Academic advisors are often positioned to address the holistic needs of students. As such, their role in promoting student success is key. However, in order to be most effective, the role of the advisor must be purposeful and intrusive. Advisors at University College, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), work in collaboration with other campus partners to provide a comprehensive set of programmatic activities that provide on-going support and interventions through the first semester of enrollment. Additionally, intensive advisor interaction with students allows for the continuous development of an inclusive profile of each student that promotes on-going advising that meets each students individual needs.
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Quality advising is so much more than knowing curriculum requirements or being able to recite institutional policies and procedures. It involves a personal touch, the ability to put a face on the institution for students. True quality advising requires the advisor to be human, not bureaucratic. I would like to think that my students view my office as a safe haven. It is a place where they can come for what we think of as typical advising services such as major exploration and course scheduling, but also to share accomplishments, concerns and frustrations, and to seek advice on things outside the confines of their academic lives.
Advising students with disabilities presents many challenges to the college advisor. However, skilled advising can go a long way towards ensuring the success of a student with a disability. To effectively advise a student with a disability requires a thorough understanding of the student’s goals as well as the student’s disability, the barriers the institution may have inadvertently created, and the resources the college provides that can be used to assist the student in pursuing his or her educational aspirations.
The issue of student retention and persistence has continued to grow in importance throughout the history of higher education in our country. Early studies (Astin, 1977) focused on the characteristics of those students who did not persist. Beginning in the 1970s, the research began to focus on the reasons students remained enrolled and how colleges and universities could make changes or develop programs to increase the retention of their students.
Good advising may be the single most underestimated characteristic of a successful college experience as noted by evidence gathered from 1,600 one-on-one undergraduate interviews. Several of the overarching findings from these interviews are 'actionable' by advisors. I look forward to sharing details from these findings with you at the NACADA national conference. However, since June brings freshman enrollment in many areas, I thought that you might benefit from a brief summary of the findings most applicable to advising incoming students.
Something had to be done about the advising practices at Sam Houston State University. In the years before research and scholarship became focal faculty achievements, students were assigned to faculty advisors across campus. But the days when faculty could devote the time necessary to adequately advise students were soon over. As the emphasis on research increased, faculty service areas became back burner items. This shift occurred even as it became increasingly apparent that we must provide closer and more intrusive advising for students struggling in their college courses.
Why do some students fail to succeed in college? What interventions are most successful with these students? There is great demand for research revolving around these questions. As chair of the Probation, Dismissal & Reinstatement (PDR) Issues Interest Group, I challenge you to approach your PDR students from a research perspective.
To be successful, those responsible for advising students with disabilities must look beyond what would be considered the normal scope and range of advising office responsibilities. This requires flexibility, coordination, and a willingness to step outside prescribed administrative roles.
I have learned to work with a population who will one day live on the outside. Without education, many will find their way back to prison. With education, many more will lead productive lives and contribute to society, rather than take from it. If you have the opportunity to work with incarcerated students, reserve judgment for later. View your opportunity as an investment in the betterment of society. Most likely it will be an investment that returns more than any Wall Street bull market.
A university's senior leadership cannot interact with every student as much as we would like to. Our best course as a university is to maintain a strong academic institution and to support advisors and advising programs. As a public university whose mission is improving the economic and cultural life of our state, we depend on the important contributions academic advisors make to student success.
It is well known that retention of every student is simply not possible. As academic advisors we understand that, for some students, transferring or stopping-out is a legitimate strategy for attaining long term personal or professional success. Yet, on many campuses, talk of retention focuses on retaining “all” students. As a result, some colleges have developed overly-broad retention strategies that disjoint campus units and ignore the role of identity in the retention of at-risk ethnic and cultural minorities. A more effective alternative is the development of a focused retention framework that utilizes assessment to identify those most at risk for early institutional departure and then seeks to develop culturally relevant programmatic interventions for their success.
Students who transfer from one institution to another constitute a significant portion of the current college population, and they consume a considerable amount of the time and effort of advisors at both two-year and four-year institutions. While transfer students bring some higher education experience with them, they are new to the (receiving) transfer institution. They are, in a sense, an anomaly in that they are first-year students with some experience in higher education. This article serves as an overview and provides a brief description of the forthcoming NACADA monograph about this important student population.
Academic advisors face increasing challenges each year. What are the most effective ways to deal with enrollment increases when there has been little or no increase in budget? How do we handle the advising needs of these students? How can colleges effectively cope with the increasing numbers of transfer students? How can we use orientations to enhance advisement? These are just a few of the many challenges faced every day by advisors at most colleges, but particularly at two-year colleges.
Increasing numbers of high school graduates with learning disabilities are enrolling in colleges and universities each year. A learning disability may be manifested by deficits in the student’s reading ability (dyslexia), speech ability (dyspraxia), writing ability (dysgraphia) or math ability (dyscalculia). A student with a learning disability may also have difficulty with sustained attention, time management, and/or social skills. Some students think that when they transition to college they will “outgrow” their learning disabilities and be able to handle their studies on their own. Individuals do not outgrow a learning disability, although they may develop a host of strategies for compensating for the disability. Still, these students find that when they transition to college they continue to need academic accommodations.
Success is having students who see all the possible links for their degrees rather than seeing limitations. A liberal arts degree is more than a checklist. It is a blueprint for building the foundations for lifelong education. Advisors are the linchpins that articulate options, challenge decisions and illuminate the links from the curricular and co-curricular educational processes to the world of choices.
Academic advisors must be in tune with the remarkable changes unfolding in today’s workplace. By expanding or refining their career advising competencies they can play a vital role in helping students understand the importance of educational and career goal setting and how the decisions they make in college might influence satisfaction and success in their future personal and work lives.
This article describes Sacred Heart University's Hispanic Adult Achievers Program, a program established to address the unique educational needs of Latinos who have immigrated to the United States as adults. The article includes student achievement and retention data, as well as a brief discussion of the advising and retention strategies used.
Working with high-achievers can be immensely satisfying: they are the students most likely to live out their advisors' ideals of the academic life. At the same time, these students present special challenges. Because they have such potential, it takes knowledge, research, and creativity to serve them well. Further, although they come to college with the same developmental needs as other students, those needs can be hidden behind their confident surface of accomplishment. Their abilities may set them up for perfectionism, social isolation, identity foreclosure or diffusion-problems that become evident only in crisis. Thus, advisors who work with high achievers need both a thorough knowledge of the opportunities open to these students and the sensitivity to support them through realization of these opportunities. How can advisors prepare for such challenges?
Nationally, study abroad interest is high, but participation falls far short of the interest expressed by students entering college. Perceived barriers and myths may deter students from studying abroad, widening the gap between interest and participation. Effective advising can foster interest and participation by addressing barriers, dispelling myths, and emphasizing the value of study abroad.
One acronym strikes fear into many in the south-QEP. The QEP or Quality Enhancement Plan is a requirement for reaffirmation of accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). This is how one college, with NACADA 's help, survived and thrived during its QEP journey.
As more and more Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines return home from war, there is a greater need than ever for educational institutions to provide these students with resources and support. Academic advisors are in an ideal position to both advocate for this student group and to provide the support services these students need to transition to academia, persist through their programs, and reach their graduation goals.
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.
The majority of universities in the United States depend upon faculty members to serve as advisors....The number of methods for integrating advising into more traditional responsibilities is limited only by the imagination of faculty members and the willingness of a department and/or university to accept these activities. Faculty members who find creative methods of advising while doing teaching, scholarship, or service activities will find it considerably easier to “do it all.”
When instructors and students contact academic advisors about a learning progress concern, advisors might be faced with the difficult task of helping students suspected of having a learning disability. The problem of identifying a disability becomes more complex if students speak English as their second language (ESL).
Student success and educational effectiveness are top priorities, especially if we expect to see successful student transitions on today’s campuses. Academic advisors who help students integrate life management skills and find solid support networks will assist these students in creating a foundation for coping with collegiate level academic stress. Advisors who are aware of the needs of first year students can make the difference as students learn to navigate the halls of academia.
Incorporating technology into advising practices that are meaningful to students can be challenging. Challenges are even greater when an institution’s student population consists of non-traditional learners juggling a multitude of roles and responsibilities, whose age range spans forty years, and whose technological skills range from a minimal understanding of basic computing to coordinating corporate networks. How can advisors effectively integrate existing technology to communicate with students, build community, provide timely information, and establish a non-threatening environment for learners? Advisors should consider their institutions’ online course management systems.
We are currently experiencing one of the worst economic downturns in our country's history... The severity of the recession has left America's education in a precarious position...Advisors must be prepared to deal with new challenges and situations.
Motivational Interviewing allows the student and advisor to work in collaboration, with the student choosing initial behavioral changes to improve the current situation. These small first steps can lead to additional behaviors beneficial to the academic success of the student.
Some people fare better than others when faced with life stressors, disasters and loss. Resilience has been identified as a fundamental explanation for this difference.
Recovering from disasters is a process that takes time – for us and for our advisees. We must recognize our own stages of recovery and realize that our stages impact how we respond to students. We must be patient with ourselves and with advisees if we are to help achieve recovery.
Advisors play such an essential role in a college student’s experience. We are a teacher, a guide, a coach, a case manager, and an attorney all rolled up into one. We are presented with cases, complaints, and offenses all the time. However, before we make our closing arguments, before we are ready to rule, I believe that we should first take the time to dig.
Those of us who advise students nearing the end of their degree, certificate, or training programs know that there is good news and bad news connected with advising these students.
While developing the blog, we kept in mind two main goals: create original and relevant content, and provide a welcoming and empowering virtual space to help students academically succeed..
As advisors, it is important to consider the culture of the out-of-state student population at our institutions. Are out-of-state students a minority population? What are the retention rates of these students? Are there any current programs or initiatives that exist to support out-of-state students? By answering these questions, advisors can determine if this programming model can be adapted to fit the needs of their institution.
A high-touch, multi-faceted approach coordinated by the Counseling & Career Center at Grand Rapids Community College provides opportunity for students to connect with faculty and staff. Resources are emphasized by a variety of college personnel, and students begin to feel empowered to make positive changes in their academic standing rather than viewing probation as a punitive measure. This difference in perception is the beginning of the path to academic success.
In an age where budgets are low and student numbers are increasing, advising has the opportunity to clarify curriculum and engage students in academic choices. In an effort to streamline advising and propel students to take control of their education, the use of advising portfolios and an interactive department orientation were initiated in the Department of Visual Arts at Northern Kentucky University (NKU) in a program called A PAART of NKU or Advising Portfolio as a Retention Tool.
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.
The fight or flight instinct is not unique to students or academic stress, but it might not be a connection the students have previously made. When advisors recognize the link between this biological instinct and student behavior, they can better educate, mentor, and guide students to a healthier and more productive response to stressful situations.
The author contends that gathering data for outcomes assessment or research does not have to be complicated, mysterious, or difficult.
This article introduces solution-focused advising, a framework built and adapted from solution-focused counseling theory, as another tool for advisors to utilize within their approaches.
The author finds that the use of collaborative note writing changes the one directional aspect of advising notes while staying true to the original purpose.
The authors contend that it is important to provide high quality online advising services that allow for comprehensive, face-to-face interactions with students, even when those students are off campus. With limited resources and demands on time, it is also critical to design an online advising option that is sustainable long-term.
With increasing numbers of student veterans entering the nation’s colleges and universities, it is critical that professionals in higher education understand the unique perspectives and experiences they bring to the campus and that appropriate models to support their academic success are developed.
Advisors recognize that students with different enrollment patterns may have different goals and need different types of support. Knowledge of these enrollment patterns can influence conversations with students to help create both short- and long-term plans.
The author describes her experience at the 2017 NACADA Assessment Institute.
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.
Although the blended position is known by various names in different institutions, there is one underlying factor: the incumbents do more than academic advising, while building relationships towards student success.
Advisors who learn to assist students with alleviating and mitigating culture shock can contribute to students’ success and their enjoyment of their time in their host country. In order to do so, advisors must understand the cultural and individual characteristics that influence a student’s experience of culture shock.
One of the hardest things advisors face is the notion that they cannot always be the hero. As advisors, we want to help and we want to make things as easy as possible. Yet, there are so many things that are just beyond our control.
Much like letting young adults spread their wings, an advisor needs to be alert, offering assistance when necessary, but knowing when to let the student “learn the ropes” of academic life to ensure they become strong, independent learners.
First generation college students face a variety of social and conceptual barriers. The author contends that, in attempting to gain a greater profundity of understanding regarding the experiences of FGCS, it may be helpful to examine the experiences of other student groups who may, to an extent, have overlapping or similar experiences.
Students who do not meet minimum grade point average (GPA) requirements are generally placed on an academic warning or probationary status that is often universally applied to all students and administrated by faculty or advisors. However, each students’ reasons for missing this academic mark are unique. Regular connection with an advisor can be very impactful and meaningful to students because they are able to articulate their obstacles to someone in an open dialogue.
Change is an inevitable part of higher education today, but as our students’ needs change, advisors will have to adapt to new technology platforms to provide better support. Academic advisors can be dynamic agents of change.
The 49er Finish Program at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte has been actively pursuing its stop out students for over 10 years, catering to adult learners who are seeking to finish what they started. Tactics are threefold: personalized marketing, support services, and institutional enhancements.
Most major academic advising theories stress the importance of the advising relationship. In advising, the quality of the relationship between advisor and student is at the heart of most interventions. The author notes that the shared focus of various advising theories on factors that foster the advisor-student relationship is very similar to the common factors theory in psychology.
Emotional exhaustion may be a prevalent threat to those working in the field of advising. How can job burnout be avoided when the fundamentals of the job seem to necessitate frequent and intense emotional labor?
In the world of improvisational (improv) comedy, advancing is the process of moving a scene forward. In the world of academic advising where student success is a central narrative, it is imperative that advisors help students advance their own scene.
The notion of peer mentoring for Indigenous students has captured all aspects of the author’s life, inspiring passion for development of a thriving and positive student community where students do not have to feel like just a student number, but a member of the community.
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.
Acting as the hub of the wheel while drawing on the three components of academic advising (conceptual, informational, relational), academic advisors can help their advisees adapt to the culture of their higher education environment and empower them to take an active part in their journey to success.
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.
Over time, academic advisors may begin to experience emotional, physical, and spiritual exhaustion from constantly witnessing and absorbing the difficulties of students. Developing self-care strategies within advising training and development can help advisors pay attention to their emotional state and allow time for reflection and healing.
Since the mid-1990s, there has been a rise in the prevalence of students diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder conditions. Interventions that offer continued support with social and educational skills may prove critical to improving success in college for students with autism.
Currently trending at many institutions, early-alert programs have become institutional priorities to improve student retention. It is imperative to note that regardless of the technological platform used to drive these retention initiatives, there is a human factor that proves vital in this process.
The author has found that the “teach-a-man-to-fish” philosophy supports the notion of challenging our limitations; asking unprompted, imperfect questions; and relentlessly seeking answers to simple as well as complex questions.
Academic advising is a term that has not yet been clearly defined in Japanese higher education.
When not addressed, shame can be a saboteur silently leading students away from an institution.
As a primary point of contact between universities and students, academic advisors are often asked to integrate data-driven tools into their practice but only rarely do the concerns of advisors guide the creation of new approaches to institutional data. By bringing the advising perspective to analyses of student data, new opportunities can be found to support student pathways with helpful information.
During the summer, the staff of Academic and Career Development at IUPUI works closely with other institutional offices to offer two-day orientation programs for incoming first-year students.
In today’s 21st century economy, it is no longer enough for advisors to help students choose a major and craft a course schedule. Advisors need to help students create a step-by-step plan for achieving their long-term goals and preparing for unexpected barriers along the way. Thus, career advising is now an important function of academic advising.
The culture within an office whose team provides service to others can set the tone for communicating positively in each situation, whether it is with a student, colleague, or a stakeholder.
Students sometimes find themselves trapped in a state of existence where they feel their voice is silenced and they experience a sense of helplessness. Academic advisors may find that employing the six stages of the Public Achievement model can empower students who find themselves in this “Sunken Place.”
Safe Conversations is an educational program that focuses on dialogue promoting a new way of talking and listening to one another. When applied appropriately, connection and safety occur which promotes respectful and healthy relationships.
Just as we expect our students to fulfill the promise they made to the institution by working hard toward graduation, we as an institution must strive to fulfill the promise we make to every student that, regardless of the difficulties they face academically or personally, we will help them reach graduation and develop into mature, intellectually curious and capable adults.
Occasionally, students enter their advising session with personal baggage to share with their advisor that detours the conversation away from the normal advising issues. Knowledge of psychological first aid (PFA) give advisors tools to support students who are striving to overcome a traumatically challenging situation before making a referral to another support resource on or off campus.
When blackness, queerness, and nonconformity intersect, the burdens students carry can be profound. Studies have shown a connection between queerness and discrimination, harassment, and victimization on U.S. college campuses. Academic advisors cannot underestimate how these incidents impact the lives and academics of BQGN students. The author offers methods that can be utilized to assist these students.
Research suggests that mental health and academic performance are positively correlated. Advisors are not expected to provide mental health counseling to students, but they would be remiss to ignore the impact of psychological issues and mental health on students’ experience, performance, and success. While treating students for mental health concerns may be beyond advisors’ scope, there are some ways in which they can address the issues.
Nontraditional student enrollment continues to make up a large portion of undergraduate student populations on both traditional college campuses and in the distance-learning sector. Institutions that wish to retain and help their adult learners be successful will need to be aware of the nontraditonals’ time and effort limitations and provide ways to support them academically to facilitate completion.
HBCUs have been leaders in producing and leading African American students toward health professions. Advisors must recognize HBCUs like a catalyst for change and bastion of future health professionals that need to be cultivated and mentored.
The Dyson College Academic Advising Office at Pace University has made significant strides towards a full-on integration of technology and is consequently changing how students expect, and deserve, immediate attention to their requests.
By accessing available student data store in institution’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, the athletics department at Nicholls State University was able to share with the coaching staff important and time sensitive information at critical and relevant points in the semester. In an effort to replicate the athletics department success, an initiative began to implement this strategy within an academic college, where data points were accessed and then reported to department chairs and faculty advisors to provide relevant data for a more intrusive advising approach with students who appear on these lists.
When academic advisors collaborate with institutional research professionals on their campuses for such an endeavor, it is important to move beyond the data which is readily available to institutional researchers to find sufficient data points for academic advisors to determine where to focus their student mentoring efforts.
With the student at the center of The University of Texas at Tyler’s efforts, Persistence and Retention Teams have been implemented to streamline employee communication to diminish the silo effect and find resolutions to student issues as efficiently as possible.
In addition to coming back from the NACADA Adminstrators Institute with an Action Plan, the author found that the work she and two colleagues did at the institute spurred valuable conversations within their office and with leaders across campus regarding the importance of investing in academic advising.
As members of NACADA, advisors work toward promoting “the role of effective academic advising in student success” and fostering “inclusive practices within the Association that respect the principle of equity and the diversity of advising professionals across the vast array of intersections of identity” (NACADA, 2018). The charge to utilize advising as a tool for student success while focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion means advisors need to be aware of how they are supporting and fighting for marginalized students and colleagues. Allies support those who are marginalized, seek to make changes so that others can get the credit they are due, and are constantly learning.
For decades, higher ed institutions have been pondering how to improve retention and degree completion rates. And yet, in spite of all kinds of programs and centers and initiatives, few have really moved the needle much in the right direction. In the search for the easy answer to a complex question: How can we help our students persist?, institutions have overlooked the fact that we have been asking the wrong question all along. The revision should read: How can we help our student persist? And we need to ask it thousands of times.
Two of the greatest barriers to implementing high-quality early intervention programs are the challenges of generating faculty buy-in and determining a reliable set of predictors. Advisors may be uniquely qualified to serve as intervention agents due to the relationships they form with students, often beginning at orientation.
Online advising may be one way to retain doctoral students. The College of Saint Mary’s Graduate Advising Space, based on NACADA’s Core Values, provides much more than the answer to “What class do I take next?”
This article will help academic advisors understand what ADHD is, how it impacts today’s college students, and what they can do to help those students.
A student’s inability to become socially integrated into the campus community can lead to both institutional and systematic departure. While a sense of belonging is beneficial to all students, it is vital to retain more black male students. Students’ relationships with their academic advisor is one where belonging can develop.
It is common for undergraduate students to encounter barriers to timely graduation, and some of these barriers are inadvertently placed before students by institutional or administrative structures, routines, practices, and procedures. An office like the University of Texas at Arlington Graduation Help Desk, with the help of the advising community, can make an impact.
The human mind is full of complex emotions and often these emotions drive us to places that we may not have prepared for. As academic advisors, we see students display a range of emotions every day. When deciding the best role for an advisor working with students experiencing negative affective emotions, it may be best to consider an advisor’s training and the context of the situation.
Advising professionals usually view empathy positively, as something advisors should employ to understand and, thus, to better help their students. In as much as empathy aids advisors in better understanding students, empathy’s appeal is hard to ignore. But advisors should also want to use empathy cautiously, recognizing that it has real limits.
Academic advisors are witnessing a growing population of students that identify as first generation. These students need validation that they belong in a university setting and that their degree is attainable.
