As I look toward to the end of my time as president, I am thankful for all the opportunities I have had this year. I am very proud to serve as your president, and I look forward to our continued work in improving our institutions and elevating academic advising in the name of student success.
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What an exciting year it has been! Not only has our membership continued to grow with over 12,000 colleagues across the world, we continue to strengthen the connections NACADA makes with our members as well as the connections our members make with each other.
Why is it so important to foster resiliency in ourselves, our colleagues, and our students? It’s critical that we have the skills to learn from our failures, because to fail is an inevitable part of the human existence. In order to thrive and to become our best selves, we must learn how to engage with failure in a healthy and constructive way.
Information comes at us like spaghetti from a fire hose. Email, newsletters, breaking news alerts, a student in the lobby, a colleague on the phone, a project spread across our desk. Advisors are constantly being asked to do more, which means less time for each task. How can all of the incoming ‘stuff’ be managed and still produce results?
While investigating the underachievement of underserved Students of Color (SOCs) is imperative, examining those who succeed is also important so we can learn how to help more SOCs be high-achieving. This study aims to create knowledge regarding what advisors can do to positively affect the motivation of SOCs by using the Culturally Engaging Campus Environments (CECE) Model of Success (Museus, 2014b) as a framework that explains the impact of campus environments, acknowledges the role of motivation and success, addresses the limitations of traditional perspectives, and focuses specifically on SOCs.
In 2011, after years of low satisfaction ratings from graduating students, advising personnel at Dartmouth College created a pilot initiative called Advising 360 that was intended to maximize the strengths of both the academic and student affairs divisions of the College. In the three years since, they have seen strong evidence that this team approach is working.
The purpose of this article is to support advisors’ efforts with useful information and best practices related to safely preventing, intervening, and managing mental health situations in the advising office via the use of de-escalation techniques and by identifying resources for collaborative assistance.
Thanks to a flexible curriculum and customized pedagogy, advisors in first-year seminars have the opportunity to help students shape their academic goals and map out the necessary steps and skills to achieve them.
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.
When we advocate, we look for opportunities to connect and share not only concerns but proposed solutions to leaders within our department, division, and college. It is relationship building at its best with the key leaders and stakeholders that can implement change within our learning environments and communities.
