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.