The goal of this paper is to learn about the professional competencies of academic advisors with doctorates. To gather information, an IRB-approved survey was distributed through the NACADA listserv and collected responses from 430 advisors, including 73 with doctorates. Responses illustrated that advisors with doctoral degrees surpass the standards for academic advising detailed in NACADA’s core competencies. And yet, survey results also revealed hesitancy and misconceptions around hiring advisors with doctorates.
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Quality faculty advising is often noted as vital and critical to student success. However, most institutions are not assessing the quality of faculty advising. In fact, when faculty advising is assessed it is often limited, including only quantitative surveys of student satisfaction. Moreover, when assessment occurs it is not typically intended to improve faculty advising and it is not typically used in formal reviews of faculty performance (e.g., tenure). Meaningful and comprehensive assessment is key to quality advising that supports student success. This brief review of the research literature on assessment of faculty advising, identified areas for improvement in practice and policy. Institutions of higher education, professional associations, unions, and accrediting bodies all play a role in improving and/or maintaining quality faculty advising through setting expectations for advising and outlining best practice for assessment.
The NACADA Pillar Documents and the NACADA EAA 9 Conditions of Excellence are frameworks that set benchmarks for institutional academic advising practices. Together, these guidelines and standards contribute to the professionalization and improvement of academic advising in higher education. This article compares these frameworks and places them within the Educational Advisory Board’s (EAB) Student Needs Hierarchy to demonstrate the contribution of academic advising to students’ overall success and well-being.
This paper addresses the imperative role of academic advisors in advancing social justice within academia, focusing on the support of Indigenous students in Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). The study examines the historical marginalization of Indigenous students at PWIs, uncovering stereotypes and cultural insensitivity impacting retention. Strategies to address biases, engage with Indigenous communities, and pursue self-education are presented. Despite anti-DEI laws, the authors advocate for an equity-minded approach, emphasizing advisors' pivotal position in fostering a sense of belonging for Indigenous students and contributing to transformative structural changes for a more inclusive academic environment.
There is a gap in the academic advising literature related to advising strategies for students in teacher preparation programs. The authors who serve as advising supervisors and academic advisors to future teachers offer recommendations designed to combat common challenges in these programs. In this discussion, advising strategies are offered to help advisors manage program complexities, recruit and retain BIPOC students, and help students overcome significant barriers to degree completion and licensure.
Providing graduate and professional students with annual feedback via progress reports is an integral component of student success. Though most graduate programs require annual progress reports, there is variation in the information requested of students, and how that information is used to improve both student and program outcomes. This paper discusses the purpose of graduate student progress reports from the perspective of multiple stakeholders, the progress report framework developed for our doctoral programs, and the best practices implemented to improve both student and program outcomes.
Nearly every aspect of American higher education was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the most notable and enduring changes was the abrupt shift from in-person advising (IPA) to remote academic advising (RAA). While this practice is now commonplace at colleges and universities across the United States, only a small body of scholarship has been dedicated to its impacts. This article offers advising supervisors and academic advisors a review of the post-pandemic literature focusing on RAA and its related best practices in American higher education today.
“Professional development is the ongoing process of improving one’s skills and knowledge to better perform in their existing role or to attain the skills needed to perform at a high level in a new role” (Meyer, 2023). Professional development - if done with intention - can have many positive impacts on Advising team and the institution as a whole. Investing in Advisors through meaningful development can lead to higher job satisfaction and decrease turnover. In fact, in a recent Gallup survey, 48% of American workers would switch jobs if it offered better skills training opportunities (Gallup, 2021).Professional development can lead to greater self-awareness, encourage confidence, and leadership. It also provides advisors with opportunities to learn new strategies and techniques based on NACADA's Core Competencies, which serve "as the foundational elements for effective advisor training programs and advising practice...(NACADA 2017)." Because of the benefits of professional development, Advisors at the University of Southern Maine have created a committee to continuously coordinate opportunities to develop the necessary knowledge and skills to support the success of our students, as well as, continuing to build community amongst our advising team.
The pandemic created a challenging environment for academic advisors. Coping with personal crises and continual exposure to intense and sometimes emotionally charged conversations with students required additional energy and empathy from academic advisors. Over time, this caused many academic advisors to develop compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma. While colleges have been hyper focused on increasing enrollment, improving student retention numbers, and recovering from the financial fallout from the pandemic, academic advisors continue to grapple with additional responsibilities, low support, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and working in politically charged environments. Recent CUPA-HR data indicated that more than 56% of higher education employees are looking for alternative employment in the next twelve months. This article reviews the concepts of trauma-informed leadership and how the trauma-informed leadership approach can support and retain advisors experiencing workplace burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma.
Whether implementing new and innovative ideas or using time tested practices, the wellness of academic advisors is a community issue, involving not only administrators, but the collaboration with academic advisors. Committed to engaging in trust-based philanthropy prioritizing community voice, the Stupki Foundation offered an advisor wellness grant initiative to NACADA Region 9 members with the primary aim to devise strategies for addressing academic advisor burnout and to provide avenues for those directly involved in this work to craft their own solutions. The grant initiative centered on the idea of “money as medicine” and that providing supportive, flexible funds would be a part of the advisor burnout and retention solution. This article provides key themes that emerged along with initiatives and interventions that can be adapted with or without funding.
