Common Issues in Advising All New Students

Getting Started
Ongoing Communication
Changing Advisors

Getting Started

Each student entering Mount Holyoke faces a period of transition as she adapts to the Mount Holyoke community and the intellectual expectations of college. The adjustment required of an entering first-year, transfer, Frances Perkins, or international student will be somewhat different, and there is more information about these specific adjustments in subsequent sections of this handbook. However, some advising issues are relevant to all new students.

Remember that while some students will have worked with guidance counselors, the college advisor/advisee relationship is different for them. In the past, students may have waited for a counselor to ask them questions about their plans or may have been expected at the office only for required appointments. For all new students, it is useful to establish the terms of the college advising relationship from the beginning. Clarify what you expect of your advisee. Stress that this advising relationship is one of shared responsibility. One advisor, for example, tells her advisees in one of the early meetings that:

"There is nothing passive about advising. You hold much of the responsibility for developing a successful advising relationship. Be a good advisee. Inform me of your needs and your goals, and that you want to learn how best to meet them."

One of the initial purposes of the meetings between advisor and advisee is to complete registration for the coming semester. With this task at hand, the direction of the conversation quickly becomes focused on "what courses" at "what times," or on "getting distributions out of the way," leaving little time for more meaningful discussions. The faculty advisor may also want to avoid making a student feel uncomfortable by asking questions, while the student in an advising relationship may want to talk about herself but assumes her faculty advisor is too busy. A starting point for conversations that can stretch beyond perfunctory registration can be established if the advisor draws effectively on the variety of resources in the student's materials.

Making Use of Materials from the Student's File
Three critical documents, when placed beside each other, often tell a story the student can expand upon when she meets with you:

• High School and College Transcripts
• Information for Academic Advising Form
• Course Schedule

Transcripts
Transcripts provide a glimpse of your advisee's previous academic history and patterns she has followed up to this point. Be particularly alert to patterns in language, mathematics, science, and writing courses, and watch for dramatic changes in grade pattern. The evaluation of college transcripts provided by the Registrar for transfer and Frances Perkins students tells how many transfer credits a student has been granted and which distribution requirements have already been met, and thus establishes a baseline for careful program planning . Questions about these assessments may be referred to the Registrar for further clarification. Some students may receive letters from departments pertaining to placement that will designate appropriate choices about levels and sections of courses for particular subjects.

Advising Information Form
Set the transcripts beside a student's Advising Information Form and the course selections on her schedule, and the story develops further. The Advising Information Form outlines her goals and concerns and provides a self-assessment of her strengths and weaknesses. She may also reveal circumstances that indicate a need to make connections with special support services such as the Office for Learning Skills, Health and Counseling Center, or the Alcohol and Drug Awareness Project.

Other Materials
Look for disparities between the record, the self-assessment and goals, and the plans for college: one form, for example may state "I'm going to be a doctor" and simultaneously, "I'm worried about the demands of science and mathematics requirements." Help your advisee construct a schedule that will enable her to reach her goals at a manageable pace.

Starting these conversations with your advisee will help them think reflectively about their goals, and is also an important first step in introducing them to this intellectual community in which they are expected to be comfortable having conversations with adults.

Course Registration and the Balancing Act
Having reviewed the information particular to your advisee, you and your advisee can work together to develop a program that balances and takes into account requirements, long-term goals, individual strengths and weaknesses, meeting times across the week, co-curricular activities, and work schedules. If your advisee is committed to working in an area that has not been a strength for her, help her recognize those courses that will require extra effort and remind her of resources on campus that may offer support along the way. The simple fact that a faculty member is reminding her of these resources will also underscore the important message that it is normal to seek out academic support in college

Ongoing Communication
First meetings between advisor and advisee are necessarily limited and usually occur during the busy days of Orientation. During the first meeting, arrange for a follow-up meeting to finalize questions related to registration. Clarify your regular office hours and how students may reach you to make appointments.

The academic deans have discovered the great importance of a subsequent meeting. Try to meet with your new advisees somewhere between the early meetings at the beginning of the semester and the official week of course selection ("Advising Week"). This meeting can be especially constructive because it is not linked to signatures needed for registration and can be focused on the progress of the semester.

Advisors are also encouraged to arrange informal group meetings with their advisees. Lunch in the dining hall or a late afternoon gathering provides an opportunity to further develop the advisor-advisee relationship.

Trouble-Shooting
Throughout the academic year, an advisor may receive "signals for help" that come in a variety of forms. Some are more overt than others, but all are indicators that a student may need additional counseling and support. Advisor intervention in response to these signals can play a major role in whether the students connect with the appropriate resources on campus.

Mid-Semester Reports
Faculty submit mid-semester reports online for those students whose performance is erratic, borderline, or failing. Additionally, after the first semester at Mount Holyoke, faculty may be asked to submit mid-semester reports for students who are on academic probation. Advisors receive email copies of these reports, as do advisees and the dean of First-Year Studies.

Mid-semester reports may arrive well before the official advising period for the next semester's preregistration. It is extremely helpful to advisees if advisors send outreach notes to them upon receipt of a mid-semester report. The encouragement an advisor gives to a student to meet with the faculty member who has sent the report can make the important difference. This is an opportunity to provide significant guidance at a critical point in the semester. Often suggestions from advisors can help students discover new ways to approach their studies and seek further advice from available resources.

If more than one report has arrived, it is useful to refer the student to the appropriate academic dean as this is an early indication of serious academic difficulty.

To Drop or Not To Drop?
Students often come to their advisors with uncertainty about whether or not to drop one of their four courses. Listening is the key to sorting out the appropriate response. In many cases, it would be a mistake for the student to drop down to 12 credits. The impulse is understandable because these are often students encountering the normal challenges of college after performing well in high school. Such students are often doing satisfactory or borderline work, and have been told that they can improve with hard work. It is worth encouraging such students to make constructive use of struggle. Remind these students that to drop to 12 credits is not necessarily preferable to receiving a lower grade on a 16-credit program.

In some cases, dropping a course is an appropriate decision. This is recommended, for instance, if the student's situation is so serious that continuation in the course will render it impossible for her to function in her other classes. These students can be reminded that there are methods to make up credits through summer school, successive 18-credit loads in the future, or January term.

A student may choose to take a course for the ungraded option as an alternative to dropping a course if she does so by the designated deadline. The student must recognize, however, that courses taken for the ungraded option will not count toward satisfying a distribution requirement or count towards a major. Students who are unsure about whether they should drop a course may want to consult with their academic dean as well as their advisor.

"I Think I Want to Leave"
This is a phrase likely to come up at any point in the life of a first or second year student. If a student is pursuing alternatives to Mount Holyoke, she can benefit enormously from discussions with her advisor, particularly if she is considering a possible transfer. In such cases, students generally are working through the process of defining their experience at Mount Holyoke. Suggestions from advisors can make a great difference.

Those students who are uncertain about remaining at a women's college often follow the suggestion of taking a course at Hampshire, Amherst, or University of Massachusetts. Many students report that this experience provides a necessary balance or helps them better define what they do appreciate about the academic experience here.

Students who suggest that they wish to transfer to a "more challenging institution" should be encouraged to explore more fully the range of challenges available here. Most often these are students who will readily respond to specific suggestions for a more challenging academic program, opportunities for independent study, and additional co-curricular activities. Students who are seeking additional support services should be encouraged to meet with an academic dean to discuss their needs and how we can best meet them.

Some students may feel overwhelmed at Mount Holyoke, and describe spending 10 hours to read what other students read in 1 hour, and the consequent pressure they feel. Such students should be directed to consult with an academic dean or John Body in the Office for Learning Skills. There may be an undiagnosed learning disability at work. Some students have not yet developed sufficient study and time management skills. The importance of encouraging students to seek the available resources for support cannot be overstated. At the same time, there may be cases where in fact there has been a mismatch. Such students will find conversations with their advisor or an academic dean helpful in sorting out the issues.

Since most students who consider transferring are fairly ambivalent, it is helpful to suggest the option of an academic or non-academic leave in place of a transfer. Many institutions have visiting-student policies that enable students to transfer a full year of academic credits to Mount Holyoke. The small group of students who do decide to transfer benefit from the reminder that we frequently readmit students who discover that the transfer was a mistake. Readmission requires a detailed letter of explanation to the Dean of the College.

Changing Advisors
The process for changing advisors is simple, and you may want to encourage your advisee to consider a change if that seems appropriate. Sometimes students are reluctant to do so because they are concerned about offending the advisor they are leaving. It is important that you let them know that changing advisors is accepted practice and no offense is taken.

As students begin to move toward a possible major or to develop rapport with other faculty members, they often wish to seek new advisors. This process requires that they become self-advocates: students can ask any faculty member to agree to be their advisor, and must then complete a “Change of Advisor Form”. The form is available in the Office of Academic Deans, on the third floor of Mary Lyon Hall, and requires the signature of the new advisor only.

Advisor who will be on leave:
If you are planning to take a leave when your advisees become sophomores, it is especially important that you discuss this with your advisees before the end of their second semester. Your conversation can help guide them toward an appropriate new sophomore advisor (one of their teachers with whom they have developed a rapport, or a member of your department). The “Change of Advisor Form” will be necessary to make the change official.

Students who are ready to declare their majors may pick up a declaration of major form and be assigned a new advisor. If they are uncertain about a new arrangement and do not have a faculty member in mind, please suggest that they consult with Jenny Pyke, Dean of the Class of 2011.