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Careers => The Administrative Track => Topic started by: buttercup5 on September 24, 2006, 11:33:54 PM
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Academic Advising--Potentially inflammatory but help me out here Post by:
buttercup5 on
September 24, 2006, 11:33:54 PM
This is re-posted from Job-Seeking Experiences. The potentially high-handed tone is more about my frustration with my career and inscrutable search committees. I am not a troll. Please help me out here! I wouldn't even be interested in this if I didn't truly care about students.
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I'm a regular but created this name for about the kind of question I'm going to ask here. Recognizing that the third time is not the charm for everyone with TT job searches, I am casting a wider net this year.
One area I'm interested in, since I'm rather "institutionalized" (as Morgan Freeman says in The Shawshank Redemption) to higher ed life, is academic advising positions.
Many of these job ads go on about very specific Masters Degrees and other qualifications. None of these qualifications seem to have the remotest connection to the only thing I've EVER seen ANY academic advisors doing--sitting in a room, with lists of courses and transfer materials, chatting with students about their majors and plans and helping them find the right information and navigate the process.
I can sit in a room, read information, and be helpful. I could do that when I was in high school.
What else is it that academic advisors do that is apparently kept entirely secret from faculty?!?!?
Thanks.
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Re: Academic Advising--Potentially inflammatory but help me out here Post by:
zharkov on
September 25, 2006, 02:24:06 PM
Where I work, faculty do the standard academic advising, which is mostly helping students in course scheduling and registration. The "academic adviser" is like a high school guidance counselor to some degree, and straddles helping students academically and intra/inter-personally. (I was going to say psychologically, but there are separate psychological counselling services for that.)
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Re: Academic Advising--Potentially inflammatory but help me out here Post by:
voxprincipalis on
September 25, 2006, 02:38:19 PM
I did a little web browsing and came up with a site that may be useful to you: NACADA, which is the National Academic Advising Association. Reading through their conference program and browsing back issues of their newsletter is illuminating because it lets you see what *they* think is important. From my brief read, it seems that the general m.o. of the advising set is to almost forget about the word "academic" in their title -- in terms of how they interact and reach out to students, they are much more closely affiliated with residence life or student affairs.
Anyway, the website is:
http://www.nacada.ksu.edu
... and the newsletters can be found at:
http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/AAT/archives.htm
VP
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Re: Academic Advising--Potentially inflammatory but help me out here Post by:
j_source on
September 25, 2006, 04:21:14 PM
Some schools have faculty do most student advising. Not a bad plan unless the faculty member is clueless, disinterested, absent, or negligent. in departments with lots of majors, it's impossible for the faculty to advise all of them so they get farmed out to other departments who often know nothing about the student's major.
Some schools have professional advisors. They are usually experts in transfering credit, working out academic plans and helping the student both choose appropriate courses and make sure major, minor, and degree requirements are met. Their drawback is that they aren't as knowledgeable about the actual jobs in various fields. Since they're advising students in all majors they can tell you what courses you need for an accounting major but not necessarily what being an accountant is like.
I've worked with both systems and lean toward the professional advisor over the faculty. I've seen badly charted college careers because the faculty member was up to speed with the advisees, for whatever reason. A good faculty advisor is terrific but some resent the time taken away from their other work. Just my $.02
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Re: Academic Advising--Potentially inflammatory but help me out here Post by:
minor_t on
September 25, 2006, 05:10:44 PM
If the position is in a public university, an MA or MS may be required in order to get the position "upgraded" to a level with a reasonable salary.
Advisors do indeed spend time going over course lists and transcripts but they can also represent the U at career fairs, recruitment events, and community events. They can make sure the web site is up to date and consistent with current policy and practice, monitor admissions, oversee retention, and guide students through the grade appeal process. Our faculty are responsible for academic advising, but our advisement coordinator is one of the busiest people around.
mt
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Re: Academic Advising--Potentially inflammatory but help me out here Post by:
appadv on
September 26, 2006, 08:53:49 AM
I am an advising administrator (director) at a mid size school. I understand the question posed, but do believe that full-time (FT) academic advisors can strengthen the academic environment on a college campus.
Advisors should be much more than course schedulers. As you state correctly anybody can do that. It should not require a Master's degree to schedule classes and chat-up students.
The real role of the FT academic advisor (it is not a good idea to refer to these positions as professional advisors, it seems to insinuate that faculty are unprofessional advisors) on campus is to set-up the faculty for success. Make sure that the resources are available and that the faculty advisors understand how to use them. The full time advisor also does a lot of the dirty work that faculty members are typically not interested in...i.e., gen. ed., summer school advising, etc. Another important role for the FT advisor is the organization and support of advising when faculty are not available. If you have not noticed it is difficult for students to get in contact with their advisor in the summer months. The FT advisor is available from 8-5 everyday. They serve as a triage unit and can answer questions, refer students, and most importantly kick students back to their faculty advisors.
In an ideal environment we are here to play the background music while the faculty advisors enjoy the solo.
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Re: Academic Advising--Potentially inflammatory but help me out here Post by:
sibyl on
September 26, 2006, 12:49:12 PM
Buttercup,
As someone who has had both advising and faculty positions, I think the most profound difference is that faculty have to specialize and advisers have to be generalists. Faculty do advise students, but it's in highly specialized ways: directing dissertations or senior theses, helping students follow specific career paths. In those situations, students know what they want, and they turn to the faculty to ask how they get there. Advisers need the ability to help students figure out what they want and the flexibility to deal with total reversals. ("I know I started out as pre-med, but now I want to be a political scientist with a secondary teaching certification. How do I do that?") This is true even if you are, for instance, department advisor for the biology department at Enormous State University, because you'll deal with pre-meds, teachers, scientific illustrators, veterinarians, nurses, poker players, and people who really don't know what they want except that Mom thinks I should be a doctor.
What you'll have to do is to convey to employers that you are truly interested in advising in all its dimensions and with all of its students, and not that you are a dissatisfied Ph.D. who's just looking for a resting place in a job that seems easy. (That's the bad spin I've put on your "high-handed" initial post.) Explore NACADA and the advising websites at some high-quality schools to get a sense for what those schools want to deliver to their students. Then figure out what in your experience translates to these jobs.
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Re: Academic Advising--Potentially inflammatory but help me out here Post by:
dale1 on
September 26, 2006, 09:25:26 PM
I must agree with Sibyl.
Academic advising at the entry level/front line is not about filling out paperwork or about matching students with classes that fit their 11 am - 2 pm class-taking window.
Academic Advising is about development of the student. As a front line, entry level advisor (MS required for this job), I:
Interacted with students 1-1 in private advising sessions, usually lasting 20-30 minutes each. I could do 12 to 15 of these a day. Days like these are very tiring because you have to be flexible and move quickly from one student and one issue to the next. It doesn't give you much time to think about other issues.
Work with students in learning communities. Often have 4-5 of them in the fall, 1-2 in the spring term, with 30 students each. Responsible for this as a case load and the a walk-in load which varies per day. Our average "case load" when you divide students by FTE advisors was about 500. No one can do quality advising for 500 students, it's impossible. Teach modules of learning community as assigned.
Marketed our services to prospective and current students.
Liaison to an academic school and work with their representative on advising issues.
Serve on multiple unit-level committees.
Prepared and presented at regional conferences, represented the unit at recruiting events on campus.
It's not an easy job, and it's not just about filling in boxes and making sure requirements are completed. It's about developing the student and helping that student understand what college is about, how to use the experience as a learning experience, not a hoop-jumping experience. Advising hits counseling and is often the front line for problems the student is facing.
Advisors are often the front line for retention, and spend a lot of time selling the institution and how it can meet the needs of students.
Also, the hours can be long and involve evenings and weekends. We also work 40+ hours per week for the entire year. No summers off (in fact, summers are quite busy due to orientation for new students).
Let me know if you want to know more. It's a great job and very rewarding, but also exhausting mentally and physically, and it's easy to let the barriers between work and life get very low.
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Re: Academic Advising--Potentially inflammatory but help me out here Post by:
xystuw on
September 27, 2006, 06:18:53 PM
Academic advising grew out of two things: faculty jettisoning their relationships with students in favor of research (with some justification) and the recognition by most institutions that students need help getting through college. I agree with an earlier poster that faculty advising is great as far as it goes, but for the vast majority of students, it doesn't go very far (assuming it even gets started).
As an academic adviser at a large university, I both encourage the use of "professional" adviser (there are those of us who are interested not just in the "how" of advising but also the "why") and feel strongly that we play a unique role in higher education. No one else on campus is focused on the complete learning and education of an individual student besides that student - and that student's academic adviser.
I often describe academic advisers as the keepers and the university's mission. Upper administration may set the policy and the tone of education at the university but we are the only ones who actually work with a student to ensure that they are learning what the university claims to be teaching.
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Re: Academic Advising--Potentially inflammatory but help me out here Post by:
artsearch on
September 27, 2006, 09:01:43 PM
Hi Dale!
(I hope the OP doesn't mind a tiny bit of a hijack here-he/she knows I'm a kindred spirit with a similar mission)
You said:
"Academic advising at the entry level/front line is not about filling out paperwork or about matching students with classes that fit their 11 am - 2 pm class-taking window."
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Even so, I am finding in my advisor interviewing sessions that the committees are VERY squeamish about how a PhD will handle the more "repetitive" aspects of the job. They fear I won't stick around because of the drudgery aspects.
Also, the university where I am interviewing would have a similar case load at 450-500 students per advisor. As you point out, it's very tough to do quality advising given that condition. So, how do YOU deal with that? I'm thinking you must have found a way to get beyond the demoralization that this frustrating overload entails.
BTW, I was twice in the "final 4" for advising jobs during the summer, and I appear to be inching closer. Thank you for your continued contributions; I always find your remarks insightful and realistic.
