An Academic Advising Model

8/12/2019 An Academic Advising Model

1/7

n cademic dvising ModelTerry OBanionThis classic article, upon which many of the subse-quent articles reflect, originally appeared in 1972 inthe Junior College Journal volume 42, pp. 62, 64, 66-69) and is reprinted with both permission anddeep appreciation.

The purpose of academic advising is to helpthe student choose a program of study whichwill serve him in the development of his totalpotential. As such, academic advising is a centraland important activity in the process of educa-tion. Academic advising occurs at least onceeach term for every student in the college; fewstudent personnel functions occur as often oraffect so many students. But while there is gen-eral agreement concerning the importance ofacademic advising for the efficient functioningof the institution and the effective functioningof the student, there is little agreement regard-ing the nature of academic advising and whoshould perform the function.

The community college, as with many of itseducational practices, has too eagerly adoptedan academic advising model practiced in four-year colleges and universities. In that model, ac-ademic advising has been faculty advising with every faculty member an advisor. When thequestion was raised regarding the appropri-ateness of this model for the community collegein a discussion at the 1964 Chicago conferencethat launched the Carnegie study, a leading stu-dent personnel educator from a major universi-ty replied: Of course this model is appropriatefor the junior college. Faculty members shoulddo the advising regardless of the institution.

Many community college educators feel, how-ever, that a different model may be more ap-propriate for the community college and forcommunity college students. This articleproposes a model based on a logical sequence ofsteps to be followed in the process of academicadvising. The model, while geared to the com-munity college, would probably be adaptable tofour-year colleges and universities as well.The Process of cademic dvising

What is the process of academic advising?Too often, programs have been planned on thebasis of available personnel (such as faculty) or

on the basis of some philosophical rationale thathas been shoddily stated, if stated at all. Seldomhave programs been constructed and coordinat-ed on the basis of the process or nature of aca-demic advising.

The process of academic advising includes thefollowing dimensions: (1) exploration of lifegoals, (2) exploration of vocational goals, (3)program choice, (4) course choice, and (5)scheduling courses.

Ideally, the college would provide the studentwith a variety of experiences in each of these di-mensions. The experiences would hopefullyoccur in a sequential order, as indicated. Thecollege that is dedicated to helping studentsachieve their maximum potential-and all com-munity colleges subscribe to such a philoso-phy-will provide students with professionalpersonnel who can help them focus on the ques-tion: How do I want to live my life? Few stu-dents have had opportunities to explore thisquestion in an intensive and meaningful way;college should be an experience especially de-signed for such exploration. Without such anexploration, a student would not be able to de-cide how to use his skills and interests in a voca-tion.

Vocational goals are life goals extended intothe world of work. What a person is and wantsto be (life goals) determines what he does (voca-tional goals). The relationship between life goalsand vocational goals is intricate and involved;educators are understandably frustrated in theirattempts to help students make decisions inthese areas. But because it is a difficult processin education is no reason to avoid it. Many pro-grams of academic advising flounder becausethey begin at step three with p rogram choice.It is assumed that students have already madechoices regarding life goals and vocational goalswhen they enter the college-a questionable as-sumption for college students in general and aharmful assumption for community college stu-dents in particular.To Select a Program

Once the college has provided an opportunityfor goal explorations through summer advisinggroups, encounter groups, occupational classes,

NACADAJournal Fall 1994olume 14 (2)


2/7


3/7

Terry O Baniontors could participate in these two steps, butcounselors should have major responsibility.

Counselors can prepare materials for studentsto explore before the students ever come tocampus. Special group meetings can be formedin the summers to help students explore life andvocational goals. The majority of communitycollege students should enroll in special coursesin personal development, occupational explora-tion, value seminars, encounter groups withcounselors to allow for a more thorough andmeaningful exploration before choosing specificprograms. Regardless of the methods used, stu-dents should have assistance from professionalcounselors to make decisions before they moveon to step three, program choice.

Once vocational goals have become fairly spe-cific, or at least identified as unclear, decisionsregarding choice of programs offered by thecollege become easier. As the student exploresvocational goals with a counselor, he reviews thevarious programs offered by the college and se-lects a program or an area of programs that in-terests him. At this point professional coun-selors could continue with the advising processthrough steps three and four, or these stepscould become the responsibility of instructionalpersonnel or special personnel employed for ac-ademic advising.

When a student has selected the courses he isto take for the term, he then registers and ar-ranges a schedule of classes. Some colleges havemoved to computer registration, but many stilluse professional personnel to help studentsmake decisions regarding scheduling. Neithercounselors nor instructors are necessary, exceptin very special cases, to make scheduling a suc-cessful ending to the process of academic advis-ing. A selected group of sophomores, speciallytrained, can assist other students in schedulingas well as professionals. More and more, col-leges will employ counselor-aides to assist inscheduling. Many students, of course, need noassistance in this step; some need no assistancein any of the steps.

While the brief overview above indicates areasof general responsibility for academic advisingin terms of the model of the process proposed,the question still remains: Yes, but who shoulddo academic advising? T his question cannot beanswered for individual institutions because ananswer depends on resources and personalbiases of administrators.

In reality, who does advising is probably notas important as the philosophy of the institution

12

that supports the academic advising programand the commitment and understanding withwhich the counselor or instructor approachesthe process.

There are some factors pro and con, however,that may be helpful in deciding on which groupof professionals should have major responsibilityfor academic advising. In the following sectionthe discussion centers on who should assist stu-dents in steps three and four (program choiceand course choice). The writer feels, as he hasindicated, that steps one and two should be per-formed by professional counselors and step fiveby student assistants.

The reasons that colleges give for using coun-selor systems of advising are varied. One of themost usual reasons given is that the student is awhole person. The implication here is that thecollege should not fragment the student intopersonal, academic, and vocational parts by hav-ing counselors relate to his personal charac-teristics and instructors relate to his academicand vocational characteristics. In the counseloracademic advising system the counselor assiststhe student with personal questions of life goals,helps him with decisions regarding vocationalgoals, and provides assistance with academic de-cisions regarding program and course choice.

ogical SequenceRelated to the rationale that the student is a

whole person is the recognition that the steps inacademic advising form a whole process. Stepsone through five form a logical sequence for in-dividual decision making and for institutionalprogramming. The effects of the program arebest realized if the program is organized as anintegrated sequence of events. If counselorsshould perform steps one and two by virtue oftheir competencies, then it follows that the pro-gram will probably be better coordinated andimplemented if counselors perform steps threeand four. Step five, of course, would be coordi-nated and supervised by counselors.

Effective counselors have had good programsof graduate preparation in which they have be-come skilled in listening to students and helpingthem in decision making. They also know howto interpret tests, an important part of programplanning. Community college instructors whocome from traditional liberal arts or teacher ed-ucation programs have not usually had suchpreparation. The decision-making process re-garding programs and courses is a most impor-

NACADAJournal Volume 14 (2) Fall 1994


4/7

tant process, and those professionals who arebest prepared to assist in such processes shouldbe made available to students.

Counselors who see only individual studentsin their private cubicles come into contact with avery small proportion of the student body. It isoften argued that in counselor advising systemscounselors are forced to relate with more stu-dents. Some administrators use this rationale tolaunch a counselor advising system because theyknow the value of counselor-student interre-lationships, and they wish to make such rela- .tionships available to a greater number of stu-dents. In colleges where counselors are alreadyworking at full capacity, such a proposal, ofcourse, would need to be accompanied by a re-quest for additional counseling staff.

Communicating Other ServicesCounselor advising systems are often ad-

vanced on the basis that such a program willgive the staff an opportunity to communicateother student personnel services to all students.Except through the orientation program thestudent personnel staff seldom has an oppor-tunity to communicate its services to all stu-dents. Since advising occurs each term for eachstudent, staff members can inform students re-garding financial aid, placement, personal coun-seling, student activities, individual testing, andother services. The academic advising systemcan become the vehicle through which many ofthe services of the student personnel programbecome available to students. In that way, aca-demic advising is not simply an additional serv-ice to be performed requiring new staff; it canbecome the service through which most otherservices are realized.

Counselors, in colleges where their expertiseis recognized and supported, do not usuallyteach subject matter courses and, therefore, aremore available to students for academic advisingconferences. When commuting and workingstudents are on campus, instructors are in class;counselors can be available during morning ses-sions, however, and many colleges have coun-selors available in the evening.

In addition to being available in the day andevening, counselors are also available in thesummer when the bulk of academic advisingshould occur for new freshmen. An excellentadvising program can be organized by coun-selors who see small groups of studentsthroughout the summer. It is possible to pro-.IACADAJournal Volume 14 (2) Fall 1994

Classics Revisitedvide orientation, testing, advising, and registra-tion for most new freshmen in a carefully or-ganized and coordinated summer program inwhich students spend no more than one or twodays on campus.

In a counselor advising system, the collegeand the educational process become part of thesubject matter specialties of the counselor.Counselors must know as thoroughly as possiblethe nature of the programs and courses offeredby the college, instructors, rules and regulations,graduation and transfer requirements, division-al and departmental requirements, tests and re-cords, and supportive agencies in the communi-ty. Counselors are freer to become specialists inthese areas than instructors who operate pri-marily from within a subject matter discipline.Perhaps because of this broader perspectivecounselors are less likely to recruit students tosubject matter than are instructors.

There are problems, of course, with a coun-selor academic advising system. One of the mostinsurmountable problems is that counselorsoften do not like or want to do academic advis-ing. Counselors often perceive academic advis-ing as a time-consuming, clerical process not de-manding of their professional competencies.Such perceptions are a natural outgrowth ofmost counselor education programs in whichcounseling is taught as a therapeutic process tobe made available on an individual basis only forthose with personal problems. Many counselorswant to be therapists; they have had little oppor-tunity to realize their skills in the larger role aseducators who can have considerable impact onthe educational process. Administrators whowish to use counselors as academic advisorsshould select them carefully and should providenumerous opportunities for their reeducation.

Program SpecializationIn larger colleges with extensive comprehen-sive programs it is too much to ask counselors to

become specialists in all phases of all programs.There is too much information and it changestoo often. Some colleges assign counselors to in-structional divisions as one way of keeping upwith size and change. While many colleges as-sign counselors to divisions to do the advising inthose divisions, several colleges have actuallybuilt offices for their counselors in the divisions.

Another problem with the counselor advisingsystem is that counselors can become perceivedby students and instructors as programmers

13


5/7

Terry O Banionrather than counselors. If the college does notfurnish a sufficient number of counselors foracademic advising, then counselors will indeedspend too much of their time with the nitty-grit-ty details of academic advising. If that happensthey become highly paid clerks whose greatercompetencies in helping students explore lifeand vocational decisions become lost in a flurryof forms and figures.

The reasons given for instructor systems ofadvising are also varied. One of the reasonsmost often given is that instructors know stu-dents better than counselors. Instructors meetstudents in class and have opportunities to knowtheir interests, skills, problems, and reactionsmuch better than counselors. If the instructor isgiven a small advising load of students who arealso in his classes, he does have an opportunityto become well acquainted with students.

It is also argued that the instructor is the ex-pert in curriculum and instruction and thusknows the college best. Instructors can provide avaluable experiential background for the stu-dent who explores a program in which the in-structor is a professional. If instructors canmove beyond the confines of their own subjectmatter disciplines, they can reflect the broaderprogram of the college. Academic advising is, ofcourse, intricately related to curriculum and in-struction, and when instructors do advisingthere is greater opportunity to integrate theprocess of advising with the program of curricu-lum and instruction.

Instructor Interaction Through dvisingA number of leading educators have sug-

gested that faculty advising is the best way to in-tegrate instructors into the student personnelprogram. The college that encourages instruc-tor interaction with students outside the class-room often does so primarily through an in-structor advising system. In this way theinstructor is forced to learn more about the in-stitution and hopefully comes to see the studentin different ways: at least the student has an op-portunity to see the instructor in a differentrole. When instructors volunteer for these out-of-class activities, they are likely to be better ad-visors and better instructors. When instructorsare required to participate in academic advising,both advising and instruction may suffer.

Administrators often argue in favor of facultysystems of advising on the basis of lower costs.With the great increase in numbers of students

in community colleges, a personalized advisingsystem can be expensive. It appears to makesense that the way to keep costs down is to dis-tribute students among instructors for advising.If instructors are given released time to performthis function, however, it is questionable wheth-er it is less expensive to use instructors in pref-erence to counselors. If instructors are not givenreleased time, advising becomes for many a per-functory activity.

It is also argued that instructors will get theadvising job done, whereas counselors are proneto probe psyches rather than assist students inwhat is often perceived as a relatively simpleprocess of decision making. Where counselorshave communicated their program as the psy-chic repair center students may have more con-fidence in instructors for the advising process.

There are problems, too, with an instructoracademic advising system. Often the program ofacademic advising is poorly conceived and coor-dinated; instructors are left to fend for them-selves. Since academic advising has been a tradi-tional function of instructors they are expectedto function adequately. Without appropriate in-stitutional support and direction , instructorsmay perform this function with disinterest andin ways that may do more harm than good forstudents.

Instructors can also become too narrowlyfocused in regard to their subject matter spe-cialization. Some instructors feel they are hiredto teach their subject; institutional efforts to getthem involved in other programs are viewed asimpositions and sometimes as even encroach-ment on academic freedom.

Another problem that is sometimes raised inregard to instructor advising systems is thatsome instructors use the system to recruit stu-dents to their classes or to classes in their de-partments. It is easy for an instructor to makesubtle suggestions to students regarding coursesthey should take; some instructors are not subtleat all in their advising.

Few instructors have the time necessary forin-service education designed to help them be-come effective advisors. If they teach full loadparticipate on committees, and sponsor clubsand organizations, there is little time left for in-service ed ucation. Unless there is an oppor-tunity for instructors to learn about test inter-pretation, programs and courses, rules and reg-ulations, transfer requirements, and many otheraspects of the academic advising process, thercannot be expected to perform effectively.


6/7

If instructors are to participate in the processof academic advising in a professional way, thensome important conditions must exist:

1. Academic advising must be recognized bythe college as an important activity in the life ofthe institution. This means that instructors arerewarded for their participation perhaps by rec-ognition of their contributions at the time ofevaluation for rank and payor in reduced classloads.

2. There must be a sensible student load. Inthe Carnegie report, Raines suggested thatthere be no more than 15 advisees without areduced teaching assignment.

3. There must be a continuing in-service pro-gram for all advisors, and a special, more inten-sive program for new instructors before theyare allowed to participate.

4. There must be special concern for the ad-visory skills of instructors, which means thatonly those who qualify should participate.

5. There must be an adequate number of pro-fessional counselors available to handle referralsas well as students who are undecided about lifeand vocational goals.

6. There must be sufficient clerical help avail-able to insure that instructors have informationwhen they need it and do not perform clericaltasks themselves.

7. Cooperation and coordination must existbetween the academic dean and the student per-sonnel dean to insure the best use of facultyrime in the best service to students.

8. Instructors must guard against using thesystem to recruit students into courses and pro-grams not of the students choice.

9. Finally, there must be a program of evalua-tion by students, instructors, and counselors inorder that sensible modification can be made ina system that is ever changing.

If these conditions are met, then it seems rea-sonable to believe that an instructor advisingstem can function as well as any other. If these

conditions are not met, then instructor advisings stems will continue to be the poorly designed,ossly ineffective systems they are in far too

many community colleges.

cademic dvising Team pproachIf the process of academic advising proposed

earlier is accepted as a viable model, then thequestion of who should perform the functionseems to be answered best in terms of a teamapproach. Each member participating in the.YACADAJournal Volume 14 (2) all 1994

lassics Revisitedprocess should contribute in terms of his com-petencies and interests.

The student is responsible for decision mak-ing throughout the process. He should explorethe special materials made available to him sothat he is informed about choices to be madeand about procedures. It is the student s respon-sibility to schedule his own courses but with thehelp of other students specially trained for thetask. With appropriate programmed materialsstudents can also select their own courses with aminimum of supervision. The students role inthe process will depend on his own experience,ability, and clarity of goals.

In the team approach counselors should haveresponsibility for helping students explore lifeand vocational goals. Ideally, such explorationshould occur in small personal interactiongroups during the summer for new students. Aprogrammed guide designed to help studentsexplore life and vocational goals could be devel-oped if face-to-face groups are not possible.Once students are attending college, there is stilla need to offer continuing opportunities for lifeand vocational goal exploration. Special semi-nars on occupations, experiential approaches tojob sampling, personal development courses,and voluntary encounter groups are only a fewof the ways the college can provide significantopportunities for students to discover meaningin their lives.

In addition to this direct involvement withstudents, counselors would prepare special in-formation for instructors and students to beused in the academic advising process. Coun-selors would also provide in-service educationactivities for instructors and student assistants.

The Role of the InstructorThe role of the instructor in the team ap-

proach would be in assisting students withchoice of program and courses. Once the stu-dent s general vocational area had been decidedupon, he would meet with selected instructors toreview the various programs offered by the col-lege in his chosen vocational area. When a spe-cial program is chosen (electronics technology,nursing, forestry, teaching), the student, withassistance from the instructor, would select thecourses for the immediate term and perhapsplan a sequence of courses for his tenure at thecommunity college.

This description of roles in regard to theprocess of academic advising is, of course, great-

15


7/7

Terry OBanionly oversimplified. Students do not always movefrom step to step in the logic of the proposedsystem. Some counselors and instructors willmove through more steps than they have re-sponsibility for. Since the process is a natural se-quence of human events, there will be muchoverlap from step to step. For these reasons it ismost important that the team approach to aca-demic advising be carefully conceptualized andcoordinated. Under the team approach, coordi-nation should be the responsibility of both thedean of students and the dean of instruction.

It may be easier to organize a system of aca-demic advising using counselors only or instruc-

tors only. Each approach has its merits and itsdifficulties. But it should also be possible tocombine the professional competencies of coun-selors and instructors in such a way that the ed-ucational planning of students results in well-formulated goals and sound decisions. Academ-ic advising occurs every term for every student;it is the prelude to the central activity of the col-lege-instruction. Certainly the college shouldorganize its resources to insure that this preludeis sufficiently effective so that the student willhave the greatest possible opportunity to dis-cover his potential through the college experi-ence.

Reprinted with permission of the junior College joumal (now Community College joumal), vol. 42, no. 6,1972. For more information or a sample copy of the Community College ournal please contact AACC,One Dupont Circle NW, Suite 410, Washington, DC, 20036. Phone: (202) 728-0200.

16 NACADAjoumal Volume 14 (2) Fall 1994

Documents

An Academic Advising Model