Faculty Advisors Mastering and Managing Information

Stephen O. Wallace and Beverly A. Wallace. NACADA Training for Faculty Advisors. Edited by Dr. Wendi Prater, Director eLearning, McNeese State University.

Quality academic advising demands a unique set of internal and external information. Even those who accept that, over time, they will master needed advising knowledge frequently cite information overload as a major challenge. Faculty advisors can face the demands for information and unannounced pop quizzes with confidence by employing a strategy to master and manage the amount of information they will need to process and learn.

Step 1. Identify Needed Information

This knowledgebase has Advisor Resources published for you.  Faculty advisors should craft a set of questions pertinent to their department and advisees. They can start their personalized list by listening to and asking students about their concerns and by inquiring of peer faculty advisors, professional advisors, and others engaged with students about the issues they regularly encounter.

Step 2. Identify Sources of Available Information

Faculty advisors should embrace the internal departmental resources available at McNeese and we also recommend that you review the Advising Resources frequently for updated information.

Advisors and students also have unprecedented access to information online. Faculty advisors can find vetted answers to almost any student question through this knowledgebase, McNeese Student Central Department and professional association web sites, such as the Clearinghouse from NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising. 

NACADA also provides excellent sources of information about advising and advisor development: Academic Advising Today and the NACADA Journal are open access venues that offer, respectively, practice- and research-based articles. Faculty advisors at all levels of experience should consider attending national and regional conferences where they can receive updates on new theories and practices, obtain new perspectives, and experience rejuvenation.

Step 3. Create an Advising Resource Tool Kit

Faculty advisors can also take solace in the realization that the recurring advisor sessions quizzes they experience are open book. Therefore, each advisor should create a readily accessible set of resources and a cheat sheet that include needed information for their department. Helpful resources can be found in hard copy and electronic formats, such as:

  • McNeese's catalog, student handbook, and departmental advising guidebooks.
  • A list of student FAQs with answers. New advisors should consolidate known FAQs and answers from the various sources they have uncovered. In addition to providing handy access, the list, whether kept as an electronic file or printed copy, must reflect current university and student information. The questions might remain the same, but the answers may change along with adjustments in institutional policies, programs, and procedures.
  • Contact list for key people in important offices across campus including name, office location, phone number, and e-mail addresses.  McNeese has provided this information for you in this knowledgebase's Advisor Resources.
  • Copies of the campus map with key locations identified to distribute to students.
  • Bookmarked links to valuable resources for advisor development, such as those from NACADA.

Next Steps? > Continue by reading the next article in this toolkit - Effective Faculty Advisors. Or go back and review the previous article Thriving as a Faculty Advisor Mastering the Basics.