The document discusses the case of Elizabeth, who initially left college after three years due to poor grades and withdrawal from courses, and did not complete her undergraduate degree until 20 years later. It analyzes factors that may have contributed to Elizabeth's initial lack of college success, such as a lack of emotional maturity, coming from a family without a college-going legacy, and attending a school that did not match her interests and learning style as a driven but independent student. The document also provides advice on how colleges can better support students from disadvantaged backgrounds or those who are the first in their family to attend college.

1. Advising
Multiculturally
Ron Carnell

2. Table of Contents
Personal Objectives 3
An Operational Definition of Academic Advising 5
Roses in Highland Park: A Learning Unit in Privilege Awareness 6
Academic Curricula & “Special Populations”
as Most Populations 12
Retention: The Case of Elizabeth 15
Climate’s Great! Wish You Were Here 21
Who Am I to Advsie? 23

3. Objectives
. . . is assumed a “pre-professional” and is merely taking the necessary steps to
arrive at his / her career. I am the consultant who helps work out the path of
least resistance; I am the collaborator, the mentor, and the coach. The student,
her parent(s) or provider, and I are all a part of the equation for her success.
Objective: Strive to remain open and available to every advisee.
Avoid a style of direction that assumes I have nothing left to learn, only
because I am in the role of authority. All involved in my advisee’s
success are both an expert and an unfinished work.
. . . . will have every question answered on meeting all requirements for
graduation. I will never pretend to know something that I don’t, and I will make
it clear that it is the student’s responsibility to follow up and evaluate her own
progress to earning a degree. He/she is steering the ship, I’m the one in the
crow’s nest looking for landing.
Objective: Communicate clearly that ultimately the advisee is responsible
for his or her successes.
Every student who arrives to my office. . .

4. . . . will be equally afforded the patience and brainstorming necessary to get on
an appropriate academic track. Does the student understand the realities of
coursework it takes to arrive at her goal? If she wants to become a meteorologist,
but cannot do fifth grade math on command, then we have a problem. Can we
pinpoint another gift or passion that is more equitable with her desires and
talents?
Objective: Evaluate the student’s progress, collaborate for goals and
deadlines, and modify academic and career trajectories with the student
as necessary.
. . . will know when a crisis or problem should be referred to another type of
professional. I am an academic adviser. I am not a psychologist, a financial
consultant, a physician, or a clairvoyant.
Objective: Know the points in the student’s development at which my
mentoring and influences are less effective and refer him or her
accordingly.
Objectives (continued)
Every student who arrives to my office. . .

5. To pair a student’s passions and gifts with an academic path that will result in the
career that is most aligned with his or her abilities, interests, and values.
My main goal as an academic adviser is to remain inspired, as well as be the
inspiration. I would also like to be an example to students that it is possible to
change courses later in life, and to have within one’s curriculum vitae a profession
or two that was strictly self-taught through observation and trial and error; and
another earned through centuries-old, proven methods of institutional structure,
critique, and collaboration.
I look forward to the day that I help students discover the gifts with which they
arrived to campus, and that they may notice without me having to say, “If I can do
it, anyone can.”
An operational definition of
academic advising

6. Introduction
The following case is based on true events once experienced in Detroit, and is
designed as a possible learning unit on White privilege.
As a 19 year-old living independently in the north suburb of Royal Oak, I
enjoyed the ease of moving from one service-oriented or small factory job to
the next. Had I ever considered that everyplace I worked as a teen employed
virtually no Blacks my age or with similar (mostly nonexistent) skills, I may have
considered White identity as my biggest asset. However, at the time, I had no
concept of white racial identity, and was oblivious to the clout I carried just by
appearance.
The first two italicized scenes include thoughts as I experienced them, followed
by reflection on these scenes a generation later. The third is followed by a
prompt for students to pinpoint and discuss examples of the scene’s White
privilege.
Roses in Highland Park
A learning unit in privilege awareness

7. The Commute
As a driver for a wholesale florist, the convenience of freeway travel throughout the
Detroit Metro area is not afforded a second thought. The company owned van I drive
to the airport every morning is entrusted to me by my White boss, and is parked
overnight in a lot staffed by Brown people. On my early morning drive to the
airport to pick up boxes of flowers
shipped from Southern California, I
hit a snag in traffic. I look up at the
run down and abandoned homes at
the lip of the concrete cliff facing
the freeway. These are old homes,
once sturdy and fully functional,
some dating to the 19th century.
They are in Black neighborhoods
(”How can they let everything just
fall apart?”), and I wonder about
the White families who I assumed
were the original owners.
The world’s first freeway “The Davison,” is near completion, 1942

8. Detroit’s lawless hellhole image has routinely hardened its dwindling population
ever since the canyon-like freeway systems began dividing its once splendid, elm
tree-lined neighborhoods. With the vanishing tax base and city services, along with
the wholesale export of businesses to the city’s suburbs and beyond, multiple
square-mile blocks of Detroit have lost their schools, businesses, families and entire
communities. In many parts of town, particularly the southwestern neighborhoods,
“at risk youth” means virtually anyone between the ages of five and the year of
death or imprisonment. Detroit’s freeway system disintegrated thriving
communities–some in place for three or more generations–allowing mobility to
suburbs for those who could afford it (mostly Whites), and leaving behind those
who could not (most everyone else, especially Blacks).
The Truth?

9. The Workplace
After a few days of deliveries, it’s apparent that almost every flower shop in Detroit
is managed or owned by gay White men. Our bosses who run the warehouse, Max
and Keith are also gay. My coworker and best friend, Josh and I have no dislike of
those we work with and serve, based on their sexuality. We also aren’t familiar with
the term “homophobia,” however our jokes and heterosexist attitudes about gays
and lesbians are not shared with gay coworkers. To Josh and me, gays are in most
ways “others,” like Blacks, but among all at the warehouse (gay or not), stereotypes
and epithets regarding Blacks–while not from a place of hatred or anger–are
commonplace.
Throughout the years my reflection on this has taken a couple turns. Of course at
the time I was not yet socially evolved enough to view my heterosexual Whiteness
as privileged. I wasn’t in the habit of considering my own place in society from
much perspective other than what I wanted or needed, and how best to get it. A bit
later I would consider that it seems a sexual minority would have empathy for
another oppressed group–especially one so visible in a city that by the 1970s was as
racially divided–and that this slice of my early working life in Detroit was an odd
exception. However, by now it’s evident to me that not only is one oppressed group
fully capable of oppressing another, but a gay White person can maintain White
privilege by suppressing his/her sexual identity.

10. Quitting Time
Often Josh and I keep our vans after work when it’s one of our turns to pick up
flowers at the airport. We recently learned that our warehouse’s shipment arrives
at 1:00 am and now sometimes make the late night trip to avoid morning traffic.
Some nights we do the task together and on the way back north hit a nightclub
or other after hours hangouts.
One night we had the idea of taking the Davison (the nation’s first stretch of
freeway) to Woodward Avenue in Highland Park, a small community in the center
of Detroit. The portion of Woodward that cuts through the center of Highland
Park teems with hookers, pimps, and drug dealers, and by all appearances is
100% Black. None of this scared us because this night we were on a mission. We
planned to show the hookers that they can be valued for more than turning tricks
by randomly driving up next to them, cranking down a window and handing
them long stem roses, fresh from Los Angeles. The first young woman
approached cautiously, as if she could not be convinced someone would give her
something for nothing. When she accepted the rose, the smile she gave us was
worth the price of a dozen. Soon others came up to the van, and within a few
minutes about a dozen girls and women crowded around our windows, pressing
against the glass, many in fake furs, sequined tops and lace.

11. It was a collage of color, emotion, and movement that I had never before
experienced. Everyone pleaded for a rose. Some offered their services for discounts
(“I’ll get in your van right now, baby!”), and a few who did not get a rose (we
could not give them all away) were angry and threatened us.
Next, a loudspeaker sounded off from behind: “Turn off your vehicle and put your
hands where I can see them!” The vice cop was the only other White person we
encountered on this block of bars and a strip club. Looking at our IDs, he asked us
what we were up to. We told him, he believed us and with a toss of our IDs
through the passenger window said: “The owners of these girls don’t like White
boys coming down here sightseeing. They’ll not think twice about killing you,
because they know they stand a good chance of getting away with it. So get your
White asses back on the freeway north and don’t come back down here.”
Activity:
Discuss at least three examples of how White privilege is at play in this case study.

12. Academic Curricula and “Special Populations “
as Most Populations
The University of Washington’s Learning in Informal and Formal
Environments Center (LIFE) recently found that much more human learning
takes place outside institutional environments than previously believed
(Bransford & Stevens, 2005). Even during K-12, it is believed that over 80% of
learning takes place outside the classroom (para. 9).
In the early 1980s I became a fan of Howard Zinn and absorbed nearly every
detail of A People’s History of the United States. Always a US history buff, this
experience guided my interest in historical accounts uncovered by the
anonymous and unknown, or the so-called unsung heroes (perhaps the all-
encompassing “special population”) who contributed to a flourishing (and
perhaps now troubled) democracy. My relatively brief, formal education
reflects this longer period of informal learning with a fair amount of thought
and writing on American history centered in the perspectives of those who
did not win the wars, become elected to office, or utilize family influence and
wealth to advance a cause. I am fairly well versed in immigration history,
women’s history and early 20th century progressive movements in the US,
and the global influences of Western popular culture.

13. With this, I have played a role in shaping my society, and I believe it is this
formal and informal learning that will help to shape students in my role as an
academic advisor.
As my interest in teaching and student guidance developed, I was drawn to the
works and writings of late Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire. Originally middle
class, his family moved to a poorer community during the Great Depression,
and Freire became interested in the perspectives of his lifelong poor
classmates, which guided his later pedagogical theories (Stevens, 2002). As
academic advising is increasingly promoted as a part of the curricula, I will as an
advisor keep close to heart the differences between Freire’s “banking” and
“problem-posing” modes of education.
Students are too often required to do little more than memorize and
regurgitate facts on command, while teachers are mostly inflexible and
authoritarian. Communication is on a “need to know” basis, with a one-way
street leading from teacher to student. Information and basic facts are
“deposited” by the teachers “into” their students, who are their “accounts.”

14. “Problem-posing” is an egalitarian and interactive teaching philosophy that
taps the student’s critical thinking skills, while instilling deeper consciousness
(Freire, 2004). The teacher inspires students to share their views and
experiences and to ask questions. Through communication and respect they
learn to become masters of their destiny, rather than remain destined to serve
a master.
The teacher’s curriculum and projects do not solicit limited, pat answers. They
instead empower the student to visualize herself within a larger world, far
beyond the boundaries of his or her socio-economic group. The student will
also learn how to identify the inconsistencies and flaws of those who teach
and rule, and possess the courage to interact and initiate change.
References
Freire, P. (2004). Pedagogy of Indignation. Boulder: Colorado, Paradigm.
Stevens, R. Bransford, J. & Stevens, A., (2010). Life Center. Retrieved from:
http://www.life-slc.org/about/about.html
Stevens, C. (2002). Critical Pedagogy on the Web. Retrieved from:
http://twbonline.pbworks.com/w/page/24969813/Paulo%20Freire

15. Retention: The Case
of Elizabeth
Through my experiences with students at UW and Shoreline
Community College, I have learned that legacy and background, and
the assumption that all colleges are the same are three major factors
as to why some students leave college before earning a degree. The
following case -- with material from noted theorists and others
discovered through self-guided research -- may support these long
held feelings of why some fail.

16. “My first approach to postsecondary
education began in 1989 and ended three
years later with poor grades and my
withdrawal from courses. Stuck in Eastern
Washington with no money or resources, I
applied for public assistance. I finally moved
to Seattle for better prospects in 1994, but
would not finish my undergraduate education
until 2009.”
- Elizabeth
Blind Attrition
How did this happen?
(besides from a love of partying
and lack of self-discipline!)
• Emotionally and intellectually underdeveloped
• No legacy of higher education in family
• Bright person, wrong college

17. “I had no practice in controlling
my emotions (or expressing those
that can be useful, like relief or
satisfaction), and I was not
receptive to this area of identity
development.”
Perhaps it Could Have
“Some students come with the faucets of
emotional expression wide open, and
[their] task is to develop flexible controls.
Others have yet to open the tap. Their
challenge is to get in touch with the full
range and variety of feelings and to learn
to exercise self-regulation rather than
repression. As self-control and self-
expression come into balance, awareness
and integration ideally support each other
(Chickering, 1969).”
“Looking back, the most important thing to me on arrival to campus was to be hip,
noticed, and popular. I reacted very negatively to criticism and rejection, and everything
that went wrong in my life was considered the fault of someone else.”
“The first task along this vector is not to eliminate [emotions] but to allow them into awareness
and acknowledge them as signals, much like the oil light on the dashboard.” -Arthur Chickering
College Just Didn’t Work Out
Emotions
ADVISE:

18. “As a first generation college
student whose parents were
neither socially nor professionally
connected to anyone with a
postsecondary education”.
1. “Implement intensive counseling
support groups and an intensive
orientation program aimed directly at
those college students who receive less
parental support.
2. Implement programs that would
involve the parents of these first-
generation college students.
3. Implement a first-year experience
course that includes effective tools for
combating the lack of academic
support for first-generation students.
4. Implement other programs to provide
additional support for first-generation
students who may lack academic,
personal, social, and/or parental
support (Hicks, 2002, p 6.).”
“The only pre-college advice I received was from an abusive uncle I periodically lived with who
encouraged a party school he had briefly attended in the early 1960s.”
Legacy
College Just Didn’t Work Out Perhaps it Could Have
ADVISE:

19. “While not exactly ‘too cool for school,’ I didn’t think my journalism classes moved along quickly enough, and
my class attendance was inconsistent at best. At the same time, I anonymously took interview and writing
assignments from the school paper’s press room, and turned in stories that were published in the university
paper. Once it was discovered that I was the ‘mystery stringer,’ I was ordered by the journalism professor to
stop taking stories, that I first had to complete 200 level classes.”
Smart Kid, Wrong School
College Just Didn’t Work Out Perhaps it Could Have
“Prescriptive and sporadic advising did
not lead me to information I was not
aware of: that there indeed were
colleges that utilized experiential
learning.”
“Increasing the amount and accuracy of
institutional and departmental information
available to students prior to entry, i.e., during
the marketing/recruitment process.
Adopting student recruitment and admissions
practices that promote better student-college
‘fit.’
Intentional creation of diverse
(heterogeneous) student sub-communities or
special-interest groups to provide students
with a social ‘niche’ (Cuseo, p. 4).”
ADVISE:

20. Chickering, A. W. (1969). Education and identity. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Cuseo. J. (No year given). The “BIG PICTURE”: Key Causes of Student Attrition & Key Components of a Comprehensive
Student Retention Plan. Learn Together Collaboratory. Retrieved from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237318088_The_BIG_PICTURE_Key_Causes_of_Student_Attrition_Key_
Components_of_a_Comprehensive_Student_Retention_Plan
Hicks, T, (2002). Advising the First-Generation College Student: Effective Retention Tools for Colleges and Universities.”
Faculty Working Papers from the School of Education. Retrieved from:
http://digitalcommons.uncfsu.edu/soe_faculty_wp/6/
References

21. Climate’s great! Wish you were here
We most often use climate to describe the repeated and generally predictable
weather in a particular region. This includes the amounts of precipitation and range
of temperatures over a large geographical area that has been in place for millennia.
At the extremes, seasonal differences are almost nonexistent (e.g., polar, tropical, or
desert climates). The more varied climates can have distinctively different seasonal
weather; summers can be hot, winters, cold. Areas with more temperate or varied
climates and fewer extremes are usually more desirable places to inhabit.
Similarly, the climate of a college campus embodies variable “weather,” that is,
behaviors, language, social events, organizations, curricula, all of which happen at
certain times in a semester, and with certain intensities and frequencies. The climate
of a campus is also often reflective of its history and location. Is the campus
exclusive with a climate that favors legacy and social status, or does it list a wide
array of student groups or clubs and have a longstanding policy of openness and
inclusivity? Also, a private college that specializes in just a handful of disciplines, or
curricula for those who are most likely to become Ph.D.s (e.g., Reed College,
Portland, OR) will have a vastly different climate than a state party school with lower
retention rates and longer graduation times (e.g. University of Colorado at Boulder).

22. My own campus, Shoreline Community College, is a campus climate in
transition. We have all the clubs and organizations for a warm and
welcoming environment, and by the names and faces of faculty, staff, and
student body, I would be hard pressed to find a more diverse school.
But the climate often feels uncomfortably warm, subdued, and deceivingly
sunny. The look of this new facility resembles a manicured country club.
The only sounds that interrupt the polite “excuse me’s” and “thank yous”
are the gasoline engine leaf blowers that whine to life at the sight of any
misplaced twig or leaf on newly formed concrete. However, with the
recent acquisition of a nearby apartment complex for student housing,
and as we enter our fifth year of four-year college status -- with lack of
space and other growing pains -- it is my hope that our campus climate
might include more out-of-class learning experienced in the slightly more
variable climes.
Climate (continued)

23. “Your field is congruent with your attributes.”
-John L. Holland, psychologist and career development theorist.
I have worked, played, socialized, and studied with every walk of American life.
Presently as Workforce CE Program Specialist 2, and a few years ago as first point of
contact for the Center for University Studies and Programs, I have become aware of
the diverse and welcoming climate of either campus, and the high quality of
direction and instruction that draws students to these institutions.
I have knowledge of which questions to ask a student to gauge efficacy,
organizational skills, and focus. This insight is invaluable to begin a collaborative
relationship and to help pair a student’s passions with his or her curriculum and
career. I believe that my insights and knowledge will become more attuned with
practice as Workforce Navigator.
Who Am I to Advise?

24. As I prepare more for a advising role at a two year college, I am reminded that at
heart I am a mentor and a teacher. I believe that the more I know of myself and
understand what led me to a career choice of academic advising, the more I can
contribute to helping students make academic and career choices that best suit
their interests, abilities, and values.
Few mentors seemed available to assist with sorting out my own “short list” of
career options a generation ago, but I feel today that I am closer to knowing which
tools work best for which young student. And as a recent nontraditional student
who finished in the top quarter of his undergraduate class, I am an example to the
young, the multicultural, and to the nontraditional advisee that it can be done.
Who Am I? (continued)