Office of the Provost
Accreditation
Academic Advising
Topic: How does WSU approach the need for academic advising?
Recent challenges/opportunities: The past year was the provost-supported Year of the Advisor. It provided the opportunity to encourage a university-wide focus on academic advising and advisors, and to develop strategies for greater advisor professional development. A challenge was to balance large advisor workloads with increased responsibilities, new technology, advisor training, and student satisfaction with advising.
Actions in response to challenges and opportunities:
- Development of a career ladder for advisors
- Updating of the Academic Advising Coordinator HR series
- Development of Core Advising Responsibilities by the advising community
- A pilot launched to decouple advising and registration
- Updating of the Academic Advising Strategic Plan to provide clear goals for the future of the advising program
Current/future areas of emphasis or next steps:
- An Advising Training Coordinator was hired to develop a comprehensive program to address advisor competency, use of technology, and professional development
- Decoupled advising and registration will be available to most students to relieve heavy advising loads, and to increase student satisfaction and responsibility
- A policy for service indicator (holds) use has been developed and will be vetted with a variety of units who place holds on student accounts
- A refined annual review with revised performance indicators for professional advisors will provide assessment data by which to revise and improve the training protocol, individual advising practice, and the system advising program
Sources for more information:
NWCCU standards reference: 2.D.3, 2.D.10