Nontraditional women students, defined as older than 24 years, parents, or veterans, compose a fast-growing higher education population. Many face identity-related challenges when interacting with advisors. From 2 northeastern U.S. women's colleges, 42 nontraditional women students participated in phenomenological interviews focused on their…

The critical thinking process of professional reasoning underlies academic advising practice. Although an essential component to effective advising, professional reasoning is rarely explicitly taught. Tenets of clinical judgment models routinely applied to the development of reasoning in health professionals, specifically clinical competence and…

In this study, the difference in the number of initial credits between incoming transfer and first-year students entering a land grant university in a professional education program was examined (N = 488). A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that transfer students transferred significantly more total credits and more credits that counted…

As online education continues to expand across the nation and world, studies on online learners need to continually address student needs for and satisfaction with advising. However, to date, academic advising for online education has been explored rarely. Therefore, this quantitative study was conducted on graduate students' perceptions of…

Motivation and psychological characteristics play important roles in college student success. Upon matriculation, pre-health students must strive for academic success to present competitive profiles for health professions schools. In this qualitative study, 17 high-achieving, upper level pre-health students at a large, mid-Atlantic university…

We examined first-semester adjustment among students in and out of an honors college because honors college participants receive relatively little attention in the advising literature. As expected, honors college students earned relatively high grades and were associated with high retention rates. Two noncognitive factors predicted these…

Nearly 40 years after the creation of NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising and at least as many years after academic advising was recognized as a unique role in higher education, the term academic advising as applied to individuals who work in higher education has been only colloquially defined. Using the analytic induction research…

When they enter institutions of higher education, students typically leave behind one culture to join another. Despite the higher rates of attrition for first-generation students over continuing-generation students and undecided students over declared students, little research has been focused on undeclared first-generation students. To understand…

Students change their majors for various reasons, and academic advisors often assume the role of facilitating that change through institutional agreements or contracts. Therefore, advisors need to identify time periods during enrollment with the greatest likelihood that students will seek to change majors. They must also examine the student…

During a time of increasing parental engagement in the lives of college-going students, we examined how first-year students' perceived interaction with their parents predicted their academic performance. Data were collected from college students living in residential housing at a diverse and selective public research university in the western…

The research presented describes the unique challenges of students from historically marginalized communities, particularly Black students, attending predominantly White institutions. Challenges include overt and covert campus racism, daily microaggressions, and limited or no sense of belonging. How are these challenges exacerbated when a…

Many academic support programs promote the academic success of first-year students, and research has shown the importance of effective academic advising to first-year student retention. Among the numerous approaches to academic advising, the strategy used by advisors at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) remains relatively…

Through the Delphi method study, we sought to identify essential competencies for entry-level academic advisors. Three surveys were administered to academic advisors with 5 years or more working in the field. Results from 57 advisors who completed all 3 rounds of surveys indicated a wide range of competencies essential for entrylevel academic…

Through the professionalization process, an occupation transforms into a profession. Although much scholarship has situated academic advising as a professional endeavor, in the past few years, the authors of two papers posited that advising is not a profession, a contention not shared by all within the advising community. Despite much scholarly…

We sought to determine whether receiving major re-selection (MRS) advising benefits undergraduate students' grade-point averages (GPAs). We used a quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design to compare a treatment group (n = 219) of undergraduates who changed their majors after receiving MRS advising with a control group (n = 206) who…