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In an effort to increase retention, create leadership opportunities for students, and reduce costs, campuses are increasingly turning to peer mentor programs as one ideal solution. To help you as you develop or improve the effectiveness of your peer mentor program, we offer this Special Edition, bringing together experts from diverse institutions to offer their advice and lessons learned. In this edition, you will find the following complimentary articles: See Other Topics in Student Success

READ THE WHOLE SERIES:Developing a High-Performing and Productive Advising Department In the first two installments in the series, “Developing a High-Performing and Productive Advising Department,” I’ve discussed strategies for identifying, assessing, and meeting student, staff, and advisors’ needs. In this installment, I will discuss best practices to successfully implement some of the key strategies identified in this series by maximizing the use of technology through creative use of student information systems (ERPs). Understand Your Student Information System / ERP I encourage advising administrators to learn, in as much detail as possible, their student database system. While we commonly rely on experts in our IT departments or super users within our departments to provide us the data we need, advising administrators are the only ones who can effectively articulate the needs of their constituents to the programmers who are to retrieve data. When there is a gap between the end user (academic advising department) and the programmers (who may be experts in the use of software but know little about the needs of the advising department), data is often inaccurate and unusable. Understanding how to “speak the language” of the ERP system the institution uses allows advising administrator to creatively solve […]

READ THE WHOLE SERIES:Developing a High-Performing and Productive Advising Department In this series, “Developing a High-Performing and Productive Advising Department,” I’ve discussed strategies for identifying, assessing, and meeting student, staff, and advisors’ needs. Now I will discuss strategies for positively impacting departmental, college, and university-wide systems and contributing to the effective implementation of change. Be a Voice in Decision Making Institutions vary as to how they deliver academic advising and where the function resides. Sometimes it is housed in student affairs, sometimes in academic affairs within colleges and departments, and other times there is a cross-over or shared responsibility between academic and student affairs. No matter where advising is situated, academic advising is just one small part of a larger unit. If advising is housed within student affairs, there is a challenge contributing to academic decision-making, as the role of the advising department is often thought to be limited to implementing and communicating academic decisions to students. Even when the academic advising unit is located within academic affairs, there is a risk of being considered a limited support service role and thus being excluded from decision-making and change implementation. Let’s examine the implementation of a new curriculum as an example. Typically, […]

When training academic advisors at your institution, don’t overlook the relational and interpersonal skills that make great advisors. by Benjamin Forche, Academic Advisor, Patton College of Education, Ohio University, Joe Murray, MSHR, Director of University Advising Services, Florida Atlantic University, and Karen Thurmond, Director of Academic Advising and Degree Planning Resources, The University of Memphis with Daniel Fusch, Director of Research & Publications, Academic Impressions While many institutions provide technical and university-specific advisor training, the relational and interpersonal skills that make great advisors are often overlooked. After research in current theory on advisor skillsets for the twenty-first century, we reached out to three expert academic advising directors who bring both a deep knowledge of theory and a “from the trenches” perspective to the table. We asked them for this interview. Q. How is the 21st century academic advisor skillset changing? Karen Thurmond. This question may best be answered by defining 21st century academic advising. I have used the phrase to describe academic advising that contributes to student success by employing all the resources at our disposal. These resources include preparation in the form of advanced degrees that focus on academic advising as an academic and professional discipline (not available until this century), enhanced research activity in academic advising, […]