Comprehensive Advising Self-Study

In the fall of 2018, the Academic Advising Taskforce expanded to include more than 90 students, faculty, and staff to engage in a comprehensive self-study guided by the EAA process. Comprised of nine Conditions Committees, the taskforce examined existing documents and data, compiled and explored 10-years' worth of student-level data, and administered and analyzed student and faculty/staff surveys about academic advising.

Each Committee completed an extensive report about their findings and offered recommendations for improving academic advising. The nine Committees made 73 recommendations for improvement based on their findings. The Steering Committee consolidated these recommendations based on overlap into 14 final recommendations. The taskforce finished its work in October of 2019, and a final report was distributed in early December of 2019. You can read the highlights of the report on this page or download the full report at the link below.

EAA Self Study Report (PDF)

  • Summary of Findings
    Points of Excellence
    1. The initial institutional commitment to improving advising at FSU is encouraging.

      The institutional strategic plan has goals, action priorities, and action items supporting improved academic advising and professional development for students. The strategic plan also supports inclusivity, cultural competence, and respect for diversity of ideas and backgrounds, which are critical to advising FSU's diverse student population. The EAA project is a strategic priority for FSU, and strategic planning funds were committed to the project. The support and engagement of faculty, students, staff, and senior leadership at FSU demonstrates commitment to implementing recommendations

    2. Faculty, staff, and students express confidence in and appreciation for campus units that provide advising services.

      These units include the Center for Academic Advising and Retention, the Career and Professional Development Center, TRIO Student Support Services, and the advising centers in the Colleges of Business and Education. These units work with faculty advisors to provide collaborative advising experiences for student populations at FSU.

    3. The first year advising program, including Preview FSU, ORIE 101, and the FSU Connections provides an exemplar for a shared model of integrated advising services with support from the divisions of Academic Affairs, Enrollment Management, and Student Affairs.

      These programs have established budgets and the advising components are centrally coordinated by CAAR. Faculty and staff advisors are partnered with peer mentors to deliver an advising experience with articulated learning outcomes and common expectations. ORIE 101 instructors also serve as advisors for first year students and are active members of students' success networks. FSU Connections provide collaboration with instructional faculty in the students' programs by coupling a high impact first-year seminar with content courses in students' majors. CAAR provides training, professional development, best practices, and regular communication relevant to these experiences. Preview and ORIE advisors, as well as student mentors, are rewarded for their efforts through stipends. Both Preview FSU and ORIE 101 are evaluated and assessed through student surveys. This integrated partnership model is a national best practice that continues to be newly adopted by other institutions.

    Areas of Deficiency

    Beyond the student's first year, advising is decentralized, with each department and college having its own procedures and practices. This advising structure leads to a lack of consistency in advising across the institution, a key conclusion from the 2018 advising town halls reinforced by the self-study findings. FSU lacks five critical components that would promote consistency and quality improvement:

    1. FSU lacks an institutional advising framework, including a shared definition for advising, an institutional mission statement for advising, advising goals to inform practice and improvement efforts, and advising learning outcomes.
    2. FSU lacks an assessment plan for advising to drive quality improvement.
    3. FSU lacks recognized institutional leadership for advising to management and coordinate assessment, training, communication, and quality improvement.
    4. FSU lacks regular training and professional development for all advisors.
    5. FSU lacks a communication plan to share advising information with students, advisors, and other stakeholders.
    Opportunities

    The greatest opportunities for improvement expand existing practices to benefit all students and advisors. To this end:

    1. FSU needs to implement a shared model for academic advising that extends the advising approach used in ORIE 101. This model will feature shared responsibility between students and advisors for academic, personal, and professional develop and be built on a partnership between faculty and staff for integrated advising services. This model needs to support students throughout their full lifecycle at FSU, not just during the first year.
    2. FSU needs to integrate the data and processes contained in existing technology for advising to provide comprehensive support for advising and retention efforts. FSU should also promote widespread use of effective alternative advising delivery practices (e.g. advising and professional development courses, virtual advising, and group advising) that occur in some units, but not others. Advising is a teaching and learning activity that supports the rest of a student's education. It is more than those few transactions that occur in order to register for classes.
  • Recommendations

    I. Institutional Commitment and Resources

    FSU must visibly demonstrate institutional commitment for advising by providing appropriate and ongoing allocation of resources (fiscal, human, and physical) to support institution-wide advising practices and continuous improvement of advising based on assessment.

    II. Consistency

    FSU must ensure consistency of the student advising experience by providing common expectations and guidelines for all advising interactions.

    III. Foundations for Advising

    FSU must adopt a foundational framework for academic advising to provide the following common elements across all advising activities in all divisions, colleges, and units.

    IV. Leadership

    FSU must identify a position or office to provide leadership for advising at the senior administrator level.

    V. Advising Model

    FSU must implement a shared, learner-centered advising model supportive of the advising mission, goals, and learning outcomes.

    VI. Student Lifecycle

    FSU must incorporate a lifecycle model into the design of academic advising that promotes connecting, engaging, developing, supporting, and guiding students through their careers at FSU.

    VII. Advisor Training

    FSU must provide a mandatory academic advising training program and plan for regular opportunities for development that integrates diversity, equity, and inclusion into its foundation.

    VIII. Knowledge Base

    FSU must improve access to advising services and information by creating an academic advising service portal available through the University's website and a Canvas advisor course.

    IX. Technology

    FSU must evaluate new technologies that could enhance the effectiveness of advising at a University level.

    X. Assessment

    FSU must assess the effectiveness of academic advising.

    XI. Communication Plan

    FSU must develop and implement an institution-wide advising communication plan that provides for the regular and timely dissemination of advising information customized by stakeholder group.

    XII. Recognition and Incentives

    FSU must provide recognition and rewards to incentivize high-quality advising based on proven best practices.

    XIII. Delivery

    FSU must promote delivery of academic advising beyond the traditional once-a-semester appointments for scheduling and registration.

    XIV. Professionalization

    FSU must promote advising as a professional field through the selection of advisors, demonstration of core competencies, dissemination of evidence-based practices in advising, and scholarship and service.

  • Rationale for Improving Advising

    To paraphrase FSU President, Dr. Nowaczyk, this is our once-in-a-generation chance to transform academic advising at FSU. If done right, we will enrich the advising experience for all students and increase the quality of student-advisor interactions. If successful, we will see an increase in student graduation rates and an enhancement of our reputation because of increased student success.

    Quality and consistent academic advising are critical components of student success. However, students, faculty, and staff routinely shared that FSU cannot consistently deliver quality academic advising to its students.

    • As many as 44% of students are dissatisfied with the way advisors help them set goals (Noel-Levitz Student Success Inventory, 2013)
    • About 44% of FSU faculty and 50% of FSU staff feel that advising is not valued at FSU (Middle States self-study, 2015)
    • Only about 38% of FSU faculty and 42% of FSU staff feel that they receive adequate advising training (Middle States self-study, 2015)
    • As many as 41% of students would prefer a different advisor than the one assigned (SGA Advising Survey, 2015)
    • Less than 50% of seniors discuss career plans with their advisors (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2016)
    • Only 45% of FSU faculty feel they have adequate resources to advise students (FSU Faculty Morale Survey, 2017, 2018)

    These data, in part, lead to Middle States Self-Study recommendation that FSU should improve and assess academic advising. In turn, FSU’s Strategic Plan for 2018-2023 includes improvement of academic advising as a priority. Improvement of academic advising supports the following FSU strategic goal, particularly parts A and B:

    II. Provide engaging experiences that challenge our students to excel.

    1. Implement an advising/support structure that meets student needs from applicant through alumna/us.
    2. Integrate effective career and professional development into the student experience.
    3. Create a campus climate that enhances the well-being of our students and is welcoming, inclusive, and contributes to the cultural competence of each of our graduates.

    Specifically, improvement of academic advising is represented in FSU’s third action item:
    Frostburg State University supports student success through comprehensive academic and career services that are focused on the needs of students from admission through their years as alumni.

  • Self-Study Timeline
    • Provost established advising task force - December 2017
    • Advising town halls - January and February 2018
    • FSU applied to participate in EAA project - March 2018
    • Findings from town hall shared with campus - April 2018
    • FSU accepted into EAA charter cohort - July 2018
    • EAA Steering committee and conditions committees established - October 2018
    • Self-study launch - First full meeting of the task force - November 2018
    • EAA surveys administered to students - March 2019
    • Complete dataset of anonymized student outcomes submitted for review - April 2019
    • EAA Fellow visited campus for Mission and Goals Advance Workshop with full task force - April 2019
    • EAA surveys administered to faculty and staff - May 2019
    • EAA task force retreat to integrate findings and develop recommendations - August 2019
    • Final condition committee reports submitted - September 2019
    • Steering Committee consolidated and prioritized recommendations - October 2019
    • Final Self-Study Report distributed to campus - December 2019
  • Self-Study Guiding Principles

    The self-study followed a model developed by the EAA core team at NACADA and the Gardner Institute and facilitated by FSU’s EAA Fellow, Dr. Susan Poch, and the Task Force Co-Chairs and Liaisons, Dr. Jay Hegeman and Dr. Benjamin Norris. The self-study adhered to these key principles:

    • The self-study will be an honest, realistic, and evidence-based assessment of the current state of academic advising at FSU. Achievable steps for improvement must be based on an accurate understanding of our true strengths and challenges and not a wishful overestimate of our progress.
    • Frostburg State University is the primary audience for this self-study. While lessons learned from the self-study will be shared with other institutions through the EAA project, the driving force remains an internal desire to improve advising.
    • The self-study will seek open and inclusive participation of students, faculty, and staff in a comprehensive conversation about academic advising. The progress of the self-study will be transparently communicated through regular reports to the campus community.
    • The self-study will prioritize student success, the student advising experience, and the joint responsibility of all members of the FSU community for improving the quality of academic advising.
    • Recommendations for improvement will be grounded in self-study results, based on evidence of effective practice, and be designed to be phased in over several years.
  • Task Force Leadership

    The taskforce steering committee includes FSU's EAA Liaisons as co-chairs, FSU's EAA Fellow, the co-chairs of each of the nine conditions committees, and additional individuals.

    EAA Liaisons

    Jay Hegeman, Assistant VP and Registrar
    Benjamin Norris, Associate Professor, Chemistry

    EAA Fellow

    Susan Poch, Assistant Vice Provost Emerita, Washington State University

    Conditions Committee Co-Chairs

    Institutional Commitment

    Jay Hegeman, Assistant VP and Registrar
    Benjamin Norris, Associate Professor, Chemistry

    Learning

    Keith Davidson, Academic Counselor, Center for Academic Advising and Retention
    Janet Mattern, Assistant Professor, Educational Professions

    Advisor Selection and Development

    Heather Gable, Associate Professor and Chair, Nursing
    Beth Stallings, Director, First-Year Advising and Retention

    Improvement and the Scholarship of Advising

    Sara-Beth Bittinger, Interim Assistant Vice President for Analytics
    Jill Morris, Associate Professor, English and Foreign Languages and Literature

    Collaboration and Communication

    Kenneth Levitt, Assistant Professor, Management
    Linda Steele, Program Coordinator, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

    Organization

    Tamara Lowry, Director, TRIO Student Support Services
    Michael Monahan, Associate Professor and Chair, Management

    Student Purpose and Pathways

    Matthew Crawford, Associate Professor, Chemistry
    Amy Shimko, Director, Student Development

    Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity

    Jennifer Earles, Assistant Professor, Sociology
    Robin Wynder, Director, Center for Student Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

    Technology Enabled Advising

    Michael Flinn, Associate Professor, Computer Science and Information Technologies
    Timothy Pelesky, Director of IT Applications and Development

    Student Representative

    Jenna Puffinburger, SGA President

    Other Steering Committee Members

    Joseph Littley, Data Warehouse Architect, IT Applications and Development
    Jeffrey McClellan, Associate Professor, Management
    Selina Smith, Assistant Director, Institutional Research

  • Appreciations

    The EAA steering committee greatly appreciates the support and engagement of FSU’s senior leadership in this project, especially:

    • Ronald Nowaczyk, President
    • Elizabeth Throop, Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs
    • Arlene Cash, Vice President for Enrollment Management
    • Thomas Bowling, Vice President Emeritus for Student Affairs
    • Jeff Graham, Interim Vice President for Student Affairs
    • Sudhir Singh, Dean of the College of Business
    • Boyce Williams, Interim Dean of the College of Education
    • Kim Hixson, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

    This project would not have been possible without the endorsement of the faculty and staff senates; the support of the Student Government Association; the active participation of a task force of 90 students, faculty, and staff; and financial support from the FSU strategic plan funds.

    The liaisons are especially appreciative of the hard work done by our EAA Fellow, Dr. Susan Poch, guiding us through the process and helping us understand our data and evidence. We also thank the EAA Core Team from NACADA and the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education for support and encouragement and the opportunity to be a part of this exciting project.

  • Next Steps

    The Transition to Action began in January of 2020. The final full meeting of the EAA taskforce occurred in January of 2020. Joined by additional student, faculty, and staff members, the taskforce drafted proposed actions based on the fourteen recommendations. The steering committee consolidated these actions into an action plan and implementation began in March of 2020.

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