceptance with junior standing at an upper division college or university,
    if such is the choice.
  • Resolve personal problems which are of such a nature that a college counselor can be of professional assistance.
Individual Counseling

Every student is strongly encouraged to see a counselor at least twice each semester to confer on matters pertaining to satisfactory adjustment to college life and progress toward educational/career goals. Since accurate information about program requirements and course prerequisites is essential for planning courses of study, counselors serve as valuable resource people in helping select appropriate courses. Pre-transfer students are urged to consult with counselors and with the catalogs of the institutions they wish to attend in order to be certain they fulfill all lower division general requirements and specific major requirements of the upper division colleges of their choice.

Counseling also offers a variety of services and resources designed to aid students in choosing, changing, or confirming career goals and taking appropriate steps to reach those goals. Students are advised to make their vocational plans or to select the school to which they wish to transfer as early as possible in their college career. Frequent changes of program or changes in vocational objectives may delay graduation or interfere with successful transfer to other collegiate institutions. Responsibility for meeting these requirements rests entirely on the student.