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College of Arts and Science Academic Advising Review, 2010
Response of the College Leadership to the Report
The College of Arts and Science welcomes the report on academic advising submitted by the
NACADA team of external examiners in May of 2010.
As you know, our College requested the review of academic advising in our 2007 Integrated Plan
for our College (initiative 5.2.1 p 90-91) and we very much appreciate the resources, time, effort,
and expertise that went into this review. The Dean's Executive of the College, which underwent
extensive turnover this summer, has now had time to digest and reflect on its findings and
recommendations. We embrace this report, albeit with some minor exceptions and one major
exception. We also communicated this point of view at the Dean’s Retreat held on August 24-25
at Waskesiu.
We draw two main conclusions from the report, both of which must be addressed if we are to
move forward.
First, we must effect an ideological shift away from regarding advising as a somewhat seasonal
service tied mainly to registration, towards an understanding of advising as an integral part of our
overall educational mission: in the bracing language of the report, this entails “a culture change,
from service provider to educator”. (p.11)
Second, new investment is urgently required in order that we may fulfill the expanded mission
that this report is helping us to articulate: to provide all Arts and Science students with the
advising they need, the way they need it, when they need it. This is an ambitious goal that we
have every intention of achieving, sooner rather than later.
The requirement for resources to fulfill this goal has been reflected in the Dean’s memo to
Provost Fairbairn of September 7, 2010.
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The report of the NACADA reviewers is helping us to identify where we must focus our
reforming energies and our resources. As we hope this document reveals, the report has already
sparked fruitful reflection and spurred us to action on multiple fronts. It is not our aim here to
detail all our plans for reforming the way we advise Arts and Science students, but our intentions
should become evident as we respond to the thirteen major recommendations made in the report.
Recommendation #1
Establish a College Advising Council
This we are in the process of doing. The NACADA team recommended that we create a
permanent standing council of the College, but before we do that we want to be sure to
coordinate our actions with the forthcoming University standing committee on advising that is
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being established under the aegis of the Acting Vice Provost of Teaching and Learning. The
College of Arts and Science will be well represented on that committee, which will serve the
crucial purpose of helping us coordinate our advising efforts with those of the wider university
community. In this as in other regards, however, we are not waiting for others to lead. While the
University Advising Council takes shape and settles in, the Associate Dean of Students will
appoint an ad hoc College committee of faculty, advisors, and students to help steer the early
stages of our own advising reforms. That committee may well evolve into the standing
committee of the College that the NACADA report envisions.
Recommendation #2
Establish a specific time when students must declare their majors.
This we will do. The Associate Dean of Students, working in conjunction with the Coordinator
of the newly established College Programs Office, and with the First Year Curricular Review
Committee, will develop a new policy on choosing majors to be in effect by the end of this
academic year. Establishing such a policy involves a collegial process yet to unfold, but we
expect to follow the advice of the reviewers and establish that students must declare a major no
later than by the end of their second year of full-time study, or by the time they accrue sixty
credits. We will make it clear that students will remain free to change their majors. Indeed, one
aim of our ongoing curricular reform process is to make it easier for them to do so. The new rule
will help students to clarify their path to academic success, and it will help the College to deploy
its advising resources more effectively. It will enable us to focus most of our College advisors
on first- and second-year students, and to effectuate a more orderly transition to departmental
and program advising for students who have declared a major.
Recommendation #3
Change Registration Schedule
We agree entirely with the examiners' advice that we do all in our power to counter the
prevailing idea of advising as a service tied to registration. Our new-model advising will be
much less seasonal and much less tied to registration. We also share their view that it would be
much better if students could enrol in their fall classes before they leave campus in the spring.
Our powers to change the registration schedule, however, are more limited than the reviewers
seem to think. The last minute planning they warn of is a systemic problem for the university as
a whole to contend with. We will pursue efficiencies and encourage departments to complete
their schedules and course builds earlier in the year, but at some point those reforms will run into
the realities of our late-breaking budgets, late-year hirings, uncertain sessional budgets, and so
forth. As soon as software technology, curricular reform, budgetary reform or other forces
allow, however, we will be ready to change the registration schedule.
Recommendation #4
Revamp the summer experience for incoming first-year students.
We agree that more must be done to offer our incoming students the advice they need to succeed
in advance of their first year of university study as well as in that first year. We also agree that
those early interactions represent a crucial opportunity to introduce students to advising in a
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broader sense, one that helps them to explore their interests, to better understand their aptitudes
and options, and to develop a plan for academic success that extends beyond the immediate
matter of choosing their first courses.
Summer advising is just one area in which our chronic shortage of advisors must be overcome if
we are to advance in the ways and on the scale we intend. The College will create a new
position, Director of Advising, which we hope to fill before the end of this calendar year. The
person in that position will be responsible for helping to revise the current policies, practices, and
culture of advising, and for implementing change. S/he will also work to improve the advising
materials on our web site, and to help to explain our new advising culture and capabilities to the
student body and to the wider university community. If, as we hope, further resources are
acquired, then we will move quickly to hire several more full-time advisors. With additional
advising resources, including the crucial DegreeWorks software technology (see below), we will
be much better able to meet the needs of our students, first-years in particular, starting from the
summer before they start classes. The College is investing heavily in these endeavours, but as
noted above we will need additional resources in order to meet our goals.
It should be noted that we have had great success lately in hiring senior undergraduates to advise
students in summer; they have been particularly effective at steering first-years towards the
learning communities that are beginning to have a positive effect on our retention rates. We
intend to build upon that success and to deploy more student advisors in future, possibly yearround and possibly in conjunction with the PALS program established in the Learning Centre.
We will also continue to involve senior students in our evolving orientation programs, which will
be more extensive (as resources allow) and more tightly integrated with university-level
orientation efforts.
Recommendation #5
Certifying students for graduation should be the responsibility of departments.
We agree with this recommendation to the extent that academic advisors should not be pulled
away from seeing students so as to conduct graduation checks. We are re-examining workflow
processes in the Student Office (formerly known at the Undergraduate Office) with this in mind.
When we have a fully enabled and proven degree audit system (i.e. DegreeWorks) in place to
automate the process of certifying students for graduation, student advisors will no longer need
to be involved in that process. The Dean has identified June 30, 2011 as a target date for beta
testing of DegreeWorks, and the College is committed to achieving this. By eliminating the need
for student advisors to participate in grad checks, DegreeWorks will obviate any need to pass
that work to departments. It is also important to note that the complexity and breadth of our
current curriculum and the freedom of students to move about within it constitute serious barriers
to devolving grad checks to more narrowly specialized departmental advisors. “Grad checks”
equate to a final signing off on the granting of a degree, and it is for the College to take final
responsibility for ensuring that our students have met and received due credit for all the
requirements needed to graduate with an Arts and Science degree. That is not a responsibility
that can be properly devolved to departments.
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Recommendation #6
More emphasis on the exploratory student (a new structure).
We agree that more needs to be done to provide Arts and Science students who have yet to
declare a major with the advising they need to help steer them onto the right path for them. We
appreciate that some among that cohort constitute an at-risk population for retention, and for that
reason we intend, in keeping with the spirit if not the letter of Recommendation #6, to
concentrate a good deal of our investment in enhanced advising capacity on them.
Beyond that, however, we respectfully reject Recommendation # 6 on the grounds that it is
founded on a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be an undeclared student in our
college, and because carrying out this recommendation would result in an unwieldy and
unsustainable dilution and duplication of advising resources. This is perhaps the most farreaching of the report's recommendations (and of the report on advising university-wide), and it
merits a detailed response.
As laid out under “Challenges” (p.4) and then again in Recommendation #6, the reviewers state
that the College should no longer be tasked with “providing advising to large numbers of
students who are not either majors or pre-majors in the college's twenty-three departments.”
Rather, the authors suggest, “all undecided students (hereafter referred to as 'exploratory') ...
would be more appropriately served by a University-wide advising center.” (p.4) The College,
meanwhile, should “focus on delivering exemplary academic advising to its own first-year
students and pre-majors and majors....”(p.4, our italics).
The main problem with this line of reasoning is simply that, with the dwindling exception of
students who declare for Open Studies, the undecided or “exploratory” students mentioned in
this report are in fact Arts and Science students. They have not declared a major (“pre-major” is
not a category we recognize at this university), but they have indeed enrolled in the College of
Arts and Science. Like every other College on campus, we take seriously our responsibility to
advise and help all our students to succeed -- and those are our students for as long as they are
enrolled with us.
We have always assisted students in the early stages of their transition to degree programs in
other colleges, and we will continue to do so. The fact that some students are passing through
the College of Arts and Science does not diminish their standing with us, while they are with us.
If their path to success leads to a professional college, for example, then we count it a success if
we help them to get there. This is not just a matter of principle, nor are we defending our turf for
its own sake. If we believed that the students in question would be better served by a Universitywide advising centre we would endorse the recommendation. This is not the case, however.
In practice, the difference between an incoming first-year student who has declared a major and
one who has not, may hang on a single and perhaps not very carefully considered click of the
mouse. It is not uncommon for an incoming student with a declared major to have no clear sense
of what the academic discipline they have selected is really about. Nor is it uncommon for
undeclared students truly to be academic explorers, to have mapped out a careful array of courses
intended to help them choose a major, in our college or another, once they better understand the
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disciplines that intrigue them upon arrival. In other words, we cannot assume that first-year
students with a declared major are all set on a firm path, any more than we can assume that firstyear students without a declared major have no direction in mind upon arrival. They are all
simply first-year Arts and Science students, and they all stand to benefit from the expanded and
enhanced student advising practices that the College is now developing.
As is frequently noted in other discussions of teaching and learning on campus, we need to lower
barriers that limit a student's proper academic mobility, not raise new ones. To draw a firm line
between undeclared and declared first-year students in the College of Arts and Science and then
send the “undeclareds” to a one advising unit and the “declareds” to another would, as noted
above, involve a huge and wasteful duplication of effort and an unhelpful narrowing and dilution
of expertise. It makes no sense in principle or practice.
Recommendation #7
Reposition the academic advising of Open Studies Students.
Here, too, we agree with the spirit but not the letter of this recommendation. We agree that
“these students should be assigned to the division that would handle the exploratory student and
the students in transition.” Which is to say that they should be advised by the College of Arts
and Science if they are taking our courses.
Recommendation #8
Assign every student to an advisor.
We welcome this recommendation. That is why we are so determined to expand our roster of
student advisors, because we currently lack the capacity to meet this critical objective. We agree
that every student upon admission should be assigned to and invited to meet with a named
advisor, understanding that as a student's career unfolds he/she may subsequently choose to deal
with a different College advisor, who will in turn be largely supplanted by a faculty or other
departmental advisor in the latter stages of that student's time with us. We agree that students
should be able to meet with the first available advisor on urgent or straightforward matters, while
still being able to have one main advising contact if they wish. We agree entirely, too, on the
fundamental importance of students having a relationship of trust with an advisor. We also
understand the vital role that advisors can play as the literal face of our College, the human
connection on which to build a sense of community and allegiance that can make all the
difference in a student's academic life. Seen in this light, College and departmental advisors
become key players in our efforts to forge enduring ties to the future alumni we helped as
students.
Recommendation #9
Establish a fully-functioning degree audit system.
We needed no convincing of the merits of this recommendation, which captures exactly the
opinion we have been espousing for many years now: “No academic advising program in the
21st century should be without a fully functioning degree audit system.” (p.18) Since this report
came out we have made the completion and implementation of DegreeWorks such an urgent
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priority, and committed such resources at a time of limited budgets, that our embrace of this
recommendation cannot be doubted. We have had meetings with ITS, the Registrar’s Office and
SESD to devise ways to have a beta system of degree works operational by June 30, 2011. The
College has committed time and resources to this important task. DegreeWorks will empower
our students and bring enormous efficiencies to our student advising processes. It has the
enthusiastic backing of our faculty, and is a crucial part of our plans for shifting the entire culture
of student advising away from a registration-related service towards the more holistic academic
and career advising we aim to provide.
Recommendation #10
Better communication between the College and the departments.
We welcome this call for greater communication in matters of advising between the College and
the departments. In fact, we would extend that call to include our intention to effect greater
communication with allied administrative units on campus (SESD, the Learning Centre, the
Aboriginal Student Centre, the ASSU and USSU, etc.), as well as with our students and, indeed,
the public at large.
Our advising reforms will occur in two phases. In Phase 1, currently underway and our chief
focus through the summer of 2011, we will attend mainly to building better College resources
and processes so as to better serve the needs of first year students, especially, and second year
students before they choose a major. In Phase 2, which we will begin implementing as soon as
our goals for Phase I are on their way to being realized (as early as the fall of 2011, in other
words), we will shift our reforming focus to transitioning students from College to departmental
advisors.
In Phase 2, we will establish closer and more regular lines of communication between the
College advisors and the faculty and staff who advise upper-level students in departments and
programs. We will work with the departments and programs to ensure that they have the
resources necessary to develop and implement effective advising practices. We will review and
revise the initial and ongoing training we offer those advisors with a view to identifying,
encouraging, and extending best practices throughout the College. We will ensure that
departmental and program advisors are thoroughly trained in the use of DegreeWorks, a software
technology that will, among other things, help to standardize advising practices across the
College. We will also review the way we deal with other colleges and university-level units with
a stake in advising, always with an eye to forging closer and more regularized connections. We
will work with some urgency to improve the way advising is represented on our Web pages, to
update and augment the information we provide, and to coordinate our message with SESD and
other advising units on campus. We will provide students and prospective students with both the
information they need to plan effectively, and with the encouragement they need to contact a
College or departmental advisor.
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Recommendation #11
Develop a College of Arts and Science mission statement for academic advising.
We agree on the need for a strong and clear mission statement that can inform and guide our
advising practices. Initially, the ad hoc College committee on advising about to be established
by the Associate Dean of Students will frame a working document outlining the fundamental
principles that will guide our new advising culture. This document will serve as the basis for a
more formal College mission statement developed in concert with the university-wide mission
statement on advising that the new University Advising Council will begin to develop shortly.
We believe that it is important that our goals for advising align with those of the university as a
whole.
Recommendation #12
Streamline the evaluation of transfer credits.
We agree on the need for such streamlining, and to that end we will continue to work closely
with SESD, the International Students Office, the Registrar’s Office, and our own newly created
Programs Office to expedite our handling of transfer credits.
Recommendation #13
Provide off-campus advisors with access to course grades.
We are well aware of this choke-point in our ability to provide effective advising to off-campus
students. We will continue to work with SESD and the Registrar’s Office to establish more
effective protocols for the sharing of student data with and among key administrative units, both
in our College and wherever the University operates.