Many advising programs strive to connect faculty, student advising, and learning in an effort to move from “advising as class scheduling” to “advising as teaching.” Likewise, many instructional development programs assist faculty with learner-centered instructional methods that better serve our under-prepared or under-served student populations. It would seem likely that the advising and teaching strategies that better serve these students would have significant overlap (Hemwall and Trachte, 2003).
[Read the rest of this article...]
At a large gathering of advisors from multi-versities during the 1990 Anaheim annual conference, several raised the question: do we have a Code of Ethics to guide us? No one knew of one. Some asked, shouldn't we have one? From that initial discussion, a small group began to consider ways that the larger NACADA membership might begin to address the question.
Our relevance assures student engagement, and engagement assures student success. Therefore, our relevancy will ensure successful students (Prentiss, 2007). Are we, as advisors, acting irresponsibly by avoiding FacebookTM? Building on Julie Traxler’s (2007) article, Advising Without Walls: An Introduction to Facebook as an Advising Tool, which focuses on the benefits of using this social networking Web site, I hope to show that, with proper care and an eye toward maintaining relevance, Facebook could be one of our most valuable tools for student engagement.
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.
Academic advisors play many roles as students progress through our institutions. Helping students increase their levels of positive self-reflection can help students increase the expectations they set for themselves and lead students to regularly view themselves as positively engaged and academically talented. Positively engaged students leave advising sessions reflecting on their strengths rather than focusing on their deficiencies....Strengths-based advising can help advisors focus on students’ strengths. When we implement an advising model best suited to students’ strengths, we increase students’ chances of success at our institutions.
The NACADA Academic Advising Summer Institute brought together over 100 advising professionals with experts in the field to work on impacting student success at campuses across the nation.... This was not your average conference. This was not a drive-in workshop. This was an institute, an academic experience, and a refreshing start to the consideration of academic advising holistically....We all engaged in learning about advising structures and systems, research and development, and of course, politics and personalities as they pertain to setting an agenda for advising on our campuses....Summer Institute was a shared experience with other colleagues who care about the students we support; it was a professional development experience unlike any other.
As advisors, we tell our liberal arts and social science students to “follow your heart” and “study what you love” in college. But, when it comes to career advising, how do we help these students “follow their hearts” to career success?
An answer to Musser’s (2012) challenge to the advising community to build on the constructivist foundation of advising theory...
Academic advisors must embrace the constant flow of change in higher education to create increasingly effective and specialized tools to promote student success and the advancement of their profession… PALEO Advising was created to provide a simple-to-remember framework for advisors of all experience levels to capitalize upon connections and promote intentional progress wherever they are.
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?
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.
As with any profession, academic advising requires training, but institutions often struggle to identify a centralized resource or approach for implementing advisor training. With obstacles of limited financial support, workloads stretched beyond capacity, and autonomous centers with disparate advising structures, advisor training has been a challenge for many institutions. The authors offer their advisor training as a potential model for other institutions.
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.
The HLC Academy for Student Persistence and Completion at Marshall University created the MU EDGE mentoring program to pair experienced faculty mentors with incoming “murky middle” freshmen to find out what Marshall can do to better retain this under-served population through more intrusive advising.
This article highlights existing concepts on how to develop an advising center at the university level while describing the process one specific college took to advising center creation, giving the reader examples of how suggestions from the literature can be implemented.
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.
The author shares insights gained during her own classroom experience.
The author discusses how she benefited from the Assessment Institute: learning the curriculum, being guided by faculty members, and networking with like-minded colleagues from across the country and abroad.
The road to self-authorship—where an individual’s internal voice emerges and asserts its authority—begins with cognitive dissonance, perhaps even existential crisis, that challenges the individual’s assumptions about the self, social relationships, and the world. This article considers advisors’ role in creating provocative moments.
Students may be like Odysseus: full of dreams, interests, fears, and confusions, ready to begin their academic, personal, social, and developmental wanderings. Graduation, much like Ithaca, is the desired destination. Advisors, like the Goddess Athena, need wisdom, knowledge, resources, and authenticity to help student find the right paths during their wanderings.
With the expansion of China’s higher education since 1998, more and more academic advisors are needed to work with Chinese undergraduates. Understanding their sophisticated social culture values is the first and necessary step for advisors in and out of China.
Advising administrators and training developers frequently ask how advisors can build relational core competencies such as communicating inclusively and conducting successful advising interactions. The author presents theory-informed practical recommendations for advisors to help address the “how” of some of the relational core competencies.
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.
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.
When he first began advising, the author “had only a vague understanding of the advising profession.” He had to find a way to take what he already knew and bring that into a new space.
The Bepko Learning Center at IUPUI houses a one-on-one peer-coaching program in which academically successful students are paired with their peers in order to aid them in achieving academic success. Coaches mentor other students on how to be successful in college—whether that means learning study techniques, creating weekly schedules, or setting long-term goals.
Application of a strengths model to academic advising can focus on students applying their talents and strengths to academic courses, study techniques, and major exploration.
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.
While Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory encompasses the entire lifespan, his eight conflicts can be readily applied to an undergraduate college student's lifespan, offering a unique paradigm through which to view the student-university relationship. Advisors, particularly, play a critical role in helping students overcome each conflict/crisis.
Students who return to college after a stop out period often have stories of arduous journeys of self-discovery predicated on competing demands of personal and professional life. Listening carefully to these students’ stories can provide advisors with resources to assist them successfully navigate the challenges and obstacles that until now have prevented them from achieving their higher education goals.
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.”
A paternalistic act is one in which an individual or institution interferes with another individual, without that individual’s consent, under the justification that such an act is for the affected individual’s own good. The author offers a conceptual analysis of paternalism and an ethical analysis of its place within academic advising.
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.
The authors contend that with the increasing focus on data-driven decision making, advisors must strengthen their scholarly backgrounds to effectively engage in the administrative landscape and ensure advising efficacy and support.
Scholarly production and practice-sharing can be a great challenge for advising practitioner-scholars as the demands of advising practice far outweigh the time available for developing research ideas and writing for the purpose of disseminating best practices to the field. Connection with others in the field can also be a barrier. The NACADA Virtual Idea Development Group is one writing support endeavor within the overall NACADA Writing Group initiative that seeks to develop and nurture academic writing skills.
Shifting the mindset from treating traditional undergraduate students as adolescents to recognizing them as emerging adults can allow advisors to build genuine and meaningful relationships with their advisees. Utilizing Knowles (1988) six principles of andragogy, not as a checklist but as a mindset, allows advisors to build meaningful, genuine, and authentic relationships.
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?”
An advising program’s mission statement is the guiding principle that should be at the back of an advisor’s mind as they enter every student interaction. The author describes a five-step process to write mission statements.
As a scholarship recipient for the 2019 NACADA Assessment Institute, the author gained new, applicable knowledge, and her team made great progress in identifying next steps for their assessment work during their time at the Institute.
Since the 2017 NACADA Annual Conference, the NACADA Professional Development Committee (PDC) has worked to promote the Core Competencies and gather feedback from various constituencies. Much of the feedback has focused on how the published Core Competencies help members use the components as a roadmap for their own professional development. In this article, PDC members provide ideas and examples of how members are utilizing the Core Competencies for academic advising training and development.
As the profession of academic advising makes its rightful case for stronger integration and recognition from the academy, advisors must consider how their practice not merely compliments but aligns with the already revered role of teaching faculty. While a stereotype persists that academic advising is simply assisting students in class scheduling, those well-versed in the profession understand that a myriad of perspectives, theories, and evidence-based approaches inform what is effective, and oftentimes transformational, advising practice.
Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) major requirements are unique; advising students in these fields requires unique approaches, supports, and resources.
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.
The term holistic advising has existed in the field of academic advising for years, but as an aspect of an office’s approach, not necessarily as a central design element in supporting students. When the word holistic is applied to advising, it suggests that advisors cannot look at students through a purely academic lens, but rather must regard them as a whole person.
The Education and Professional Studies (CEPS) at the University of West Florida adopted a centralized advising model, restructuring how academic advising services were provided to students. This article extends the story by highlighting key considerations resulting from the inception of the advising center.
Organized anarchy is presented by the authors as the best organizational structure for meeting the needs of advisors by providing the space to practice both transformational and developmental advising in a way that most effectively meets the wide-ranging needs of students.
Students from first-generation, specialized populations, and first year limited income (FLI) communities who gain access to higher education, must be supported by advisors with robust resources incorporating advising theory and framework to help students build a trajectory of new life opportunities.
