Peer Advising
Undergraduate Students Helping Themselves and Each Other Through Academic Advising
by Kristen Labrecque, for submission to PACRAO, March 2008
Why turn to peer advising?
At most of our institutions, regardless of the model of academic advising employed, the number of
advisees, the complicated questions they pose, and the countless options we’ve tried to provide
for students in terms of class choices can leave advisors feeling overwhelmed. Many professionals
- academic advisors included - face burn-out, as evidenced by the countless articles highlighting
coping strategies (Fisher-Kenney, 2003, The National Academic Advising Association, 2007, The
Pennsylvania State University, 2007). The articles help, suggesting proper rest, diet, and exercise
as well as the pursuit of a hobby outside of work (Fischer-Kenney, 2003), but we all have so
many students to help that it can be quite overwhelming even when one is well-rested and able to
pursue hobbies.
So what’s a good advisor to do? Who do we turn to in our hour of need? The very students we
are serving can be taught to help themselves and each other with good training from those of us
who advise them. Student numbers alone support considering a peer advising model. No matter
how many advisors your school employs, there are more students than there are advisors—and at
some point, enabling students to help themselves becomes an obvious approach. After all, they
will graduate and leave our institutions—shouldn’t we teach them how to be resourceful and take
care of themselves? And in doing so, we can encourage students to build relationships with each
other and to further enhance their learning process resulting in a more satisfying college
experience.
Goals, Strategies, and Outcomes of Peer Advising
Those institutions already employing peer advising programs have much to say about the
effectiveness of their programs. At the University of Denver, “Peer Advising staff helps bridge
the gap between professional advice and personal experience by supporting first-year students
during the transition process” (University of Denver, 2007). According to Freear, “Often, a
student's freshman year is one of the most challenging in terms of academics and personal growth.
…[O]ne of the best resources for those who are facing these challenges are individuals who have
also faced them, and are willing to share their knowledge and experiences” (2007). Many
advisors are somewhat removed from the college experience, and peer advisors may be better
able to relate to new students having very recently gone through the same process themselves.
With the goal of providing more help for new students in their transition process, and of
strategically recruiting veteran students to help, advising offices are able to provide the kind of
personal support that aids not only in the new student’s transition, but also in that student’s
community-building, which is a great tool in student retention.
Peer advising can also impact student retention in other ways. Miller’s (2007) study found that
students who completed their undergraduate degrees attributed their college success to caring
relationships with faculty and staff. Students sometimes find it difficult to immediately establish
relationships with faculty and staff because they are too shy to approach “authority figures”. To
encourage the establishment of healthy relationships with faculty and staff, peer advisors can step
in to talk about how they got to know their faculty and staff mentors. These relationships can
serve as a bridge, and provide the means of transitioning to healthy mentoring relationships new
students need. Beyond that, at Rutgers College, peer advisors reported that the relationship was
beneficial to both the students being mentored and the mentors themselves because of the
experiential nature of this advising process (Boice-Pardee, 2005). These meaningful relationships
aid new students in their transition, and at the same time, provide the veteran students with a
sense of purpose and responsibility. This community-building process can lead to increased
persistence of all students.
Disclaimer
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not suggesting that peer advising take the place of professional
academic advising from faculty and staff. Students need advising and mentoring from full-time
university personnel who are the experts on degree requirements and retention strategies. But as
a supplement to professional advising, peer advising can play an important role in students’ lives
and in community-building for our institutions.
Striking a Balance: the Peer Advisor and Faculty/Staff Advisor Working Together
When a person is sick, it can be reassuring to know that there is a team of doctors to help since
that team will provide a diversity of expertise and opinions. The same can be said for students
who need good academic advising to efficiently complete their degrees. Faculty and staff
advisors are the experts on university policies and procedures and on degree requirements, but
when it comes to information about instructors’ teaching styles and homework requirements, peer
advisors can provide the best and most recent feedback. By working together, peer advisors and
staff advisors can provide a wealth of information to enrich the student’s undergraduate
experience and inform his or her decision-making. But to ensure the quality of the information
provided to students, peer advisors need to receive basic training in advising.
Training Peer Advisors
Peer advisors genuinely want to help new students Peer advisors have already gained the skill
set required for successful navigation of their college careers, and they are eager to provide
leadership and pass on the knowledge they’ve acquired. Good training and clear role definition
are required to assist peer advisors in understanding appropriate interaction with the students
they wish to help.
Peer advisors also need to know that their roles come with freedom and with responsibility. It is
freeing for them to understand that they are not professional advisors, and they shouldn’t feel
that they need to be professional advisors. In training peer advisors, professionals need to
impress on peer advisors that referrals are key—when it’s necessary, students can and should be
referred to a professional advisor if they have questions that can only be answered with a
complete understanding of university policies and procedures. But where professional advisors
may be lacking, peer advisors can be a great resource because of their recent experiences with
scheduling, with the campus culture, and with faculty teaching styles. Peer advisors can relate
their own experiences, but they also have the responsibility to remember what I call the “theory of
relativity”. This relates not to Physics, but to the idea that one student’s experience and opinion
may differ from another student’s. The peer advisor’s information is meant to improve the
student’s decision-making ability, so the student should be encouraged to seek a variety of
opinions in order to make an informed decision. In essence, peer advisors provide information
and advice to students, thereby empowering them in their academic journeys.
Peer Advisors: The Cycle of Service
A peer advising program requires an on-going commitment for training as students graduate and
leave their roles as peer advisors, being replaced with another group of eager peer advisors.
The time invested by full-time staff to train peer advisors is well worth the effort, however,
considering how much assistance peer advising can provide, and considering its positive impact on
retention.
SPU’s Peer Advising Models
At Seattle Pacific University, peer advisors assist new students with their transition to SPU.
Whether coming directly from high school or transferring from another institution, new students
need help adjusting to the culture of Seattle Pacific. Peer advisors are recruited to serve in
leadership roles during our summer orientation (new student advising) program. During the
Autumn Quarter, our senior honor society hosts a curriculum fair to help freshmen and sophomores
navigate their degree requirements and utilize the scheduling tools available to them.
The summer orientation peer advisors, called emissaries, serve as hosts to the new students and
lead them through their orientation activities. These activities include presentations on academic
life and student life, academic advising and class selection for the upcoming quarter, and
registration for the first term’s classes. The emissaries are assigned a group of about 25 new
students and talk with these students about their academic expectations, campus life, and general
tips for college success. New students seem to feel comfortable asking questions in this group
environment and they tend to heed the advice they receive.
Having the new students work though the orientation program in groups also creates an unofficial
peer advising situation. The students talk with each other about their experiences, hopes, and
fears, thus learning each other’s coping strategies and multiplying their knowledge bases. This
unofficial peer advising has also gone high-tech. The Autumn 2007 incoming class created their
own group in the social utility Facebook, carrying on discussions about their anxieties, plans for
the upcoming term, and décor for their dorm rooms. Some discussions involved orientation
experiences, and students helped each other through SPU’s online tutorial in Blackboard which
must be completed prior to the student’s orientation event. This tutorial utilizes an online discussion
board, encouraging students to communicate with each other and share what they’ve learned. In
essence, these new students are peer advisors before they’ve even matriculated, benefitting from
the relationships they create with one another.
Current students benefit from peer advisors as well. During Autumn Quarter, Ivy Honorary (SPU’s
chapter of Mortar Board) hosts a curriculum fair for freshmen and sophomores. During the fair,
they create booths for each of the categories in our general education degree requirements.
Honor Society students staff the booths, offering help identifying courses that will fulfill degree
requirements, and providing feedback about instructors’ teaching styles as well as discussing their
own experiences in those classes. They also show students the online tools that can be used in
scheduling, such as the online degree audit, catalog and time schedule search engines, and online
registration information. In many cases, the honor students were themselves served at this event,
and it’s a time to give back to the community by providing the assistance they once received.
Students sometimes retain relationships with these peer advisors, looking to them as mentors.
Other times, the peer advisor is simply a friendly face on campus. In both cases, relationships are
formed leading to a strong sense of community within the undergraduate population. This feeling
of community has contributed to SPU’s recruiting and retention efforts, resulting in an evergrowing application pool and a retention rate of 86% (Seattle Pacific University, 2007).
Students Helping Themselves = Happy Graduates and Healthy Advisors
With benefits such as increased retention rates and relief for professional advisors, institutions
can’t afford to ignore peer advising as a resource. The fact of the matter is, students talk to each
other and give advice without sanctioning from our advising offices, so we have a vested interest
in developing a structured peer advisor program. By investing the time to train students to advise
themselves and each other, faculty and staff can equip and empower students for academic
success. This achievement and the relief for professional advisors are just two small outcomes of
peer advising. The overall result is the creation of a learning community in which knowledge is
shared by all--the very essence of the education experience.
Resources
Boice-Pardee, H. (2005). Assessing peer education: What can we learn. Retrieved November 20,
2007 from http://www.sc.edu/fye/resources/assessment/newessay/author/boicepardee.html.
Fischer-Kenney, J. (2003). Beating burnout. Retrieved November 20, 2007 from
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:aUrgga4y590J:www.academicadvising.org/inde
x_files/2003newsletter.pdf+academic+advisor+burnout&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=15&gl=us.
Freear, J. (2007). University of New Hampshire peer advising program, Whittemore School of
Business and Economics. Retrieved December 12, 2007 from
http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Awards/archive/peer.htm.
Miller, A. S. (2007). Students that persist: Caring relationships that make a difference in higher
education. Retrieved December 12, 2007 from ERIC database.
The National Academic Advising Association. (2005). Coping with advisor burn out. Retrieved
November 20, 2007 from
http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Clearinghouse/AdvisingIssues/BurnOut.htm.
The Pennsylvania State University. (2007). Are advisors too connected to their students. Retrieved
November 20, 2007 from http://www.psu.edu/dus/mentor/foru0703.htm.
Seattle Pacific University. (2007). Enrollment statistics (based on Autumn Quarter 2007).
Retrieved 10 January, 2008.
University of Denver. (2007). The center for academic and career development. Retrieved
November 20, 2007 from http://www.du.edu/thecenter/peer/.
About the Author
Kristen Labrecque is an Undergraduate Academic Counselor at Seattle Pacific University, where
she earned a B.A. in English in 1998 and a M.Ed. in Education in 2004. Kristen has been a
member of PACRAO since 2004 when she presented information about SPU’s Degree Audit
System at the regional conference in Tucson. She has facilitated sessions at the regional
conferences in Tucson, Sacramento, Honolulu, and Salt Lake City. In Honolulu, she presented a
session about Online Advising and in Salt Lake City she presented a session called “Getting
Involved in PACRAO” with Seattle University’s Andrew Anderson.
In her spare time, Kristen assists her husband with his photography business, cares for three furry
children (a cat and two Boston Terriers), and cheers on the Seattle Seahawks.
Questions or comments are welcome via e-mail at kristenl@spu.edu.