Racial and ethnic minority student departure continues to be a major concern for higher education researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. We explore the role that academic advisors play in facilitating success among students of color at predominantly White institutions that have demonstrated effectiveness at generating ethnic minority…

One might say that good advising requires understanding of those being advised. Yet, the way to achieve an accurate understanding of each advisee is unclear. An introduction to the field of hermeneutics, including an outline of Martin Heidegger's notion of human being and existential understanding, is presented to offer advisors a new opportunity…

In the last year, three respected leaders in academic advising, Wes Habley, Terry Kuhn, and Gary Padak, published articles suggesting that academic advising has not met the standards of scholarship to be considered a field of inquiry, an academic discipline, or a profession. In this article, we examine academic advising history from the…

This article presents an annotated bibliography of recent research related to academic advising. It includes eight research papers that focus on advising.

Presented analyses regarding academic-advisor job satisfaction are based on data from a survey administered to NACADA members in July 2005. Advisor job satisfaction in various environments and differences in satisfaction across personal demographics were studied. Academic advisors report high satisfaction overall as well as with student and…

The interrelationships between motivation for choosing a program of study, intention to access academic advisors, academic difficulty, and actual appointments with academic advisors were based on student self-reports of motivation and intentions. In addition, academic achievement measures and data on student access to academic advisors were…

We studied first-year students through an integrated group workshop and longitudinal interviews that focused on students' transitional experience at the university as well as the strategies they developed to adjust to university life. Four themes emerged: the challenges of forming connections to other students with similar interests during the…

By adding student perceptions of the curriculum, we enhance the current history of American higher education over 5 decades. We draw from memoirs, short stories, notebooks, and legends to animate the story of students and the curriculum. The episodes depict historical events and cases that have shaped colleges, curricula, and students. The study…

The development of academic advising parallels the history of higher education and reflects decades of student personnel work. Changes in funding, curricula, students, and faculty roles have all affected the means by which students have been advised. The evolution of advising eventually led to the formation of NACADA in 1979. Since 2001, when I…

In this article, we trace the history of NACADA from many perspectives. The NACADA mission, organization, programming, and services throughout the past 30 years provide a story of innovation and change. The effect of technology on NACADA's growth, especially in the last decade, has created enumerable opportunities for more comprehensive…

In this article, we present the results of interviews with past presidents of NACADA (the National ACademic ADvising Association), who responded to nine questions about the strengths, achievements, challenges, and obstacles faced during their presidencies. The presidents also had an opportunity to discuss a critical incident, people who were…

Recently veteran academic advisors were asked to share their experiences. The respondents to an E-mailed survey self-identified as advisors or administrators and represented six American regions and various sizes of public and private 2- and 4-year institutions. Their responses reflect a genuine interest in the welfare of students today and a…

In this article, I examine the degree to which academic advising has met the scholarship and research standards necessary to lay claim to designation as a discipline or as a profession. I include a review of 3 decades of observations on advising scholarship and research, a review of NACADA's efforts to advance research, and an analysis of trends…

I was delighted to be invited as a keynote speaker for the 2007 NACADA conference in Baltimore Maryland. The conference theme, Advisors as Navigators: From Orientation to Graduation and Beyond, was very inspiring. I was stimulated by the deep commitment conveyed by it and I found myself delighted with the task of preparing my speech. I recap the…

University stakeholders recognize the importance of exposing all students to academic advising as a means to enhance their engagement with the institution. Living-learning communities are of particular promise. In this study, conducted at a mid-western land grant university in the 2004-05 academic year, advisees in living-learning communities…