This document discusses the importance of effective academic advising and provides strategies for addressing advising issues on college campuses. It notes that incorrect or lack of advising can lead students to waste time and money. The document recommends first identifying if advising is a problem and gathering data on the specific issues through surveys. It emphasizes building relationships with advisors and working with advising departments and administrators to create solutions instead of against them. The goal is to ensure students receive proper guidance to complete their degrees successfully.

1. Advising
By Kevin Parker, President

2. Importance of Advising
 Every student at some point speaks to
an advisor.
 They are to help guide someone in their
academic plan to their degree.
 Also a good point of contact for various
resources that students can utilize.

3.  Incorrect advising can lead to wasted
credits, money, and time.
 Not having the right information can
lead to unnecessary stress and
improper class alignment.
 If students are not informed of
resources here, they lose out.
Impact on Students

4.  First! One must identify if these are
issues that are happening on their
campus.
 Second, which issues are happening?
Are there more unique issues?
Is It A Problem On Your
Campus?

5. Time To Change

6.  Before trying to change anything,
having the proper data on hand makes
everything smoother.
 See if your campus has an institutional
research department or individual. They
may have advising data you could
utilize.
 If not, you could suggest that be apart
of their following surveys.
Strategy: Research

7.  If your campus does not have an
institutional research department or
they don’t possess the information you
need, gather it yourselves!
 Run your own surveys, questionnaires,
see how the issues affect students.
 Gather some personal stories, as many
as possible as well. Facts tied with
emotion create complete stories of the
situation.
Strategy: Research (continued)

8. The Key To Success

9.  Once you have your research, the most
important piece moving forward is
relationship building.
 Work with those in Advising, not
against unless necessary.
 Everyone has their own struggles and
challenges based on campus and
population.
Relationship Building

10.  Try to schedule meetings with various
Advisors to share your data and
concerns.
 Ask what challenges they face in
guiding your students.
 See if together you can create potential
solutions moving forward.
From the Bottom Up

11.  If you face barriers or if talks go well
with advisors, you will want to
eventually work with the department
head.
 If talks went well with advisors, they
can help set this meeting.
 If they did not, you will have to reach
out on your own.
Department

12.  Reaching the Dean may be a natural
occurrence working with the advising
department to address some of their
challenges.
 This may also occur due to your own
initiative if there seems to be pushback
to any form of change.
 Again, overall goal is to work on
solutions to ensure students receive
proper academic advising.
Dean

13.  Overall goal is to gather support to
support advising.
 Presidents have the final say on many
issues and can manage resources.
 What are the costs of providing more
complete resources to advising? What is
the solution?
President

14. Success

15. What does it look like to
you?
Success (Continued)

16.  Each campus will be forming an
advising committee that will report best
practices and ideas to a system
subcommittee working on this.
 Solutions created or functional ideas
that currently exist can be offered
through this committee on campus.
 This means that current positive actions
or changes could have a potentially
system wide impact.
Charting the Future: Unique
Opportunity

17.  This is an opportunity to merge some
steps.
 Depending on the composition of the
committee, you may be in contact with
advisors, their department head, and
the dean all at once.
 Build. Those. Relationships.
Charting the Future: Unique
Opportunity (Continued)