ACADEMIC
ADVISING SUPPORT SERVICES
Unit
Annual Report
2002-2003
Academic Advising by the faculty is an integral
part of UMM's central mission and is considered part of teaching. The Academic Advising Support Service
(Advising) is the administrative arm of the advising system, reporting to the
office of the Vice-Chancellor and Dean John Schwaller. Advising staff establish, manage,
monitor, and improve the system; initiate campus discussion of advising issues;
design and conduct training sessions for new students, summer advisers and
first time advisers; respond to students' and advisers' questions; and create,
update, and/ or distribute appropriate advising materials. The Advising staff
advise UMM PSEO students, register students who are unable to come to UMM at
the scheduled times, and trouble shoot for students with complex academic
questions. We work with the Scholastic Committee to implement the academic
probation and suspension system.
We oversee the assessment of advising in the freshman year and have
begun working with the assessment tool to evaluate advising in the major.
Personnel
Advising and the Scholastic Committee staff were
brought together in one space in 1994 to reduce overlap and to better relate
the programs. Staff have responsibilities and are based fiscally in two or more
programs. Staff include Karla
Klinger, director of Academic Advising/ Scholastic Committee Coordinator (53%);
Brenda Boever, new student adviser and transfer coordinator (with responsibilities
to Advising, Admissions and the Registrar's Office); Dorothy DeJager, executive
secretary and lead clerical for the combined offices; and Ginger Nohl, office
specialist (10 months, 75%). Since
fall 1999, DeJager has provided support for the First Year Seminar. Other
Advising clerical support is provided by a work study assistant.
Narrative or Statistical
During 2002-2003,
Advising processed 548 changes of major, 307 changes of adviser, and 90
administrative changes for a total of 942 changes. Initial advising assignments are made on the basis of a
student's intended major, identified during summer registration. Assignments thereafter are made at the
request of the student or adviser.
A summary of adviser assignments by division in Spring 2003 showed the
following advisee averages per unit: Administration 15; Education 19;
Humanities 11; Science/ Math 16; and Social Science 16. Across the campus, the number of
advisees per adviser is as low as 4 (German) and as high as 53 (El Ed). The campus average was 15.
The staff provided 23 APAS reports for students, way down
from the 482 provided the pervious year.
Student access to APAS on the web probably accounts for the difference.
Advising Support
1. Empower advisers and advisees
The Advising Office's role is to empower both
students and advisers through information, training, support, and intervention
in difficult cases. During each
year, staff accurately track advising assignments for the division chairs and
monitor advising changes, folders and files.
Advising sponsors several annual workshops for students and faculty:
q Incoming summer advising workshop for incoming Gateway students: Klinger helps new students understand how to plan their academic programs and what the requirements are for staying in good standing.
q Academic Planning Workshop for Freshmen October 29: Professors Nancy Carpenter, who helped design the workshop, and Jeff Ratliff-Crain, conducted the sessions on the day registration began. The Advising staff handles publicity. The numbers attending the 2002 workshop were under 200 for the first time. Next year, we will hold it a few days before students receive their registration materials.
q A half-day workshop for first time advisers during the week before classes: This practical faculty workshop conducted by Klinger is designed to introduce new advisers to advising expectations, advising materials, and to other experienced advisers. Attendance is required. This workshop is the foundation for building a commitment to advising among new faculty advisers.
Since fall 2000, Advising has provided student
information to advisers, such as a student's name, ID, major, adviser, email
address, campus post office number, and number of credits earned. Following the
web-based dissemination of information, more of DeJager's time is required to
update and maintain the Advising web-site.
2. Oversee advising aspects of summer
registration
Six single day registration sessions for new students were held in spring and summer 2003. The Advising staff is in charge of the academic aspects of summer registration, coordinating our work with Admissions and the Registrar's Office. The division chairs recruited advisers; Advising staff placed students in advising groups, conducted the information sessions for faculty, prepared and distributed advising folders, and trained student assistants. Brenda Boever registered 148 students by phone or by special appointment, who were unable to register during scheduled registrations. She often corresponded with transfer students by email or met with them when they came to campus.
3. Contact students in academic
difficulty:
New academic progress criteria were
implemented in 2002-2003. Students
who do not maintain a 2.0 GPA in either fall or spring term are placed on
probation. The Advising
Office worked with the Scholastic Committee to notify 211 students at the end
of fall term and 137 students at the end of spring 2003 that they had been
placed on probation.
4. Advise students
Staff provide UMM students with drop‑in and
problem‑solving advising. Contacts with students who drop-in with
questions or who contact the staff by e-mail are not recorded, but an
increasing number of faculty and students contact the Advising Office for
help. Klinger had 56 recorded
Scholastic Committee contacts, usually conferences to discuss exceptions to
policy, academic progress, or prior learning. DeJager met with a larger number of students to determine
whether they needed to meet with Klinger, and the entire staff talked with
countless others to respond to their requests. Many new students registered by Boever meet with her on a
drop-in basis.
Boever advised 36
high school students (21 full-time and 15 part-time) enrolled in the Post‑Secondary
Enrollment Options (PSEO) program as well as prospective PSEO students sent to
her by Admissions. PSEO is a
labor-intensive program involving over 1200 contacts with students as well as
with their high school counselors and the state. Boever took the initiative to
develop and have approved the UMM response to the Minnesota Graduation
Standards and Course
Equivalencies. The document will
be defunct next year, since the state has dropped the Profile of Learning. Jacki
Anderson, Principal Secretary with Continuing Education and Regional Programs,
provides written documentation for the state. A full report of PSEO
students' college choices, along with a year by year comparison, is prepared
for the administration each year.
Boever works with Admissions to plan an
orientation for new students who enter UMM between fall and spring semesters.
She also provided over 262 informal transcript evaluations for incoming
students by the end of June.
5. Special Projects:
§
MSP Advising
Partnership: Given the resignation of Rickey Hall, MSP director, the MSP
advising pilot continued throughout the year. Eight faculty each advised up to five incoming minority
students who would otherwise have been advised by MSP staff. Although an experienced adviser,
Shezwae Fleming, left the program in summer 2003, the pilot will not be
necessary in 2003-04. The new MSP director is Aida Martinez, an
experienced UMM adviser. One effort undertaken by the faculty advisers
on the pilot project was to consider whether there were differences in advising
students of color. The August 2003
faculty retreat will address this question through a session on Advising
Students of Color, to be led by Pareena Lawrence, acting director of MSP, and
James Cotter, Professor of Geology.
Hopefully, this information will be available for broader distribution.
·
Web site: The Web
site is located at:
<http://www.morris.umn.edu/academic/advising/>.
Klinger edits the Advising Web; DeJager keeps the
site updated.
§
Assessment of
Advising: An anonymous advising questionnaire measuring the response of first
semester freshmen to the advising they receive has been conducted through the
First Year Seminar (FYS) since 1999.
In December, 2002, 414 of 414 freshman students attending FYS completed
the questionnaire. These data are appended to the hard copy of this report.
In fall 2002, seniors applying for graduation were
asked to complete the assessment questionnaire evaluating advising in the
major. One hundred sixty of 339
graduating seniors responded, 91 during round #1 and 69 during round #2. We will consider ways to increase the response in the coming
year.
.
The two assessment instruments have been posted by
invitation on the web site of the National Advising Association (NACADA) at http://www.advising.hawaii.edu/nacada/assessmentIG/advising
Assess tools.asp
§
August 18-19 Faculty
Retreat on Advising: The annual
fall retreat, sponsored by the Faculty
Development Committee,
will be titled, Deepening Our Commitment: ADVISING FOR A LIBERAL EDUCATION
AT UMM. After consulting with key faculty who have provided
counsel to Advising, Klinger and Paula O'Loughlin, Professor of Political
Science, proposed to the Faculty Development Committee that the retreat center
on advising. An email
questionnaire initiated by Klinger, O'Loughlin and Bert Ahern was sent to
faculty in spring. They developed
a practical and issues-oriented agenda in April and May, based on questionnaire
responses. Focused interaction will be encouraged. With the exception of an
outside keynoter, Lynn Anderson of the Bush Study Abroad Integration Project,
presenters will be UMM faculty. Since an increasing number of students wish to
enrich their academic programs by participating in opportunities such as study
abroad, internships, and research, the conference will be designed to provide
advisers with information they need to do this effectively. Some of the materials should be
appropriate for the Advising Handbook and Advising Web as well as a new site to be developed.
(August N.B.: 20 faculty participated as presenters. On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being highest, 59% of 41
respondents gave the retreat a rank of 5, 2% created a rank between 4 and 5,
32% ranked it 4, and 7% gave it a 3.)
Looking ahead:
§
Fall 2003 faculty
retreat: The fall advising retreat will require additional preparation and
follow-up and an opportunity to provide additional helpful information to
advisers.
§
Implement advising
assessment: The freshman assessment questionnaire will again be distributed
through FYS. We will try to increase the number of students who assess advising
in the major.
§
Workshops: Workshops
are scheduled for Gateway students, new faculty advisers, and for freshmen.
§
Implementation of
the academic progress standards for probation: The Advising Office will work
with the Scholastic Committee to send out probation letters in fall and spring.
§
National
presentation: Klinger, O'Loughlin and Jess Larson will discuss UMM's assessment
process at the national NACADA conference in Dallas in October, 2003.
§
The future of
Advising linked with the Scholastic Committee: Staff will be involved in
discussions of the future organization, since Klinger will resign in June 2005.
Summary:
2002-2003 was another productive year for the
Advising staff. We maintained the
ongoing program of adviser assignments and worked with the Scholastic Committee
to implement the probation system and to implement new academic progress
standards. We were co-planners of
six summer registrations. In addition to managing the advising system and
responding to student and faculty requests, we updated, compiled and
distributed advising handbooks, designed and conducted several workshops,
conducted the assessment of advising, and began reorganization of the advising
web. Klinger was pivotal in
planning the fall 2003 faculty advising retreat.
Karla Klinger, Director of Advising