This article contains tips and practices that help the author communicate more effectively in writing, save time, and establish and/or strengthen connections with advisees.
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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.
The increased presence of international students means academic advisors must be aware of the unique issues facing international students in order to support and ensure success across the range of students they serve. The author shares six strategies that can help advisors working with international students.
Advisors sometimes need to deliver bad news to students. The author discusses how advisors can use the SPIKES model as a framework for delivering bad news to students.
The authors highlight Gen Z-friendly methods that they have used to promote student engagement in appointments, on campus, and in the community.
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?
Students often lack the motivation to participate in the democratic process because they feel that they cannot make a difference. Academic advisors can provide knowledge and skills necessary for students to become politically engaged citizens.
Each year the question of whether or not to implement mandatory advising seems to surface across a variety of venues and mailing lists. In addressing this question, campuses must be able to answer other questions about how they meet student needs. When campuses pose an essential outcomes-based question, they strengthen their ability to conceive the most integrative and holistic solutions for ensuring that students can achieve desired advising outcomes.
Over the past 10 years at the University of Hawai‘i’s Mānoa Advising Center (MAC), a number of small but significant changes have been made in the way that mandatory advising is offered—namely in format and tone—that have had a big impact in helping advisors to more efficiently and proactively assist their students.
