NACADA’s concept of “Advising as Teaching” offers a frame through which to view advising as critical to students’ academic and personal development and success.  It extends the skills, competencies, and attitudes of teaching and the teaching process, and it places the role of an advisor squarely within the role of a teacher.  In this presentation, we will come to understand that when done right and well, advising, like teaching, is a shared and reciprocal responsibility between students and advisors/teachers…

This presentation reports a support program for new international Chinese students at a major university in U.S.A., which integrates the Non-cognitive Model (Sedlacek, 2003), the ExCEL group model (Ting, 2008), advising, tutoring, and academic and cultural enhancement. The evaluation shows that the program students' posttest scores in study skills (e.g. revision, time management), and stress coping abilities were higher than their pretest scores. Implications for international student advising and services, theory, and limitations will be discussed. The presenter will facilitate a discussion about international student support programs in the world as well as brainstorm how the participants may take ideas from the presentation back to their campus.

The focus of this interactive workshop is to introduce and encourage practice of the coaching skills of asking powerful questions and setting goals with intention as a way academic advisors and tutors can enhance their skills and encourage student success.  Academic advisors and tutors can be powerful collaborators with students, supporting them to improve their self-determination and self-management skills and improve their academic habits.  
The presenters are academic coaches at Landmark College. They are certified by the International Coaching Federation as Professional Certified Coaches. They are also part-time advisors and would like to share how their coaching mindset and skills have been useful assets when advising students.

In 2008 the University of Melbourne in Australia undertook a radical overhaul of its curriculum aligning itself with the Bologna Model and endeavored to distinguish itself from other Australian Universities. It was seen by many as a risky strategy and for the first couple of years concerns about enrolment numbers were evident as students waited for the first graduates to emerge. Since that time demand for the “New Generation” degrees at the University have exceeded all expectations. With the curriculum reform came a strong focus on advising, and then in an effort to differentiate ourselves further, a culture of customer service and purpose built consultation spaces were introduced. This presentation will explore how the Faculty of Arts brought together advising, customer service and purposeful facility design in achieving strong student satisfaction and success.

As students are increasingly crossing geographical borders to complete a degree today, the need of advisors to understand the transfer course evaluation processes and transition needs of international transfer students has grown.  Given from the perspective of the receiving institution, this presentation will review typical practices in transfer course evaluation when working outside of established articulation agreements and the transition challenges international transfer students face.  Advisors will gain familiarity with Schlossberg’s transition theory as applied to all transfer students, while the common issues facing international transfer students will be used as an example population during the presentation.  Model institutional programs will be presented that can assist advisors in brainstorming to improve the intake and transition of transfer students at their own institutions.

American-style higher education is a rapidly developing trend in the Arabian Gulf region.  However, little research has been conducted regarding student success within these institutions. As an institution within the Middle East, we can only borrow certain aspects of an American-style education. This paper focuses on four important areas in a young liberal arts university in Kuwait; diverse student body and faculty, policies and procedures, culture, and laws and regulations. As advisors, we are aware of the complexities of these areas and how they contribute to the student experience. In this presentation, we will use our current qualitative study to make recommendations on academic and extracurricular practices and as a result improve student engagement.

Students transitioning into the higher education environment have the opportunity to explore a range of domains pertaining to their identity development.  Identity development is based on two processes: exploration and commitment.  They are processes every student across the world experiences.  Regarding a student’s academic identity, the big question is what major they choose. Deciding on a major can create anxiety in a new student; on the other hand, deciding too early can inhibit the exploration process of identity development.  In this dynamic session, one advisor will share his advising style formulated from a counseling background. He will introduce two career and identity development theories that can help promote exploration and commitment and how to apply these theories in academic advising and career planning.

The development of study skills is concerned as a task for central study advice units, separately from the curriculum students engage in. The international literature, however, states that learning how to study effectively at a university can’t be disconnected from the subject content and the process of learning (Ambrose et al, 2010; Tinto, 2012; Wingate, 2007). Settings conductive to learning as well as students’ academic involvement are crucial for student success (Tinto, 2005).  Consequently study advice units are challenged to integrate the development of study skills within the curriculum (Tinto, 2012). At KU Leuven we take up this challenge by launching different projects with several stakeholders. We will discuss three projects in this session. (130/130)

Faculty advisors, full-time advisors, and personal tutors play increasingly important roles in assisting students with the transition to college and their subsequent transformation throughout their college experience. A growing body of knowledge on the practice and impact of advising on student outcomes suggests that advising has indeed emerged as a profession and field of study. However some have argued that advising is not “there” yet and remains a job or set of responsibilities subsumed under the umbrella of the field higher education and student affairs. The presentation will debate the merits of this argument within the literature, solicit contextual perspectives from session participants, and collectively generate evidence supporting or refuting this important, lingering question for higher education across the globe.

Utrecht University is the first university in the Netherlands to introduce a mandatory matching procedure for bachelor’s students. The procedure is designed to reduce the drop-out rate from students and to strengthen students’ affiliation with their study programs. Prospective students study materials, attend classes, complete an assignment and receive feedback. After enrolling the student is assigned a personal tutor, a teacher from their academic discipline. At the end of the first year students need to complete 75% of the program.


This presentation will focus on the development of the procedure of matching and the way it extends into the first year at university. The system of tutoring at Utrecht University is undergoing revision and the presentation will address challenges and next steps.

In cultures where parents and other family members hold tremendous power over the lives of students, advisors face particular challenges in approaching the process of academic advising. It also offers opportunities for parental involvement in ensuring student success. This session will look at such challenges and opportunities associated with high levels of parental involvement. Participants will learn about the level of parental involvement Asian and Middle Eastern students can experience, impact of parental involvement on students’ motivation, how to appropriately involve parents in advising students on academic probation, and some strategies used to manage confidentiality of student records.

This workshop will examine effective communication strategies used throughout institutions as a way to improve retention.  The approach that will be focused on brings in a variety of individuals concerned with different elements of the student’s life.  When it comes to academic recovery, it is essential to realize the interconnectedness of these aspects and how they affect the student. If we are able to bring together student life, counseling, athletics, special needs and opportunity programs into the academic sphere, we are often able to better assess why a student may be struggling in class. Participants will be asked to look at scenarios of students in jeopardy and offer possible outcomes and obstacles as well as provide examples from their own experiences.

For a long time, the role of academic advising in Japanese higher education existed. The definition, however, is different from other countries’. Usually, an “academic advisor” at the most Japanese university is a faculty member who is also student’s seminar instructor. At the same time, there are staff members who advise students on personal concerns, registration questions and other issues at various units in the institution. The presenters feel the need of providing a systemic and purposeful academic advising for meaningful educational experience. In this session, we will first explain Japanese “academic advising structure.” Then, we will propose the professional development opportunities to develop skills necessary to provide a systemic and purposeful advising without reconstructing the organization.

Students enter the higher education environment with varying levels of academic preparedness.  Additionally, the student profile grows increasingly diverse each year.  How can higher education practitioners meet the needs of these students?  How can intercultural competence enhance the quality of the student experience, and contribute to students’ success overall?

The purpose of this presentation is to use an overview of student development theory, discussion, and reflection to explore the role of intercultural competence on student success, particularly in terms of academic advising and general student support.

At UCM we developed an academic advising curriculum, called ‘UCM Milestones’ that spans over the course of the students’ entire academic program. The UCM Milestones program consists of workshops, an academic portfolio and a Milestones booklet. It closely follows the student’s curriculum: we identified key moments that students encounter during their academic program and linked them to learning outcomes we want students to achieve at particular stages in their curriculum. In this presentation, we will elaborate on the way we took key moments in the UCM academic curriculum as a framework for developing our advising curriculum. We will emphasize the need to develop clear learning objectives for an advising curriculum, and provide participants with a template they can use for the exploration of possibilities at their own institutions.

Reflecting team processes (RTP) have received significant attention in academic and practice fields. This highly interactive session outlines the results of an evaluative study demonstrating how RTP were innovatively adapted for summative appraisal which has not, to the presenter’s knowledge, been reported previously. This study confirmed that RTP, with emphasis on the way feedback and participant responses to feedback are processed, promotes greater meaningful student engagement in self appraisal and success. Participants will learn the defining aspects and essence of RTP and discover how components of this approach can be incorporated into learner centred advising, thus fostering engaged and life-long reflective learners.