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.
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E-portfolios are an increasingly important part of the college experience and can be a fundamental means for the documentation of advising outcomes....Academic advising should become a vital portion within the increasing number of e-portfolio programs. Recognizing that advising is teaching, NACADA members have promoted the advising syllabus as a means to identify learning outcomes students can attain through the advising process. The e-portfolio contributes to the achievement of numerous learning goals. Therefore, advisors should consider how the activities and expectations that make up advising syllabi can be connected to and facilitated by electronic portfolios. The possibilities are ripe for study and experimentation.
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.
This article discusses tools that can be used to help academic advisors increase their happiness and positivity levels.
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.
If the cure for apathy has anything to do with its antonym, then the best way we can overcome this epidemic is to increase our activism, vigor, and purpose. It is a daunting task, but as professional and faculty advisors, we can reverse the effects of apathy in order to strengthen our institutions and promote student retention and success.
Professional and faculty advisors can develop a strong, valuable relationship that aids the institution and its students.
Identity matters as we make daily value judgments about our work and construct professional development plans for ourselves. But advisors’ self-constructed identities and our campus-constructed reputations may differ depending on the company we keep.
While new advisors come into the field with many questions and much to learn, they also bring with them a unique skill set.
