Kelly Payne & Ann Tschetter
UNL Academic Advising Association Conference
“The Hidden Student”
Spring 2015
Activity

 Quickly list three words that describe you as an
adviser.
 Write down one advising experience that was
memorable because of how it made you open up
about your own personal experiences?
Defining our terms

 Radical
 a. Esp. of change or action: going to the root or origin;
touching upon or affecting what is essential and
fundamental; thorough, far-reaching.
 c. Characterized by independence of or departure from
what is usual or traditional; progressive, unorthodox, or
innovative in outlook, conception, design, etc.
 Openness
 The quality or condition of being open (in various senses).
taken from Oxford English Dictionary Online
Bell Hooks and Radical
Openness

 Educational theory that incorporates space, location,
and subject position
 hooks as African-American, feminist, woman, author,
educator
 “words emerge from suffering” (204)
 “Private speech in public discourse, intimate
intervention, making another text, a space that enables
me to recover all that I am in language, I find so many
gaps, absences in this written text” (204).
 We are transformed, individually, collectively, as we
make radical creative space which affirms and sustains
our subjectivity, which gives us a new location from
which to articulate our sense of the world .
Faculty Advising: Reaching
our Hidden Students

 Faculty engagement in classes and in advising
sessions
 Teaching & Learning
 Building trust
 Cultivating self-efficacy
 Locating oneself
 Classroom as open space, as radical space
 Advising as core educational activity
 Our students are our advisees!
Case Study: Sexual
Assault Crises

 Quiet
 Lack of engagement
 Poor grades
 Using the office visit
 Shifting from class to advising
 The follow up
 Major vs non major
 Success?
Radical Space in the
classroom

 Breaking down barriers in classroom
 Using their language
 What is okay to share
 Using Humor
 Graded comments as conversation
 Classroom space as advising space
 University space as advising space.
Case Study: Grief and loss

 22-30% of college undergraduates are in the first 12
months of grieving the death of a family member or of a
friend,
 35-48% are in the first 24 months (“Bereavement and
University Scholarship” 69).
 Academic performance also impacted
 Ability to concentrate, to read for sustained periods of time
 Stresses about changes related to the bereaved student’s
loss
 Financial aid changes
 Leaving campus frequently to be with family or to take
care of estate concerns.




English major case
studies

Unexpected, sudden loss family members
Beginning versus end of term
Unexpected challenges
Academic ramifications of loss—motivation to do course work
 “… it was also hurtful when the teacher didn’t acknowledge that it
happened at all.
 Openness with adviser and instructors
 Identity and the need for community
 I don’t want the grief to define me as a person…it’s easy to assume
that people can go through tragedies such as these alone, that if a
strong person is subject to loss they will have an easier time
overcoming it. That isn’t true I don’t think, everyone deals with grief
in different ways and even the strongest person would still benefit
from having someone else there to listen to them during their
struggles.
 Search for meaning
 “none of this feels important”
 Creative impact
What not to say?

 Offering platitudes
 Minimizing the problem
 Giving unsolicited advice
 Providing a Religious or Philosophical Perspective
 Claiming to know how the student feels
 Avoidance
 Asking inappropriate questions
 Blaming the victim
What can you do?
 Listen

 Connect
 Be open
 Recognize that healing is highly individualized process,
no matter the crisis.
 Don’t force timeline but help student understand the
semester or the class doesn’t stop
 Maybe withdrawal is appropriate
 Finding meaning to process
 Importance of relating their story, the crisis to trusted
source
 “Some theorize that one of the most important outcomes
of trauma-related cognitive processing in general (JanoffBulman, 1992; Taylor, 1983, and bereavement-related
cognitive processing, more specifically (Bower et. Al,
1998, Stein et al., 1997), is finding meaning in the
experience).”
Resources for Hidden
Students in Crisis

CAPS
Women’s Center
Advising office hours
Share books and literature pertaining to situation, if
students asks.
 Peer referrals
 Other service offices that may help with resulting issues




 SSD, Health Center
 Hope
 “Hope is the active cognitive process of moving toward
these goals.”
Activity

 Connecting your personal experiences, your narrative,
to your students.
Return to radical
openness

 “Our living depends on our ability to conceptualize
alternatives, often improvised. Theorizing about this
experience aesthetically, critically is an agenda for
radical cultural practice. For me this space of radical
openness is a margin - a profound edge. Locating
oneself there is difficult yet necessary. It is not a 'safe'
place. One is always at risk . One needs a community
of resistance. “ (206)