Why is it so important to foster resiliency in ourselves, our colleagues, and our students? It’s critical that we have the skills to learn from our failures, because to fail is an inevitable part of the human existence. In order to thrive and to become our best selves, we must learn how to engage with failure in a healthy and constructive way.
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While investigating the underachievement of underserved Students of Color (SOCs) is imperative, examining those who succeed is also important so we can learn how to help more SOCs be high-achieving. This study aims to create knowledge regarding what advisors can do to positively affect the motivation of SOCs by using the Culturally Engaging Campus Environments (CECE) Model of Success (Museus, 2014b) as a framework that explains the impact of campus environments, acknowledges the role of motivation and success, addresses the limitations of traditional perspectives, and focuses specifically on SOCs.
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.
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.
High-achieving students come with great potential, but also great need for assistance, even though that may seem counter intuitive. High-achieving students have challenges of their own, such as dealing with perfectionism and lack of guidance and support for lofty goals.
Developing a sense of belonging in the first year is critical to whether or not a student will be retained. Orientation and the first-year seminar are ideal places to begin. The author offers strategies created to nurture belongingness for first-year students which can be applicable to a wide range of academic programs, institutions, and advisors and can be implemented at no cost.
One exploratory advising office’s success in mandatory advising can be attributed to allowing students choices to fulfill advising and sending multiple reminders to facilitate the flow of students throughout the semester. This is their story, growing from basic survival to streamlined efficiency, cultivated by nearly ten years of experiences and lessons learned.
