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It is important for advisors to remember that the higher education transition for students does take time. And sometimes, perhaps many times, a student will try their very best and be unsuccessful. One of our jobs is to help them as they navigate the uncomfortable growth process surrounding those experiences.
Two advisors discuss the quest to bridge the way students and their information are handed off between departments and advisors.
Many people, including advisors, struggle with paying attention. If this inability to pay attention occurs during advising appointments, opportunities could be lost to connect with students. Nevertheless, it is possible to increase one’s ability to pay attention and increase effectiveness in completing tasks with the practice of mindfulness.
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.
The authors discuss an initiative developed to fill a gap in professional development opportunities available to the academic advisors at their institution.
Implementing a successful outcomes assessment plan, particularly one that assesses learning and performance across campus units, is a big undertaking. The authors consider ten essential, intangible elements of any successful outcomes assessment endeavor.