Concordia College

What is Academic Advising?

At the April 30, 2001 meeting, the Faculty Senate passed the following:

“Concordia College definition of Academic Advisement should be as follows:

Advising should be understood as a dynamic process that assists students in exploring and defining educational, career, and life goals.  Advisors should recognize that students’ advising needs change at different points in their college careers.  The advisor/advisee relationship should encourage students to take responsibility for their own decisions and become proactive in the pursuits of their goals.”

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Advising is...

*a caring, concerned relationship

*process oriented

*facilitating the utilization of campus and community resources

*providing a role model

*concerned with educational development

*collaboration between academic affairs and student services

What is my role as an advisor?

• Review information with advisee -- this includes test scores and placement information, core requirements, major requirements, and available resources.
• Encourage advisees to be actively involved in the advising process -- do not choose classes for your advisee -- guide them while they make the decisions, but do not make decisions for them.
• Realistically appraise your advisees’ choices -- are they overly optimistic about the course load they can handle while working and participating in co-curricular activities?  Are they avoiding challenging courses to protect a GPA?  Are they taking courses to satisfy someone else’s goals?
• Responsible for rendering competent academic advisement to assigned advisees.  Competent advisement includes assisting students to understand and fulfill the core curriculum requirements as well as readily sharing information beyond planning the class schedule to enable students to be proactive in their pursuit of their academic and career goals.

What can I do to improve my advising skills?

1.  Listen constructively to hear all aspects of students’ expressed problems.

2.  Try to understand student concerns from the student point of view.

3.  Learn college policy and practice in sufficient detail to provide students with accurate, usable information. 

4.  Refer students to other resources when referral seems in their best interest.

5.  Set aside regularly scheduled time to meet the advising needs of your students.

6.  View long-range planning as well as immediate problem solving as part of the advising process.

7.  Share advising techniques, skills and concerns with colleagues who are also involved in advising.

8.  Participate in advisor training workshops that might include but not be limited to a workshop before the faculty member begins to advise, a follow-up workshop after they have begun to advise, summer workshop opportunities on advisement topics, mentoring on advisement by members of the evaluation committee during the regular evaluation process, and on-line resources.