This paper explores the challenges of the registration process in higher education through the vantage point of a retired college administrator re-enrolling as a student. Despite extensive experience and knowledge, the author faced numerous obstacles from application to course registration, illustrating how systemic issues can impede student progress. The author highlights the critical role of academic advising in student retention and success, drawing on research and personal insights to identify a gap between institutional values and practices. This gap underscores the need for higher education institutions to align their operational processes with their commitment to student-centered advising and support. The author’s experience serves as a call to action to improve these processes to better serve all students.
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Fear of failure and procrastination pose considerable barriers to students in higher education. Advisors can make a difference by recognizing the existence of these fears and understanding their consequences. This knowledge enables advisors to empower students to address their fears, promoting both academic and personal success.
Academic success can be hindered by the demands and responsibilities of everyday life. Students are often in the difficult position of deciding how to navigate multiple obligations. Use of the 'Yes, And...Rule" equips advisors to provide perspective and support. The growth oriented approach helps to create a path for students to attend to outside the classroom tasks as well as achieve academic success.
What does advising have to do with the board game Monopoly®? Students seek their academic wealth potential through their academic decisions to build skills, just as someone decides what to do to build wealth in Monopoly®. Empowering students to take control of their game play so they spend more time acquiring wealth and less time stuck in Jail is a powerful influence advisors can have on their success trajectory. Teaching a Get out of Jail Free Card mindset and a Park Place Focus can lead to multiple wins for our students.
NACADA’s Well-Being and Advisor Retention advising community frequently facilitates conversations with academic advisors on crafting sustainable workplace practices to safeguard advisor wellbeing and promote persistence in the advising profession. The authors’ participation in those conversations have led us to two conclusions: 1) advisors should engage in self-advocacy to achieve personalized workplace wellbeing and 2) little research or discussion is available on workplace self-advocacy in academic advising. Academic advising professionals must begin to discuss the importance and implementation of workplace self-advocacy in the advising field. Workplace self-advocacy is a critical skill for academic advisors given the demands of the advising profession and advisors’ positions within university systems. This article, sponsored by the Well-Being and Advisor Retention advising community, promotes conversation on advisor workplace self-advocacy to encourage advisors to engage in research, discussion, and personal reflection on the topic. More academic advisors should engage in workplace self-advocacy to benefit themselves, their students, their institutions, and the advising field.
The role of an academic advisor and some of the demands and challenges are emphasized in this study. There are four advisors in the Computer Science department of the College of Engineering and Computing at George Mason University (GMU). The advisors meet the advising needs of more than 2600 Students each year, some of which display behaviors related to mental illnesses such as depression, autism, anxiety and more. This population has a plethora of resources to support the needs of the student. However, there does not seem to be the same number of resources or training available to the advisor. The importance of professional advising, the need for additional information, and training on how to best work with this population of students is essential. Student issues are documented based on advisor experience, and scenarios are shared. Key questions are asked of the advisors who will read this article. This article expresses the importance for advisors to self-educate and share their own experiences in lieu of the imbalance of training currently available to advisors.
Harford Community College (HCC) Advising, Career, and Transfer Services Department has undergone changes to transfer programming offered to students. In alignment with Community College Research Data and advising literature, the department added several group workshops and increased the presence of transfer admissions representatives on campus to assist students in building transfer student capital and successfully prepare for transfer. The advising literature and data show that academic advisors from Community Colleges are important in helping students successfully prepare for transfer.
Using Shaun Harper’s (2010) anti-deficit achievement framework, academic advisors can center student achievement to facilitate thriving in college students. An anti-deficit approach focuses on strengths but differs from strengths based advising in its active resistance to deficit narratives that persist about marginalized populations. Through acknowledging deficit thinking and deficit-focused policies and practices, advisors can begin to recognize and disrupt deficit-thinking at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and systemic levels.
Higher education institutions have been incorporating more academic coaching models into their student success plans in recent years as a supplement to academic advising to improve retention. However, academic coaching still suffers from an identity crisis as there is no universal definition for what coaching entails as the roles differ across institutions, which makes it challenging to find research that provides enough data that can be used to determine the overall effectiveness of academic coaching. At the University of St. Thomas in Houston, a new success coaching program has been launched with the goal of helping students differentiate between the roles of coaches and advisors and working collaboratively with faculty and other campus resources to provide a more holistic approach in serving students.
After over a decade, one professional left his advising position for a new opportunity in the field. These decisions are incredibly challenging because they bring up feelings of guilt for leaving the role and excitement for the latest opportunities ahead. Our identities are, at times, ingrained into campus cultures. Being on one campus for so long can make one feel they may be a lifer. However, when a panic attack made this advisor re-evaluate his overall mental health and well-being, a change of position was one of the solutions on the table to assist in his overall retention in the industry. Gain insights on this practitioner’s journey of shifting jobs during the post-lockdown era in higher education. There are highs and lows in this story, but overall, it is a story of resilience that shows how you can bounce back from an uncomfortable situation.
There are many best practices in Academic Advising. These are typically found in industry publications. Purchasing and reading these texts can be both pricey and time-consuming for advising professionals. This document is designed to be a cheat sheet of best advising practices for busy Academic Advisors.
Incorporating survey response data has become increasingly important for higher education institutions. In addition, most research published in higher education journals is based on findings from survey data. However, many offices and researchers are experiencing decreased survey response rates. This issue was also experienced by the authors’ advising office. The authors tried various methods to increase the evaluation form responses received. This article will discuss what did not work, what worked, and the office’s future plans.
Academic advisors have the unique opportunity to assist new students as they transition to higher education. Thus, it is important for an academic advisor to be equipped with an abundance of resources in their toolbox pertaining to student success. This article shares some examples of topics and action items advisors can share with new students to help them on their road to success.
The “cafeteria model” of course selection and academic planning has long been a tradition in higher education and can complicate the advising experience. The cafeteria model is meant to offer students choice, but it can also lead to excess credit accumulation, longer time to completion, and negative outcomes for students. Harrisburg Area Community College has demonstrated positive outcomes by deconstructing the cafeteria model in favor of a more focused and intentional model of educational planning that builds relationships - student-to-advisor as well as colleague-to-colleague.
The goal of this paper is to learn about the professional competencies of academic advisors with doctorates. To gather information, an IRB-approved survey was distributed through the NACADA listserv and collected responses from 430 advisors, including 73 with doctorates. Responses illustrated that advisors with doctoral degrees surpass the standards for academic advising detailed in NACADA’s core competencies. And yet, survey results also revealed hesitancy and misconceptions around hiring advisors with doctorates.
Quality faculty advising is often noted as vital and critical to student success. However, most institutions are not assessing the quality of faculty advising. In fact, when faculty advising is assessed it is often limited, including only quantitative surveys of student satisfaction. Moreover, when assessment occurs it is not typically intended to improve faculty advising and it is not typically used in formal reviews of faculty performance (e.g., tenure). Meaningful and comprehensive assessment is key to quality advising that supports student success. This brief review of the research literature on assessment of faculty advising, identified areas for improvement in practice and policy. Institutions of higher education, professional associations, unions, and accrediting bodies all play a role in improving and/or maintaining quality faculty advising through setting expectations for advising and outlining best practice for assessment.
The NACADA Pillar Documents and the NACADA EAA 9 Conditions of Excellence are frameworks that set benchmarks for institutional academic advising practices. Together, these guidelines and standards contribute to the professionalization and improvement of academic advising in higher education. This article compares these frameworks and places them within the Educational Advisory Board’s (EAB) Student Needs Hierarchy to demonstrate the contribution of academic advising to students’ overall success and well-being.
This paper addresses the imperative role of academic advisors in advancing social justice within academia, focusing on the support of Indigenous students in Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). The study examines the historical marginalization of Indigenous students at PWIs, uncovering stereotypes and cultural insensitivity impacting retention. Strategies to address biases, engage with Indigenous communities, and pursue self-education are presented. Despite anti-DEI laws, the authors advocate for an equity-minded approach, emphasizing advisors' pivotal position in fostering a sense of belonging for Indigenous students and contributing to transformative structural changes for a more inclusive academic environment.
There is a gap in the academic advising literature related to advising strategies for students in teacher preparation programs. The authors who serve as advising supervisors and academic advisors to future teachers offer recommendations designed to combat common challenges in these programs. In this discussion, advising strategies are offered to help advisors manage program complexities, recruit and retain BIPOC students, and help students overcome significant barriers to degree completion and licensure.
Providing graduate and professional students with annual feedback via progress reports is an integral component of student success. Though most graduate programs require annual progress reports, there is variation in the information requested of students, and how that information is used to improve both student and program outcomes. This paper discusses the purpose of graduate student progress reports from the perspective of multiple stakeholders, the progress report framework developed for our doctoral programs, and the best practices implemented to improve both student and program outcomes.
Nearly every aspect of American higher education was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the most notable and enduring changes was the abrupt shift from in-person advising (IPA) to remote academic advising (RAA). While this practice is now commonplace at colleges and universities across the United States, only a small body of scholarship has been dedicated to its impacts. This article offers advising supervisors and academic advisors a review of the post-pandemic literature focusing on RAA and its related best practices in American higher education today.
“Professional development is the ongoing process of improving one’s skills and knowledge to better perform in their existing role or to attain the skills needed to perform at a high level in a new role” (Meyer, 2023). Professional development - if done with intention - can have many positive impacts on Advising team and the institution as a whole. Investing in Advisors through meaningful development can lead to higher job satisfaction and decrease turnover. In fact, in a recent Gallup survey, 48% of American workers would switch jobs if it offered better skills training opportunities (Gallup, 2021).Professional development can lead to greater self-awareness, encourage confidence, and leadership. It also provides advisors with opportunities to learn new strategies and techniques based on NACADA's Core Competencies, which serve "as the foundational elements for effective advisor training programs and advising practice...(NACADA 2017)." Because of the benefits of professional development, Advisors at the University of Southern Maine have created a committee to continuously coordinate opportunities to develop the necessary knowledge and skills to support the success of our students, as well as, continuing to build community amongst our advising team.
The pandemic created a challenging environment for academic advisors. Coping with personal crises and continual exposure to intense and sometimes emotionally charged conversations with students required additional energy and empathy from academic advisors. Over time, this caused many academic advisors to develop compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma. While colleges have been hyper focused on increasing enrollment, improving student retention numbers, and recovering from the financial fallout from the pandemic, academic advisors continue to grapple with additional responsibilities, low support, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and working in politically charged environments. Recent CUPA-HR data indicated that more than 56% of higher education employees are looking for alternative employment in the next twelve months. This article reviews the concepts of trauma-informed leadership and how the trauma-informed leadership approach can support and retain advisors experiencing workplace burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma.
Whether implementing new and innovative ideas or using time tested practices, the wellness of academic advisors is a community issue, involving not only administrators, but the collaboration with academic advisors. Committed to engaging in trust-based philanthropy prioritizing community voice, the Stupki Foundation offered an advisor wellness grant initiative to NACADA Region 9 members with the primary aim to devise strategies for addressing academic advisor burnout and to provide avenues for those directly involved in this work to craft their own solutions. The grant initiative centered on the idea of “money as medicine” and that providing supportive, flexible funds would be a part of the advisor burnout and retention solution. This article provides key themes that emerged along with initiatives and interventions that can be adapted with or without funding.
This article explores the changing concept of mentorship through academic literature and conversations with colleagues. The author examines their past assumptions of mentorship and describes journey in reframing mentorship as "Thought Partners" (Anderson and Stanny, 2012). This reframe provided space to re-conceptualize mentorship as a productive partnership between equals and let go of past stereotypical assumptions of mentorship. Given the pressure that students may feel to find a mentor in their early career journeys, this article can provide an opportunity for advisors to think about how they talk about mentorship with students.
This paper explores the integration of Positive Psychology principles into academic coaching practices to enhance student well-being, resilience, and academic success. Academic coaching has emerged as a valuable resource on college campuses, providing personalized support to help students navigate their academic journey. Positive Psychology, with its focus on optimal functioning and well-being, offers a complementary framework for promoting student success. The paper examines the application of Positive Psychology principles, particularly those outlined in the PERMA model –Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment – within the context of academic coaching. It discusses how academic coaches can foster positive emotions, promote engagement in challenging and rewarding activities, nurture meaningful relationships, facilitate a sense of purpose and fulfillment, and encourage goal-setting and a growth mindset. By embracing Positive Psychology principles, academic coaching becomes a transformative experience that empowers students to thrive academically and personally
This article demonstrates ways in which an advising office can benefit from a close working relationship with a registrar’s office. Building upon historical literature, and more recent interest in the connections between these areas, the authors utilize their own experiences from working in a combined registrar and advising office at Davidson College. Providing real world examples in the common areas of reporting, training and communication can bridge gaps and highlight potential collaborative ideas. The article provides suggestions that readers can use at their home institutions. By advising and registrar offices working together, time can be saved, redundancies can be reduced, consistent messaging can thrive, and students can receive quality service.
