I profess that the most important job duty of an advising administrator is to hire the right people, because no other function done improperly or poorly will so quickly damage the advising operation and the mission of providing quality advising services to students. Over the twenty plus years that I have been an administrator/manager, both in higher education and private industry, I have observed that the art of hiring the right people is constantly cussed and discussed. One must continually hone hiring skills, especially in light of the ever-changing workforce landscape.
[Read the rest of this article...]
Here we will begin to explore how best to approach advising relationships in a multiculturally competent way, mindful of both the individual and cultural similarities and differences between advisor and advisee, and how those factors may influence the advising process. Suggestions are based on the author’s personal experience in helping relationships (i.e. mental health and career counseling), as well as the counseling psychology and intercultural communication literatures. The intention is to provide a description of a “both/and” approach to preparing for multicultural helping relationships. This approach can be useful with all students, regardless of how culturally similar or dissimilar advisor and advisee are, because all people are cultural beings. The objective of this article is to provide advisors with questions and principles to consider in interactions with students.
Great thought leaders represent one of the major driving forces of history and an underlying power for constructing local and global culture patterns...Just such individuals are now needed within NACADA to catalyze its march into the future.
Right now, astounding changes are occurring in academic advising because of the work of a few dedicated leaders...it is my hope that this issue of Academic Advising Today will inspire all of us to lead change through passion, compassion, initiative, attention, and persistence.
Advisors have the freedom to choose to be at one of four levels within our discipline: advising practitioner, emerging professional, advising professional, or advising scholar.
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.
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.
