Amberniqua Iglehart

Composition 1023.10

Donna Souder

February 26, 2007

Journal

Music Educator’s Journal—Mortenson, Gary

            This article was based around becoming a college professor at a music school.  However, the information that I found in this document was beneficial to explaining the attributes of a good academic adviser.  The characteristics found in this article are several that the academic advisers at Texas Woman’s University lack.  The author spoke of the fact that most teachers do not want to advise but they are assigned to do it.  “Advising takes considerable time, energy, and attention to detail” is how Mortenson described the task dreaded by many teachers.  He went into to detail explaining how important it was for an academic adviser to take the job seriously.  He also elaborates on the importance it is for the adviser to realize that every student is different and should be treated in that matter. 

            The author, Gary Mortenson, begins to write about other tasks that may go along with being a college teacher.  Recruiting is another subject that he went into detail about.  Recruiting becoming only about the money and little attention paid to the school was an interesting fact I found.  I never thought about it until I read the article.  The whole world has gotten to the point where all that matters is money.    It is said to say but it’s the honest truth.  Many college athletes look at who’s paying and how much before they even considered the quality of the education they will be getting.  Personally, I’d love to have someone pay for me to go to school but I wouldn’t want a scholarship to somewhere like Paul Quinn or Texas State University.  If I’m going to be wasting four years on my life on something, it’s going to be something that is going to benefit me in life.  Getting an education is important but if I never learn anything, having a degree isn’t going to help me when I have to perform in the working world.

Academic Advisement: An Untapped Resource—Wilder, Jerry

            This article spoke of academic advising in more of a scientific viewpoint.  Wilder wrote about how different scientist did studied how successful academic advising actually was, as well as some statistics that would help determine how successful advising was.  He spoke of the problems that come about when the idea of how well advising actually is.  The fact that a lot of students have to be advised and also the idea that advisers don’t take their advisees seriously are two factors that bring up more questions.  I believe that the author himself believes that advising is beneficial to the how well student does in college.  He elaborates on the idea that academic advising may be able to give the student confident and perform to the best of his or her abilities.  I believe this is true.  Consider a person who was well organized compared to a person who never had his or her things organized.  The individual that is well organized would always come out better simply because they had everything organized.  It makes it a lot easier for the individual and also allows the individual to have fewer things to worry about.  The same principle could be applied to a student that has been well advised.  He or she doesn’t have to worry about having enough credits to graduate or rather they are taking the appropriate classes to graduate.