Academic Advising Discussion Notes

Academic Advising was one of four shared areas of interest for participants at the East Georgia CCG Regional Meeting held at Augusta University on March 7, 2016. Brief notes from the breakout conversation on this isse at the meeting follow:

Key Concern: Advising is a critical part of student success, but there exists great variability across the System and within institutions in its efficacy

Observation: No one size fits all model

• Professional advising offers key advantages, but may not be possible because of budget and personnel constraints.
• Training is critical for advisors regardless of who is delivering advising.

One Solution to Involvement: Adapting successful local programs that serve small populations to have broader reach can scale up promising practices locally.

Discussion Notes:

• Georgia Southern moved away from faculty advising because of frequency of training for faculty about advising processes and degree certification procedures that constantly change.
• Professional advisors often willing to take on all advising responsibilities but campuses want to strike a balance between professional advisors and faculty. Group agrees that the professional advising model can’t be completely divorced from advising and mentoring by faculty
• Advising models identified during discussion:
  
  • Faculty model: faculty manage all aspects of academic advising
  • Decentralized faculty and professional advisor model: Professional advisors embedded in academic departments
  • Centralized faculty and professional advisor model: Professional advisors that are usually in academic advising centers and not specific to academic program.
• Different advantages and challenges when professional advisors are centralized.
  
  • Georgia Southern uses decentralized advising model
• Several agreed that the most difficult part of the advising process for faculty is administrative (e.g., paperwork).
• A challenge mentioned with faculty model is maintaining consistency in advising across all faculty advisors. Also discussed these inconsistencies may be partially due to variability in training
• Major touch points for advising at Georgia Southern
  
  • Orientation, graduation clearance, when academic eligibility issues arise
  • Mandatory advising is the best way to signal importance of advising but may not be possible because of volume at certain campuses and constraints on budget.
• An important part of ensuring resources are fully utilized is periodically reviewing professional advisor case loads
• Multiple touch points for advising is favorable—several advising points for students to receive information from at any given time
  
  • Faculty advisor
  • Professional advisor
  • Peer advisors
• Several group members mentioned the success of adapting the academic advising program for athletes to first-year students.
• One way campuses manage time constraints on faculty is by having them focus on advising when office hours are less demanding
  
  • Faculty focus on advising at the beginning of the term and during orientation, while professional advisors manage advising during the remainder of the term.
• Group discussion regarding the appropriate transition point for professional advisors to hand off responsibilities to faculty advisors as students declare majors and enter programs.
  
  • Hand-off may vary by program
  • Professional advisors not completely removed from advising process even after hand-off—students may still seek them out for help, professional advisors have information on students that might be useful and needed as reference, etc.
  • As students transition and choose a major, it is important for campuses to maintain advising continuity between professional advisors and faculty
  • Clearly communicating who has accountability, defining roles and how they change as students progress
• Defining advising and expectations of advising (regardless of model)
  
  • Purpose is to provide guidance to students to ensure progression toward degree completion
  • Key characteristics of effective advising:
    • Continuity in advising information provided to students
    • Access to advising when students need it
    • Developing relationships that last over time
• What can CCG/USG provide to help with advising:
  
  • Review policy that affect advising, develop processes for reviewing policy
    • Reviewing Transfer Student Process similar to how Transient Student Process is being reviewed
  • Strengthen communication by leveraging technology on campuses
    • Fully utilizing Degree Works
    • Working with campuses interested in obtaining EAB tools
    • Creating opportunities to share best practices about training faculty to advise, especially using technology to track advising process
• Effective use of technology, better communication will allow campuses to move from transactional advising practices to relationship-based advising practices
• Mapping each campuses Core Curriculum to other USG campuses to assist with determining course transfer
• Communicating core changes will be important
• Possibly a discussion for the General Education Council