Student-first advising: The evolution of UAA’s advising system

The shift in UAA’s advising system began in April 2022 when Chancellor Sean Parnell sent out a memorandum to the provost and vice chancellor of Student Affairs, Denise Runge, charging her with creating a working group to create a “student-first” approach to academic advising.

In an interview with The Northern Light, Parnell said that there was inconsistency between the experience of students under first-year advising and students who transitioned to advisors in the various university colleges after their first year.

“There were gaps there,” he said, and “people were falling through the cracks … It clearly needed improvement.”

After becoming Chancellor, Parnell said that he was hearing from different groups and individuals that there were issues.

“If I’m hearing it several times, it’s definitely something to pay attention to.”

Parnell’s memo recognized key challenges with academic advising.

Parnell wrote that First Year Advising’s centralized model did not “serve students in all academic colleges, campuses, or programs,” that the decentralized model of advising across colleges led to inconsistent advising experiences, that these practices often led to redundancies, and that caseloads varied between advisors.

In an email to The Northern Light, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Denise Runge wrote that she worked with Parnell “to launch the committee that ultimately recommended the advising changes we are now implementing.”

According to her email there were a few issues that caused them to look for changes, including a larger than expected number of advising related problems and complaints from students and parents regarding long wait times for appointments.

She wrote that “survey data from UAA students … showed dissatisfaction with advising, including comments about how difficult it can be to ‘find’ the correct advisor for a particular program, not knowing how to access advising support, and difficulties in getting appointments.”

In fall 2022 Valerie Robideaux became the interim executive director of Advising to take on changing advising at UAA. In an interview with The Northern Light, Robideaux said that the goal with this new advising system was to make both the student and advisor experience consistent.

“Some advisors had student caseloads – the population of students that they work with – in the 300s or 400s. Some had them in the 200s. Some had them in the one-thousands,” said Robideaux, “But they were all in the same position at the university, meaning they’re all being paid the same amount.”

Robideaux said that under the new structure, advisors will have similar caseloads, somewhere between 350 to 400 students.

Now, instead of reporting directly to deans, advisors will report to one of three academic advising directors who have a “dotted line of connection” to the dean of the college they represent. Though advisors no longer report directly to the deans, the deans will still be involved with advising and have a connection to those advising directors.

This new system is also trying to address the issue of advisor turnover at UAA.

Parnell said the issue of turnover is a “problem all throughout the university,” and that “we have trouble throughout our employee ranks attracting and retaining employees because our pay is typically lower.”

Under the previous system, some advisors had career advancement opportunities while some did not. Robideaux said this new system will work to combat advisor turnover by creating a “career ladder system,” where advisors can move up to higher positions after becoming proficient in their position.

Under this centralized system, First Year advising no longer exists. First year advisors will become a part of one of three academic advising cohorts. One will serve the College of Health and another the College of Arts and Sciences. The last cohort covers the College of Business and Public Policy, the College of Engineering, and the Community and Technical College.

Students who do not yet know what degree they are seeking will still have access to an advisor, said Robideaux.

“Technically ... the exploratory major is under the College of Arts and Sciences programs.” There will still be an advisor who exists to help these students, she said.

Under this new system, the First Year advising program no longer exists. The First Year advising program was created in 2018, said Robideaux, but what UAA learned during that time with that advising program isn’t being thrown out.

“Now we’re kind of expanding that model into the rest of professional academic advising.” Said Robideaux, “First Year advising will kind of be the guiding principle on how we work with our first and second year students.”

As this new system continues, Robideaux said that there will be ongoing conversations about how to support exploratory students who may have a specific interest they wish to explore.

“For instance, a student who’s still exploratory but knows they’re interested in a health profession –  how can the College of Health advising team accommodate that? Is there a go-to person within that unit that the exploratory advisor and the College of Arts and Sciences team can work together [with] on how to support exploratory students in really common ways?”

By centralizing the advising experience, said Robideaux, students should be able to have standard experiences across colleges, meaning that even if a student completely changes their degree or college, the process of finding and meeting with an advisor should stay the same.

Previously, some colleges used certain technology and practices while others did not during advising appointments. By standardizing the experience, advisors and students will be expected to use the same technology and methods, making measuring effectiveness easier than it was under the previous system, said Robideaux.

“We’re going to be able to track and be able to see, okay, do the students who have one or two academic appointments with an advisor [...] have a better retention rate? Do they have better credit conditions? Do they have better term GPA’s?”

“All the advisors are going to be incorporated with their appointment schedule in Navigate – that compliments the mobile app – so students will be able to go in and schedule appointments with advisors that way.”

Advisors will also be reaching out to students to schedule advising appointments as a part of advising campaigns throughout the year. Students should be hearing from their advisors about the upcoming semester shortly.

Robideaux said that they are still developing practices that come with this new advising system. Under the new centralized model, Robideaux is still working to figure out how best to address first and second year college students who may have different advising needs from students with more credits and who may be more familiar with UAA.

The system will likely continue to keep changing, said Robideaux, but there will likely be a stronger baseline of what this new system looks like in the fall.

“The vision that we have right now for student advising is to be a student-first advising team continuously evaluating and improving practices.” Said Robideaux, “We’re always learning more about the best approaches to work with students because we want to keep our ear to what other schools are doing and to make sure we’re leaving room for campus feedback.”

Advisors will also be a part of working groups with other advisors outside of their unit. These working groups will look at advisor onboarding, advisor professional development, student communications, and campus feedback.

When it comes to evaluating campus feedback, Robideaux says that the campus feedback group will look at “putting some surveys and focus groups and recommendations for how we can continue to assess with different stakeholder groups on campus– so faculty, staff, students– on the experience of advising, and feedback on what we are considering to be our student first advising.”