Academic advisor

Academic advising is, according to the National Academic Advising Association, "a series of intentional interactions with a curriculum, a pedagogy, and a set of student learning outcomes. Academic advising synthesizes and contextualizes students' educational experiences within the frameworks of their aspirations, abilities and lives to extend learning beyond campus boundaries and timeframes."

Academic advising traces its beginnings to the earliest of American colleges including Harvard University. The book Academic Advising: A Comprehensive Handbook,sponsored by the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA), contains chapters on the historical foundations, theory, current practices, ethics, and legal issues of academic advising.

According to Kramer (as cited in Harrison, 2004), the history of faculty as academic advisors can be traced back to 1841 at Kenyon College. At that time, the college required students to choose a faculty member to be their advisor. The faculty member would then help the student determine what courses they needed to take in order to graduate.

Of significance to the profession of academic advising are the Standards and Guidelines for Academic Advising that have been developed by the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) and endorsed by the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA). These Standards and Guidelines are available at the NACADA web site. The Standards and their accompanying Guidelines cover thirteen areas from Mission to Assessment. The current Standards and Guidelines were last updated in 2005.

A variety of approaches exist to academic advising, each of which is informed by the goals of the advisor-student interaction. Three principle models of advising include developmental advising, prescriptive advising, and intrusive advising.

Developmental advising was first introduced by Crookson in 1972. This approach is focused on helping students explore and define academic, career and life goals and pathways, and develop problem-solving and decision-making skills through collaborative and process-oriented advising. Fostering a relationship between the advisor and student is critical to this model, which is based primarily on adult development theory and student development theory. Although many studies have shown that students generally prefer this approach it can require a greater commitment of time and resources compared to other advising models.

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