Joe Cuseo - ACADEEMIC ADVISEMENT:

Require students to confer with, and obtain a signature from an academic advisor before they can register for, add, or drop courses.

Educate academic advisors about the need to avoid the conception that advising is synonymous with course scheduling, and provide them with a substantive advisor orientation, training, and development program that prepares them to provide comprehensive developmental academic advising—i.e., personalized advising that relates students’ present academic experiences to their future life plans, and connects students with key campus-support professionals who can most effectively address their present needs and facilitate realization of their future plans.

Establish an advisor:student ratio (e.g., 1:20) that is conducive to developmental academic advising.

Provide special academic advising support for undecided students—e.g., pair them with advisors who are specially trained to work with students who are uncertain about their academic major and future career plans.

Periodically conduct group advising sessions, whereby students with similar academic or career interests (e.g., sociology majors) are advised together in order to promote peer support and collaboration with respect to academic and career planning.

Select and train peer academic advisors to support faculty advisors and facilitate the course-selection and registration process.

Develop a system for recruiting and selecting advisors to identify faculty advisors who have the interest and commitment needed to provide developmental academic advising (e.g., adopt advising experience/effectiveness as one criterion in the recruitment and selection of new faculty).

Develop an evaluation system that provides advisors with individual feedback on the quality of their academic advising.

Develop a system for recognizing and rewarding high-quality academic advising—e.g., have advising “count” in decisions about faculty retention, promotion or tenure, and in decisions about “merit pay” or salary increases.