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Advisement in the College of Arts and Sciences

Group 4: Michelle, Roxana, Raven, and Ramona

Introduction:
How can the College of Arts and Sciences improve their instruction, communication, and
college structure to better ensure the success of their students? Provided are the steps and signs
students can keep a lookout for to ensure they’re receiving quality advisement.

Methodology:
1. Identified the issue regarding advisement in the College of Arts and Sciences.
2. Sought out other colleges here at the university, attempting to see if they also had the
same issues with advisement
3. Researched LoboAchieve, specifically the advisors, along with the appointment hours
and available amount of time for each appointment.
4. Looked into the college of arts and sciences advisor list
5. Compared the three colleges (as seen in figure 1)
a. Gathered number of advisors along with their departments
b. Identified the ratio of students to one advisor compared to other colleges
6. Defined (1) what an advisor’s job consists of, and (2) why an advisor-student relationship
is important, (3) how an advisor helps the student, and (4) how the student helps the
advisor.

Research:
Through our research, we found that there are not enough advisors for students to get
accurate, good information. The advisors are not knowledgeable of class information and options
for elective courses and upper-division classes. This causes students to take classes that do not
apply to their career path. We found that there are nationally used advising tactics that can be
applied to the College of Arts and Sciences and across UNM as a whole.
According to academicimpressions.com, there are six primary methods that university
administration employs to measure the effectiveness of their advisor’s student impact. Three of
which are effective, as follows: student feedback, quality of student interaction and engagement,
and accuracy and thoroughness; three of which are not effective: number of contacts an advisor
makes, time on calls with students, and student retention rates.
Student feedback far surpasses whether an advisor is “good” or “bad”. The site suggests
using advising surveys to specifically identify the strengths and weaknesses of the advising
department as well as considering emotional feedback from the student population. Besides
university surveys, however, what other resources are available for advisors to find honest
student feedback? Other than loboachieve, there are no external sources for students to provide
feedback to their advisors. While a “Rate My Advisors” website has been proposed, critics point
out that most student-advisor relationships aren’t as quantitative as a student-professor
relationship because advisement is more emotionally-driven. There is no “homework” that can
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be quantitatively analyzed except for a degree plan, which most students are not well familiar
with, hence their need for an advisor.
Insofar as the quality of student interaction, accuracy, and thoroughness goes, academic
impressions recommend use of a qualitative rubric “to assess advisor performance and provide
constructive feedback to the advisor” using observation, notes, email reviews, and listening.
These techniques are not intended for students; however, they’re intended for administrators.
Ineffective advising techniques include the number of contacts an advisor makes, time on
calls with students, and student retention rates. Number of contacts refers to the number of times
an advisor personally reaches out to their student on a regular basis. Unfortunately, this approach
prioritizes quantity over quality and does little to surpass UNM’s “meet with your advisor once a
semester” student requirement. Time on calls with students is mostly a penalty for advisors who
spend too much time with one student, ruining time management for other appointments.

Graphics, graphs, table:

Figure 1:
Total number of students at UNM (estimate): 25,000
Number of Number of Number of undergraduate
Undergraduate students Advisors students per advisor

School of 1,742 12 145


engineering

College of Arts and 6,116 21 291


Sciences

College of 1,337 7 191


Education
Figure 2:
College of Arts and Sciences advisement stated goals and purpose:

Discussion:

Results:

The information we researched helped us address the problem regarding advisors in the
College of Arts and Sciences by providing us with the unfair ratio between advisors and students.
When reviewing this ratio, it was obvious that students were receiving poor advisement due to
the fact that they were only receiving minimal time with a small number of advisors. By
increasing the number of advisors, and providing with accurate information on those advisors,
students can excel throughout their college education. Students depend on these advisors when
choosing classes, and following the path to their degree, and if this advisement isn't up to par,
students will lose out on their necessary classes, which leads to a negative impact on their degree
completion. With the ideas we've given to fix these advisement issues, students should be able to
happily complete their degree, without the stress of not having enough time with their advisors,
not getting the right courses and more of the unnecessary problems in this category.
Our Solutions:

We have come up with a few solutions based on this information we have collected. We
found that there are too many students for each advisor, so having more advisors is necessary so
that everyone can have adequate time with each advisor and the advisors can have a file on each
of their students. Keeping track of 300 students to advise can be extremely difficult and
overwhelming. So, graduate students or master’s students can advise undergraduates who are in
the same college as they were. So, a higher-level graduate student from the college of education
can advise an undergraduate student who is also in the college of education. Student or peer
advisement can cut down on the number of students per advisor and increase the quality of
advisement and accuracy as well.

Having a file on each student can help with the accuracy of advisement and can make the
time spent with each student more valuable. If each advisor had a running file on each student,
they could jump into what the student needed advising on or helping the student stay on track.
The students could get what they need out of the short advisement time and not spend the whole
15 minutes summarizing who they are and what they need and then not getting what they need.
The file could contain a summary from the last meeting, and any filled out paperwork, course
suggestions, or fliers given to the student at any point in time during a meeting and this would be
cumulative over the students' college career. Keeping a student with one advisor through their
undergrad years would help the advisors get to know the student better over time as well, this
would help with any confusion and with keeping the file together over time.

Advisors need to be educated on what classes to take and when. If the college can they
could have a list of courses that should be taken and which semester if they can be taken earlier
and or what year. They can have this available to everyone and it would be based on your chosen
path. This would take extra work in the beginning but would cut down confusion and
misadvising over time. This document would be cumulative and would stay with the students'
file.

Conclusion:

Throughout our research, we found many issues regarding advisement in the College of
Arts and Sciences, primarily the lack of advisement time provided to students. The solutions
listed above provide a concise plan on how the College of Arts and Sciences can achieve greater
advisement, and while there might be plenty to choose from, the best methods include hiring
more advisors and keeping an updated file on every student. This would provide students with
more advisement time in addition to concise advisor knowledge regarding their course choices
and, ultimately, career path. By providing these tools, students will achieve greater outcomes
with their degree and receive better assistance when visiting with an advisor. Students’ visits will
be more productive since students will have a better understanding of their classes, credits, and
whether they are on track based on their degree of choice.
SOURCES

ChinGChinG 15916, Wetlab WalterWetlab Walter 4, Kfxkfx 648512, Anonymous


PhysicistAnonymous Physicist 20.4k84182, HadiHadi 1, & ScientistScientist 7. (n.d.). Is
there a "Rate my Advisor" type website? Retrieved from
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/76111/is-there-a-rate-my-advisor-type-
website
College of Arts & Sciences. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://artsci.unm.edu/advisement/advisement-staff.html
Ohrablo, S. (2019, February 06). Academic Advising Metrics: Are We Measuring the Right
Things? Retrieved from https://www.academicimpressions.com/blog/academic-advising-
metrics/
Smith, B. (n.d.). 10 Questions to Ask Your Academic Advisor. Retrieved from
https://www.collegexpress.com/articles-and-advice/majors-and-academics/blog/10-
questions-ask-your-academic-advisor/

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