With the threat of budget cuts continuing, counselors at Fresno City College have developed crafty ways to serve students who seek academic advice.

The counseling division, which has fewer people available due to the budget cuts, has set up a “Counseling Q&A” system upstairs in the Student Services building during registration periods to use its limited manpower quickly and efficiently.

The goal: to provide students with help without too much wait time.

“The intent of Q&A,” according to Dr. Geri Santos, the elected chair of the counseling division, “was to triage students to make sure they were in the right place and getting the right services through Student Services.”

Triage is a process of prioritizing patients based on the severity of their condition.

The registration period, known as Ram Rush, takes place twice a semester. The period runs the week before and the first two weeks of a new semester. It runs again around mid-term, for the first two weeks of continuing-student registration and the first week of new-student registration.

During this time, the Q&A offers a streamlined counseling service for students who do not need a full session. This service is in addition to other counseling methods, such as by phone, over the Internet and via group sessions.

Counselor Forouzandeh Rahnejad said the Q&A method works. “We channel them to the right place, if that is their need,” she said.

Dr. Santos said the Q&A line is designed to move more quickly. “The wait time in counseling is two and a half to three hours,” she said. “It’s a long wait time but we have a large student population.”

A smaller number of “duty days” for counselors has also contributed to the wait times.

“Historically, we’ve worked 205 days and we are now working 181 days,” Santos said. “But that’s not just in counseling [here], that’s across the board in Reedley College, Clovis Center. Everybody has been cut.”

With 18 full-time counselors, Santos said, it’s easy to do the math. “That’s … 432 days’ reduction off counselors’ days,” she said.

Rahnejad said that because of the cuts to the counseling division hours, “students pay for it with longer waits.”

Hundreds of students go through the counseling process daily.

When asked about his experiences with the counseling division this semester, Matthew Nides, a 20-year-old psychology major, said about a month ago he had a four-hour wait.

“It has been pretty good,” Nides said. “But lately it has been backed up. My only frustration is waiting.”

Amanda Salazar, a 21-year-old child development major, said that her experiences with counseling have been all right but that she devised a strategy to help.

“I waited for about an hour last week because I came to the counseling office early,” Salazar said.

Santos posed a few solutions to the waiting problem.

“We have appointments available,” she said. “Students should try to come in and make appointments, not during peak time because we don’t offer appointments during peak time [during registration]. But students…should utilize the appointment system because then they have a specific person and they’re seen right on that time.”

Rampage staff writer Sydney Excinia contributed to this report.