Academic advisors around campus are beginning to clear their walls, empty their bookshelves and box up the contents of their desk drawers.
And then they’ll put it all back in their new offices.
The Success Advising Center is located on the lower level of the Elliott Student Union. It will replace the five separate advising centers currently in operation across campus.
Director of Success Advising Ken Schueller said some advisors will be seeing students in the SAC Monday and all advisors will be seeing students in the SAC by Wednesday.
Paula Brant, Natalie Peirce and Kristin Salas will serve as senior academic success advisors.
Schueller said the focus will be on making sure relationships are built between students and the success advisors to make sure students feel comfortable addressing certain issues. He said they want to begin building those relationships as soon as possible.
“This model is going to put a lot of emphasis on proactive and intentional meetings with freshmen,” he said, “so we can develop a relationship, make sure they’re connected and start off on the right track.”
Schueller said proactively engaging with students and building relationships will make any support required later more effective.
“In the old model, if we get a semester check and they’re going ‘Wow, this person needs help,’ when I go knock on their door in the residence hall, I feel like I’m the academic bill collector,” he said. “They don’t know who I am… I want to build a relationship with that student ahead of time so that when that does happen… I want them to feel more like ‘That’s somebody who cares and wants to help me.’”
Salas said advisors reached out to incoming freshmen almost immediately and advisors will be following up with the contact made over the summer as soon as the SAC opens.
“We want to bring them in, and we really want to focus on what went really well in high school. What didn’t go well? What things do we need to do right now and put into place so they can do well in college,” she said.
Schueller said the new advising model is aimed at improving retention by helping new students feel connected to the institution.
“I’ve never met a student when they were coming into the university, first conversation with them and they say, ‘I really intend on just going a year and then dropping out,’” he said. “I’ve never had that conversation. Yet, they do. So, why do they? The research shows us that they didn’t feel connected.”
Having a single location will help improve that holistic, individualized plan by allowing advisers to have much smaller caseloads. Godard estimated advising caseloads were 500-700 students per adviser on average. Under the new model in the new location, caseloads are projected to be under 300 students per advisor.
“That also was a restriction of having five (advising) centers,” Schueller said. “If I had no more personnel, but now we gained an extra hundred people in a particular program that was growing, we had to suck it up rather than disperse it amongst the whole team.”
Schueller said he wants to work with his team help change the culture of academic advising at UCM.
“My background is career development,” he said. “My senior advisors are very seasoned advisors. Theirs is more advising experience. Between the two of those things, that’s what’s going to make us a strong team. I’m more visionary beyond graduation; they’re very adept on what takes a person from one step to the next. We can meld those two things together.”
Construction of the SAC began over the summer after being approved by the Board of Governors May 30. The job was awarded to Reasbeck Construction Inc. for $693,875. Provost/Chief Learning Officer Mike Godard said construction is on schedule and is within the budgeted amount approved by the Board of Governors.
Godard said many offices and groups have made the transition into a centralized area work.
“There has been a massive coordinated effort to make it all happen,” he said. “FPO has been involved with everything from the beginning… The Office of Technology has played a role in that as well. Enrollment Management, Student Experience and Engagement, all the academic colleges; I mean, everyone has really come together to make sure it is a coordinated effort.”
He said he expects a few hiccups along the way but said there haven’t been any major concerns.
Brant said she expects an adjustment period while the students and the advisors figure out the new model and the changes implemented but said she doesn’t think it will take too long to start seeing positive results from the change.
“I think we can definitely see some results by the end of this year,” she said. “I’m hoping this freshmen class has an increase in retention over the last few years’ retention. It’s a growing year, a lot of changes and confusion, probably, on the students’ part for a little while… But I think by the end of this year we could see results. And then each year it should get better.”
Godard said the new advising model will be more holistic and will focus more on building relationships between students and their advisors.
Godard said the intention is to proactively identify potential issues such as finances or mental health rather than address them after they occur and get students in touch with the resources available.
In addition to academic success advisors, students now have a designated financial aid counselor. In the future, students will have a career development coordinator as well who will help with preparing students for internships or job opportunities. Godard said the career development coordinators will be assigned throughout the fall semester.
“Questions that are going to be asked might be a bit more intrusive than students are used to,” Godard said. “Like, ‘Are there any issues with paying your bill?’ because we want to be able to get ahead of those things and make sure we put them in touch with a financial aid counselor who’s already assigned to the student, or someone in student accounts to kind of make sure we make arrangements and not put things off.”
Schueller said students will be hired and available to help students on a peer-to-peer level as academic success coaches. He said 16 have been hired so far and the goal is to hire 42.
Senior Academic Success Advisor Natalie Peirce said the ability to work with other advisers will help both the students and the advisers.
“I think the thing I am most excited about is the synergy we are creating, with vast amounts of knowledge in five different centers moved into one new, great space,” she said.
Another aspect of the new advising model is to turn much of the student advising over to the faculty in their programs at the end of their college careers. Schueller said the faculty has specific expertise within a certain area that will benefit students beyond navigating the nuances of completing a degree.
“If somebody has given their life, so to speak, the professional part of their life at least, to research to the level I have a Ph.D. in my chosen subject, then I’m probably fairly connected and know this field better than anybody else on campus,” he said. “The faculty can talk to you about your major better than I can. So, at some point, I want them fully engaged and the expectation is that they’re also mentoring you along the way.”
Although there are bound to be bumps in the road and lessons learned along the way, there seems to be a sense of excitement about the possibilities provided by this new model.
“I think it is exciting,” Brant said. “It’s different. Not everybody likes change. But I’m really just looking forward to seeing how this whole proactive model can work because we know it works because we’ve seen it happening at other institutions… To really put it into practice here, I’m just really excited to see the results.”