Information comes at us like spaghetti from a fire hose. Email, newsletters, breaking news alerts, a student in the lobby, a colleague on the phone, a project spread across our desk. Advisors are constantly being asked to do more, which means less time for each task. How can all of the incoming ‘stuff’ be managed and still produce results?
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Race, ethnicity, and culture are powerful variables that influence the way that people behave, think, perceive, and define events. Academic Advising for African Americans can be complex and requires specific skills and knowledge from the in order to establish a more safe and welcoming environment that fosters a humanizing, holistic, and proactive approach.
Traditionally, graduate students have been advised by faculty within their academic programs. As faculty demands increase in other areas, there has been a shift at some institutions from faculty to professional academic advisors, mostly in master’s degree and professional programs. This is an area in need of attention and research to better train, prepare, and provide resources to assist graduate student professional academic advisors who come from staff positions other than faculty.
What steps can advisors take to prepare them to ascend the campus career ladder? Regardless of their ultimate goal, it is important for advisors to strive to reach the next step in each and every area of their job.
Successful engagement in strong communication, problem-solving, and rapport-building skills – those critical to the relational component of advising – requires emotional intelligence. Without it, advising is little more than authoritative information dissemination.
In the June 2016 edition of Academic Advising Today, NACADA Executive Director, Charlie Nutt, and NACADA President, David Spight, challenged members of NACADA to consider their role in and their contributions to the profession of advising... The work that lies ahead for NACADA members comes with the challenge of an evolving profession, and NACADA members will need to work collaboratively and steadily to capitalize on the momentum that has been created.
Academic advising is crucial if institutions are to achieve goals of persistence and timely graduation, as well as student self-realization and growth. It is one of the two most important levers to pull within the university to positively impact student success… As institutions look to academic advisors for leadership, members of the profession need to be able to articulate their value, assess their impact, and embrace the changes required to serve students better.
NACADA (2017) has identified the relational element of academic advising as one of the core competencies of the profession along with the conceptual and informational elements. Distinct from the others, the relational element highlights the dynamics within the advising practice. That said, saying the relationship is important is one thing, designing and supporting advising practices that help facilitate and sustain the relationship is another… How do institutions help advisors develop the knowledge and skills to enhance and sustain their advising relationships?
Academic advisors promote student development through providing readily accessible information and guidance to students and by helping them feel stimulated and challenged as they work toward meeting their academic goals. Academic advisors can also help students develop in other ways outside of a traditional advising appointment.
Enhancing student success, as the purview of academic advisors, is ever-evolving, and recent success has been generated through course management software, an electronic tool that traditionally provides important links between students and their instructors.
