ADVISING TASK FORCE SUMMARY UW­L Faculty Senate April 24, 2014 Introduction: Academic advising is a critical component of student academic success and one focus of the campus­wide HLC Quality Initiative Firm Footing: Foundations for Student Success. The goal of the Advising Task Force was to examine advising across a student’s college career and determine gaps and overlaps that may exist from a university­wide perspective. The workgroup aimed to better distinguish the roles of different advisors (Academic Advising Center, faculty advisors, college advisors, and advisors associated with student services) and to improve communication both between different advising units and to students to allow for more efficient and effective advising overall. The group also collected information about faculty advisors, the advising unit with the most variability, and explored mechanisms to strengthen the role of faculty advising across campus. Advising Task Force Membership: Lori Anderson, Academic Advising Center Colin Belby, Department of Geography and Earth Science Joseph Johnson, Department of Educational Studies Richard Mikat, Department of Exercise and Sport Science Jennifer Miskowski, Provost’s Office and HLC Executive Group, Chair Marie Moeller, English Department Betsy Morgan, Psychology Department and HLC Executive Group Peter Stovall, College of Liberal Studies Dean’s Office Laurie Strangman, Department of Economics Goal: To improve communication between the different advising units on campus Outcomes: During the initial inventory of advising strengths and challenges on campus, the Task Force acknowledged that UW­L recognizes the importance of academic advising and has made clear investments to support advising at multiple levels (Appendix A). However, the Task Force sought to formalize relationships between the different advising units in an effort to foster communication between groups. Hopefully this will lead to improved clarity and consistency of the advice delivered to students. To this end, there is now a representative from the Academic Advising Center on the Technology, Records, and Advising Committee (TRAC) which had consisted primarily of the College Deans’ Office Advisors and representatives from Records & Registration. Furthermore, an Academic Advising Center liaison has been assigned to each College, as well as the School of Education. This link should be the first point of contact for academic departments and programs if they have questions or want to communicate information about advising in their particular major. It is hoped that the AAC liaison might provide training and/or resources for faculty advisors. Lastly, a large number of faculty, staff, and administrators who routinely deal with advising­related issues meet once per semester as part of the LaCrosse Academic Advising Association (LACADA). Lori Anderson has agreed to send an email to faculty advisors after the LACADA meeting each semester to inform them of any pertinent discussion or changes that they should be aware of. AAC Representative on TRAC: Lori Anderson College and SoE Liaisons: Liberal Studies: Sharie Brunk Science and Health: Damien Parks Business Administration: Michelle Stertz School of Education: Lori Anderson Goal: To improve communication to students about advising Outcomes: The Task Force identified that one challenge on campus is that students do not know what advising unit is best suited to help them with a particular advising need (Appendix A). Hence, our group aimed to better communicate to students where they should go for advising help at different times during their academic career. The group worked to identify the specific and discrete responsibilities of each advising unit (Academic Advising Center staff, College Deans’ Office advisors, Faculty Advisors, and Student Life), as best as we were able. With the help of the iComm staff in University Advancement, this information can be found on a new Advising web page that will be prominently displayed on the Current Students web page and also be found through the advising link on department web sites, IF those departments have not developed their own information. The staging site for this new web page can be found here: https://stage.uwlax.edu/templates/uwlax1Column.aspx?pageid=2151&id=3547#you Although the development of the web site is the major outcome, the Advising Task Force also instigated the change of two terms used on WINGS. The “Academic Requirements” report has now been renamed to the “Advisement Report”, which will more clearly communicate to students that this contains important information for advising. Second, pre­curricular tracks that do not yield degrees on their own (e.g. pre­Physical Therapy, pre­Medicine) are no longer called “2nd Majors” and instead are named “Pre­Professional Tracks”. It is our intent that this will help eliminate confusion for students who have not yet declared a major, but think they have because they are following a pre­professional curricular track. One last idea that emerged from both the Advising Task Force and conversations with other faculty members across campus is communication to a student that an advisor has been assigned to them. Although this information is available to a student through WINGS, many times newer students are not familiar enough with WINGS to retrieve this information. Also, faculty members expressed interest in knowing when new advisees were assigned, in particular, transfer students. We have consulted with IT and they determined that it was feasible to send an automated message from WINGS to both faculty advisor and student when a new relationship was assigned. It has been recommended that these messages be sent in bulk, once a week, to avoid annoyance during peak times (e.g. freshman registration and orientation). This worked will be completed during summer. Goal: Strengthen faculty advising across campus Outcomes: The Advising Task Force designed a survey that was administered to department Chairs prior to the August 2013 Chairs’ Workshop. The responses were collected and reviewed for common themes and related action items. All of the survey information can be viewed in Appendix B. Our group focused mostly on the open­ended responses to the last question that asked what single change would they make to advising if resources were not an issue. The comments were grouped into four categories: improved communication between advising units, best practices to consider adopting, advising concerns related to workload, and advising concerns other than workload. Some of the specific action items were addressed earlier in this report, such as the renaming of “2nd Majors” to “Pre­Professional Tracks” and the establishment of a link between academic departments and the AAC, which will hopefully improve communication and develop into substantive partnerships. A new document entitled UW­L Academic Advisor Quick Tips was generated as a how­to guide for advising meetings. This will eventually be housed on the AAC website. Although this will not satisfy the clear need for more training and resources on advising, it will provide some guidance, in particular for new and unexperienced advisors. In addition, it is our recommendation that LACADA determines a formal mechanism for reaching out to faculty and staff in the advising “trenches” to assess the state of advising in departments. Other action items were deemed outside the scope of our committee and will be referred to the Provost’s Office for additional consideration. In conclusion, academic advising is a critical component of our mission as a university to promote student success. To put it in perspective, it has been said that “academic advising is the only structured activity on the campus in which all students have the opportunity for one­to­one interaction with a concerned representative of the institution” (Wes Habley, 1983). UW­L has many dedicated and talented academic advisors, and the work and recommendations of the Advising Task Force hope to strengthen the existing structures as they work toward the common goal of helping students. Appendix A: Key Campus Advising Strengths and Challenges Identified by the Advising Task Force Strengths: ● Many levels of advising ● There is an advising portal, but it is not well­known ● The institution has clearly invested in advising ● The presence of the Academic Advising Center (AAC) and the relationship between the AAC and Career Services ● The ability to place a registration “hold” on a student account to require advising ● Many deeply caring and committed advisors on campus ● The fact that students have a faculty advisor to discuss details in the major ● Benefits are obvious for students who declare a program of study early in their career and maintain a relatively straight path Challenges: ● The different levels of advising are not necessarily well­coordinated ● The exact responsibilities of the different advisors might not be well­defined or communicated ● There is no campus­wide mission statement for advising ● Students do not necessarily know what academic advising entails; often related college advising to a high school counselor ● There are growing advising loads, but little to no credit assigned to this activity for faculty/instructional staff ● Little to no accountability for faculty/instructional staff advisors. What are the consequences if someone is a poor advisor? ● Little information is available about what alumni are doing in respective fields of study ● Challenging to channel students into majors/programs that might be a good fit, but less known than others ● Little to no flexibility for students who are undeclared for a period of time Appendix B: CHAIRS’ WORKSHOP ADVISING SURVEY WITH RESULTS (n=23 or 72% response rate; 32 departments on campus, not including Department of Ethnic and Racial Studies which does not have a major) 1. How does your department advise students ­ individual meetings scheduled by students, mass advising sessions, not at all, etc? ● Individual Advising = 16 ● Individual & Mass Advising =7 2. Is advising mandated? If so, how often are students required to meet with their faculty advisor and how is this regulated? ● Yes = 10 (Sometimes only for students under a certain credit number) ● No = 10 ● It is up to each advisor = 3 (often depends on the subdiscipline) *For those who mandated advising, it was always once per semester. 3. Who performs the advising duties in your department ­ everyone, a select group of faculty or academic staff, those who volunteer, etc? ● All instructional staff = 17 (A few exceptions like faculty, but not IAS, or the Chair is excluded) ● Everyone but 1st year faculty = 5 ● Everyone but full­time graduate faculty = 1 4. How are advisees assigned in your department (college office personnel, ADA, chairperson)? Does this work well or would you prefer a different method? ● ADA = 10 (Sometimes this was in consultation with Chair and/or College Office) ● Chair = 4 ● College Office = 7 ● Other = 1 (The College Office, ADA, and Chair all played a role) *Note that every respondent was either pleased with the method by which advisees were assigned in their department or indifferent. There was no inclination for change. 5. Is training provided for advisors? If so, how? ● Actual training with professional advisor = 9 (Usually provided by College Office staff) ● Mentor within the department = 3 ● None = 11 (Several individuals mentioned that they would like college personnel to come to department meetings) 6. How does advising “count” in the workload of individuals in your department? Is it considered a service or teaching activity? ● Service = 16 (One department said that reassigned time is given for particularly large advisee cohorts) ● Teaching = 4 (but workload is not provided for it) ● Not at all = 3 (although, technically, it goes under “Teaching” on Digital Measures) *No matter what category individuals chose, many commented that it does not play into one’s merit ranking or promotion/tenure decision. Because everyone does it, it is simply a checked box and does not distinguish an individual from others. 7. Does your department have any mechanism(s) for assessing advising effectiveness? If so, what? Only four Chairs mentioned a form of assessment (listed below): ● End of the year interviews and Senior Exit interviews ● Biennial senior survey ● Student feedback; graduation survey ● Survey 8. Have you encountered advisor problems in your department? If so, how were those problems addressed? Few comments that mostly centered around a poor advisor in the department. 9. Are there any advising strengths or challenges in your department that have not been covered in this survey? None 10. If resources were not an issue, what single change would you make to the academic advising practices in your department to improve these practices? *The comments were grouped into four major categories that are listed below with roman numerals. A take­home message is listed after each category followed by one or more action item(s). I. Improved Communication Between Advising Units: ∙ Double majors are tricky…one major gets good advising, but not so much for the second major ∙ Concerns about different advice from AAC reps and department advisors ∙ Concerns about poor advice for non­majors regarding course requirements in the department ∙ There needs to be an automatic process in place to assign advisors to 2nd majors. This is a recurring problem. ∙ Concerns with inconsistent info between college office and faculty, problems with double majors, and problems with study abroad students ∙ Confusion over study abroad advising ∙ Concerns about students receiving misinformation from AAC Take home: 2nd majors and study abroad advising should be addressed. Action items: (1) Recommend that students are assigned an advisor for both majors. (2) Ask Records & Registration to explore other names for programs of study like pre­medicine and pre­physical therapy that are not true majors. (3) Suggest that the Advising Task Force be charged to work with the Office of International Education to develop a typical mechanism for students planning coursework for study abroad programs. II. Best Practices to Consider Adopting: ∙ Psych forces students to complete an online tutorial prior to declaring major ∙ Psych has a professional advisor in­house ∙ Advising notes are a good idea ∙ One department documents each session actively; students leave with a copy of the notes and one copy is filed ∙ Would be good to keep notes of student meetings ∙ Require that all students declaring the major take a “pre­capstone” course that provides them with discipline­specific advising early on, both on courses and other career prep opportunities ∙ Not currently a practice, but…Would like a university­wide advising information system ∙ Have only the best advisors; offer some incentive Take home: Information, both “how­to” and “why­to”, on advising notes might be useful to compile and distribute. Action item: (1) The Advising Task Force should identify and/or compile information on what type of information should be documented in an advising meeting and how to run an advising meeting in an efficient and effective manner. III. Advising Concerns Related to Overall Workload: ∙ Concern – some subdisciplines are more popular than others, leading to uneven advising loads (e.g. in Chemistry & Biochemistry, Biochemistry has three faculty members but more than half the majors, while there are 16 regular Chemists for the remaining students) ∙ Poor advisors have been given fewer advisees, so they have a “reward” with workload. Department has tried to give them other responsibilities to keep workload even ∙ Concern that time and significance of advising is not appreciated ∙ More time devoted to advising would be good ∙ If resources were no issue, would mandate advising for all students each semester and have a dedicated, rotating course release for two faculty members for advising. ∙ If logistics and equity could be worked out, figure out a way that really good advisors could take on more students as a trade­off for some other responsibilities ∙ Would like to provide one or two­hour reassigned time to faculty members based on advising load ∙ Would like to assign advising to a position(s) in the department as part of workload ∙ Assign advising to person as part of load ∙ Too many advisees for it to “not count” ∙ Would ideally like release time for advising, for one or two people Take home: There is a strong desire to have advising “count” in workload. Can/should this be part of a larger discussion of workload assignment? Is this related to work down with Professional Education programs, for which advising is a large (larger?) component? Action item: (1) Suggest that the Advising Task Force be charged to investigate what constitutes a good academic advisor, how advising fits into the typical faculty workload at other institutions, and how advising could be assessed. IV. Advising Concerns Other Than Workload: ∙ “Advising is mentorship, therefore, there should not be any evaluation tasks connected with that person in that environment” ∙ Need more training and a formal assessment process ∙ Complexity of curriculum is biggest issue ∙ Hard to motivate some faculty to fully engage in the advising process. ∙ New faculty can lack knowledge about UW­L ∙ Need training for new faculty, at least ∙ Could use training Take home: Encouraging/promoting/developing training resources would be valuable Action item: (1) Recommend that the college office advisors and AAC college liaisons work with their respective units to identify the best means to provide advising training to faculty advisors. This would include both face­to­face events and information provided on the web.