After Kori Green graduated from the University of Kansas in 2000 with a degree in women’s studies, she went to work for both the Douglas County and Sedgwick County district attorneys’ offices and had plans of eventually going to law school. Rather than amass a large amount of debt pursuing a career that she no longer had the same enthusiasm for, Green enrolled again at the University in 2004 to pursue undergraduate degrees in history and secondary history and government education.

“I realized that you don’t have to remain unhappy,” she said. “You can go back to school. You have choices, and you have the power to change.”

Though University life has been different for Green, a Wichita senior, as she pursues her second degree, one piece of her first undergraduate experience has become part of the second. In 1999 Green served as a peer adviser and did so again in 2000, even after she graduated that May with her women’s studies degree. After she returned to the University, Green served as an orientation assistant in 2005 and as a peer adviser again in 2006. This summer will be Green’s fourth summer as a peer adviser, and she said that she had learned much from her job.

“It gives me an insight into the inner workings of the University, especially the administration and student success,” she said. “It has been a great experience and it has opened up so many possibilities.”

Green and the 19 other members of the peer adviser team work 10 to 15 hours per week during the summer and see more than 5000 students come through the orientation process, Shanda Hurla. Hurla, assistant director of the Freshman Sophomore Advising Center and Green’s boss, estimated that peer advisers work with about 20 to 30 students every day one-on-one. Those conversations have proven to be one of Green’s favorite parts of her job.

“The contact with students and the one-on-one time has been beneficial to me,” she said. “We are a real face that they can connect with, a student who has been there recently in the trenches. I hope they leave with a really positive impression, an ‘I can do this’ type feeling.”

The team is composed of many different types of students, and Green said the hope was that every student that went through the orientation process can connect with at least one of the peer advisers.

“We work really hard to get a diverse and representative group,” Green said. “We want a group where just about any student can find someone to identify with.”

One of Green’s favorite experiences with being an adviser when she runs into students that she previously helped.

“Students do remember you,” Green said. “They see you as someone they know, someone that knows what’s going on. It’s nice to be that person.”

— Edited by James Pinick