Achieving in college is the proverbial mountain that so many students face. For some students, specifically those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, the mountain presents a daunting task and they are unsure about whether they have the tools or ability to reach the top. These students can be called our “at risk” students or students who are on the edge of academic failure. As a new advisor in the College of Education, I was responsible for creating a success plan that would address the needs of students having academic difficulty. So here I was, standing at the top of the mountain and attempting to map out a plan that would support the students in their climb to success.
[Read the rest of this article...]
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.
Scholarly and theoretical underpinnings of academic advising acknowledge the importance of the relational component of advising. A common factors meta-model of academic advising suggests that several factors can be applied to the advisor-student interaction to increase student persistence, regardless of specific advising theory or practice.
