Charlie Nutt, NACADA Executive Director
As many of you read this, you are already traveling to attend or preparing to attend one of NACADA’s 10 Region Conferences. These conferences are always outstanding opportunities for participants to gain access to valuable research, knowledge, and strategies that enhance student success in colleges and universities. In addition, it is exciting that many of you are also preparing to attend one of the NACADA Summer Institutes in June or July and the International Conference in Belgium in July as well. These events, in addition to the NACADA Research Center and other growing resources and programs, clearly demonstrate that the NACADA Board of Directors and the Executive Office is constantly exploring new and exciting ways to meet the needs of our participants and members as we all are working so hard to increase the academic, career, and life successes of our students.
It is important that NACADA continues to grow in influence and involvement in higher education across the world in order for the future of the association to have impact across higher education for student success. This involves intentionally selected partnerships and collaborations with many institutions across the world as well as with other influential higher education associations and entities. Just as we know that academic advising cannot be successful working in a vacuum or silo at any institution, NACADA must also be proactive in strategically connecting with other associations to place NACADA “at the table” in global discussions on student success. This work connects directly to our NACADA mission and with NACADA Strategic Goal 3 (to promote the role of effective academic advising in student success to college and university decisions makers). I feel it is important for members to be aware of these partnerships and how they strategically connect NACADA to higher education in ways we have not been in the past.
While there is a long list of strategic partnerships we are working on, I am going to highlight just a few:
Achieving the Dream: NACADA continues to be actively involved with ATD as it does outstanding work in reaching out to institutions for the improvement of academic advising.
Complete College America: NACADA continues to build a strong partnership with CCA in their work with game changers for student success across the colleges in the US. This partnership includes jointly sponsoring material such as the 15 to Finish initiative, Purpose First, and workshops and events focused on academic advising.
Gates Academic Advising Solutions Network: With NASPA as the grant recipient, NACADA is collaborating in a multi-year project with NASPA, EDUCAUSE, ATD, AASCU, and FYE to provide technical assistance to a multitude of institutions with the goal of improving the academic advising experiences of their students.
Global Partnerships: NACADA continues to strengthen our partnerships with global associations such as UKAT in the United Kingdom and LVSA in the Netherlands as well as working closing with institutions in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and several other countries.
NACADA/John Gardner Institute Excellence in Academic Advising (EAA) Program: This new collaborative venture provides an aspirational two-year self-study of the academic advising experiences of students on university and college campuses with the goal of implementing an action plan based on 9 Conditions of Excellence in Academic Advising.
NSF Inspire Alliance: In partnership with the CIRTL and APLU, NACADA is actively involved with a multi-million dollar NSF grant with a focus on new higher education faculty and post docs to enhance their skills in innovative teaching, research mentoring, and academic advising. NACADA is actively involved in providing resources, expertise, and delivery of workshops for faculty on the skills and competencies for effective academic advising.
Reinvention Collaborative: Dedicated to reinventing the undergraduate experience at US research universities, Reinvention Collaborative has partnered with NACADA for the past four years on the NACADA Academic Advising Administrators’ Institute for a new track for administrators with campus-wide responsibilities for academic advising at all types of institutions globally.
Tyton Partners: NACADA has been actively involved for five years with the Tyton Partners Drive to Degree survey for academic advising in both creation and analysis of the survey. Recently Tyton has provided funding for a Senior Research Analyst position for the NACADA Research Center at Kansas State University.
While NACADA is expanding its reach with other associations as well, these are just a few of the partnerships presently in place. I hope all of you are as excited as I am that the NACADA reach is connecting the organization in ways the association needs not only to grow in numbers (we presently have over 15,000 members internationally) but also to grow in influence and impact for the future!
Charlie Nutt, Executive Director NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising (785) 532-5717 [email protected]
Cite this article using APA style as: Nutt, C. (2019, March). From the executive director: NACADA’s growing role in higher education globally. Academic Advising Today, 42(1). Retrieved from [insert url here]
