A college or university's general approach to students and student support services, as reflected in its institutional vision, can serve to advocate the adoption of one type of advising structure, approach, and delivery system over another. A content analysis of a nationwide sample of institutional vision statements from NACADA-membership colleges…

The advising literature confirms the graduate student-graduate advisor relationship as the most important factor in graduate student success. To better understand the characteristics of graduate advisors that students find most helpful, we conducted a grounded theory study with a constructivist design that involved a qualitative textual analysis…

In every way that matters, advising is a form of teaching. Using Bloom's (1956) taxonomy of educational outcomes, I explain how to develop learning objectives within advising contexts. The article also suggests commonly available educational materials, such as university catalogs, as content delivery mechanisms for students; in addition, it offers…

Servant. This novel actively portrays Greenleaf's concept of servant leadership by describing the extracurricular work of a university professor. Consequently, some scholars have demonstrated the relevance of servant leadership to classroom instruction (Powers & Moore, 2005). However, it was not as an instructor, but as an advisor that the…

In this study, I examined the effectiveness of adding insight-oriented strategies to an intrusive academic-advising approach with students on academic probation. Twenty males and 22 females at a comprehensive private university participated in the study. Students who attended three to eight meetings had a significant improvement in semester GPA…

In writing this article, we wanted to provide advisors practical means with which to optimize their relationships with advisees. First, we describe behavioral micro-skills that can be used by advisors to enhance advising sessions. Attending behaviors (eye contact vocal cadence and tone, verbal tracking, body language) and listening skills (asking…

Although previous research has not consistently shown that uncertainty about academic major negatively impacts graduation, commitment is largely believed to affect college students' success. We investigated the impact of institutional commitment, commitment to an educational goal, and commitment to an academic major on the probabilities of…

The accounting profession is in a state of flux--some might even say crisis. Recent ethical lapses, such as the Enron debacle, have called into question the professionalism of a few, tainting the reputation of many accountants. In this study, we examined the attitudes of accounting students at a comprehensive public university at the beginning and…

In this article, we describe a continuum of responsibilities shared by faculty and non-faculty academic advisors as well as personal counselors at 4-year colleges and universities. After addressing terminology, we describe a continuum of issues that advisors and counselors routinely address and identify some triggers that might suggest that a…

Self-authorship is an additional orientation to traditional college student, epistemological, development theories. Facilitation of self-authorship, via academic advising, may help students meet the desired outcomes outlined by the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education and integrate these abilities into their knowing and…

We examined the mental constructs that guide students' expectations for advisor behavior. Through exploratory factor analysis, we identified four factors that underlie students' expectations. Interpretive analysis revealed underlying dimensions reflected by the factors of advisor role and enactment level. Specifically, the first dimension…

We designed this study to understand academic advising at an urban university from diverse student perspectives. Based on a review of the advising literature, we identified 12 functions of academic advising and surveyed 2,100 undergraduates to address the following questions: Which of these advising functions are most important to students? How…

Most information advisors receive about first-year advisees pertains to students' academic achievement and high school courses. To assist students effectively with the transition to college, advisors need additional information. We describe a collaborative process used to develop a pre-matriculation, academic motivation instrument that provides…

As the numbers of students who earn the general educational development (GED) high school equivalency diploma increase, so too does the presence of GED credential holders on college campuses. Yet in large universities, they make up a relatively small demographic group whose advising needs may go unnoticed. In this article, we describe a series of…

Quality academic advising in higher education is the product of a multitude of elements not the least of which is institutional vision. By recognizing and embracing an institution's concept of its capabilities and the kinds of educated human beings it is attempting to cultivate, advisors gain an invaluable apparatus to guide the provision of…