This week at DGS, most of my time was dedicated to Express Advising. Students come to DGS on a drop-in basis only to ask quick questions about registering, their schedules, or anything else. Some of the students I met with had questions that took longer to figure out. For example, some students came in wanting to plan their courses for next semester. Usually that takes longer than a 10-15 minute drop-in. Overall, I had a good mix of questions I couldn't answer and had to ask another advisor, and questions that I could answer. Generally, I like express advising, especially for my internship because that means I get to meet with students. One big thing that I don't like is that I don't really have time to plan ahead, meaning I don't get to study the student, see what they have taken, see their test scores, past advising notes, etc. before meeting with the student. It is a bit uncomfortable calling a student back to my office without knowing much about them at all. However, I think that is why express advising is beneficial for me. It challenges me to recall information quickly and accurately. Thankfully, most students are patient with me if I have to ask another advisor a question or look something up for them.
Express advising also opened my eyes a bit more to the difficult job that our receptionist does. At one point, the entire lobby was full of students and there was a line out the door of students waiting to check in. She is in charge of getting all of those students checked in and letting all of the advisors know who is checked in and whether they are willing to see any advisor or their own specifically. She "sparks" the advisors to let us know who is waiting in the lobby. Spark is an instant messaging system. If I were the receptionist, I would probably get overwhelmed and frustrated.
I also continued to work on the DGS website. I have almost all of the bios for the advisors for the new website.
This week, I read "Academic Advising: A Cornerstone of Student Retention" (1978) which basically outlines a successful advising program. Crockett defines academic advising and then goes on to explain that the keys to a good advising program. Institutional commitment to advising, a clear institutional goal for advising, rewards for good advising, a quality process for hiring academic advisors, training for advisors, an advising handbook, knowledge about the students that the advisor will work with, development of relationships between students and advisors, an appropriate ratio of number of students to number of advisors, a system for making referrals for students to other resources, student satisfaction of advising, evaluation of the advising, and the appropriate structure of advising are all key components to a good academic advising program. I am unsure if many of these components are present at DGS. For example, I do not know if there is an advising handbook for Illinois advisors or if there is evaluation of services. I do know that advisors form relationships with students; however, I have not been able to do that because I do not have my own roster of students that I see. I was a part of the hiring of one of the advisors and the hiring committee has changed the process of hiring to be more comprehensive to truly find out if the applicant is genuine about helping students. Also, due to technology, I am able to pull up student files electronically, which proved to be helpful during express advising so that I can learn some information about the student while I was talking with them. Further, although I did not receive an award for advising, I did receive a thank you card from the director of DGS for helping at the Majors and Minors Fair. From experience, it is nice when somebody acknowledges hardwork. Overall, I agree with Crockett (1978), but I wonder if an updated version of this article would include professional development and advisors, so that they remain knowledgeable about the field.
This week, I spent approximately 30 minutes working on the website and 10 hours doing express advising and following up with students I met with during express.
I also spent about 45 minutes blogging and reading.
Crockett, D. S. (1978). Academic advising: A cornerstone of student retention. New Directions for Student Issues, 1978(3),
29-35. doi: 10.1002/ss.37119780306
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