Take My Advice — Please! Academic Advising at Cal

By Herman Lee

What kind of advising do students at Cal receive? Is this the best possible advising we can offer? Students, staff and faculty may wonder about this at times. Christina Maslach, the interim dean of the Undergraduate Division in the College of Letters and Science, opened with such questions at the Fall 2007 L&S Colloquium on Undergraduate Education. The event was held on September 19 to an unusually large audience in the Alumni House. Panelists from four departments on campus followed Maslach’s lead in what proved to be a thought-provoking discussion that ranged from the theoretical to the practical.

Each panelist approached the topic from a different perspective. Lisa Thomas, adviser for the College of Letters and Science, provided an overview of advising theory, with discussion of four specific styles. She began by citing the 2005 Noel-Levitz National Student Satisfaction and Priorities Report, based on a survey sample size of over 600,000, which found that students rated academic advising as one of the most important aspects of their educational experiences. She described four styles that are widely used and suggested that no single approach fits all advisors and all students, so she stressed the importance of using an integrated approach. 

The styles are described as follows:

• Prescriptive Advising – student and adviser relationship is based on authority and degree requirements, driven by registration cycles
• Developmental Advising – focus is on personal growth and empowerment using series of “building block” advising appointments to obtain outcome
• Intrusive (Proactive/Early Intervention) Advising – focus is on building connections and engagement, often used with at-risk students
• Mentoring Advising – faculty/grad students/assigned professionals work with students personally and academically with ideal goals in mind
• Derek Van Rheenen, director of the Athletic Study Center, went on to discuss the practical applicability of these theories of advising. Hertha Sweet Wong, a professor in the English department, and Anne Aaboe, Student Services Manager in the Molecular and Cell Biology department, concurred with the importance of using an integrative approach that draws from all four advising theories.

As each of the panelists shared, it was obvious that they used an integrative model of advising with differing levels of each approach. Van Rheenen saw that effectiveness of any approach could be greatly affected by two very common factors: time and mission.  On a large campus like Cal, staff and faculty may not be able to spend as much time with each student. Secondly, a department’s mission may somewhat clash with the goal of an approach. A mission for a department, for example, could be to help students become independent and self reliant, while the advising approach could be an intrusive model.

Professor Wong noted that while faculty members have an expertise in their respective fields, they have no formal training in advising. She walked through each of the advising models listed by the first speaker, and noted how she had drawn on each of these models as if by instinct, although naturally the mentoring model matched the situation of a faculty advisor most closely.

Though many factors can make it challenging to apply ideal advising philosophies in the real world of a major university, there are strategies to maximize one’s effectiveness as an advisor. Aaboe shared the importance of organizing and planning work carefully around important events such as academic deadlines, telebears appointment times and midterms and finals. 

When the panelists concluded their presentations, the audience split into small groups to discuss the ways that they use or could use the methods outlined by the panelists. The small groups also came up with questions for the panelists, which formed the basis of the last segment of the event. What type of creative ways can we use to collaborate and share information with other departments? Can a centralized system be set up to train advisers to understand all the support areas on campus? How do staff and faculty advisers evaluate their advising? Many difficult questions were raised with no simple solutions.  Addressing these issues will take time, hard work, and as Maslach, indicated in closing, “communication and collaboration across units is going to be really important.”