Advisors go to students

Charity may begin at home; so too may academic advising at the university.

Academic advisors from the university’s Cross College Advising Service have branched out into Sellery Hall and the Bradley Learning Community, serving all Lakeshore halls. Previously, advisors maintained one full-time advising office in the Chadbourne Residential College.

Cal Bergman, coordinator of academic programs for University Housing, says expanding on-site advising in the residence halls is part of an effort to weave the life of the mind into life itself by nurturing the development of formal and informal “learning communities.” Preliminary assessments indicate to Bergman that support for on-site advising will continue.

“University Housing has been seeking ways to incorporate academic services like advising into all of our residence halls as we develop learning communities,” he says.

This sort of collaboration makes sense: “University Housing has partnered with Cross-College Advising to transform academic advising for students who have yet to declare a major or are exploring their options. Many of those are first- and second-year students living in university residence halls. The CCAS is the only advising service on campus that specializes in helping undecided/exploring students. Our populations overlap significantly,” says Bergman.

Timothy Walsh, CCAS director, agrees wholeheartedly. Indeed, Walsh says that a community-oriented advising process really begins during the university’s Student Orientation and Advising (SOAR) program, which new students attend before they start their first semester. In fact, the entire SOAR advising component has been overhauled in concert with the goal of a more “organic” approach to undergraduate advising, Walsh says.

“During the last academic year, first-year students exploring majors were grouped according to their residence hall and assigned a CCAS advisor who would be working with their hall. In addition, the CCAS has pursued a number of other initiatives. We’ve established CCAS advisor liaisons with all residence halls. And we’ve launched a modest pilot program of CCAS student peer advisors, drawing upon our pool of highly-trained SOAR student advisors,” he says.

One of that company is Stephanie Sager, a sophomore from McFarland, Wis., majoring in psychology and social welfare. Sager, based in Sellery Hall, says the convenience of on-site advisors has encouraged res hall students to use the advising service.

“It’s much easier for students to just stop by and talk with an advisor than to call and make an appointment. And then remember to go to it,” she says, adding that scheduled as well as impromptu appointments are available.

Three full-time CCAS advisors — two academic, one career — shuttle between Sellery and CCAS headquarters in Ingraham Hall. Stacie Haen-Darden, a CCAS academic advisor since 1996, says that despite the miles she now logs between offices, she has no doubt that the arrangement pays dividends in the quality of service she’s able to provide to students.

“I’m can interact with the ‘whole’ student, which helps a great deal during advising appointments,” she says.

In fact, students responding to a satisfaction survey last spring were just about unanimous (98 percent) in rating overall CCAS service as good or excellent.

Other initiatives in the CCAS whole-student, learning-community approach to advising include efforts to help incoming students begin thinking about career options at an earlier stage in their education than they traditionally have, Walsh says.

“We’re focusing more on helping our undecided students think about what they might want to do after college as a way they can get a better grasp on what they might choose to study in college,” he says.

Last spring, the CCAS hired two full-time career advisors, Andrea Boulanger and Diana Maki, to expand the reach of the CCAS Career Exploration Center into the residence halls. In addition, on-site advisors have increased the number of evening group advising sessions and workshops, held in the halls and covering, of course, choosing a major, and also addressing such topics as deciding on a business career, careers for liberal arts students, selecting a biology major and more.

The on-site group sessions have been a big hit. “The number of students attending the evening group advising opportunities in the residence halls jumped from 310 in the fall of 1999 to more than 1,500 in the fall of last year,” Walsh says.

The partnership between CCAS and University Housing is in keeping with the overarching goal of more thoroughly building academic advising — and, by extension, the learning community concept — right into the student’s way of life, says Bergman.

“In a campus culture emphasizing the enhancement of undergraduate education, the development of learning communities has been identified as a primary vehicle for achieving that goal,” Bergman says.