S4 E32: Academic Advisors as Partners in Student Success

What exactly do academic advisors do—and how can faculty benefit from understanding that role more clearly? In this episode, four of George Mason University’s professional academic advisors unpack the realities of advising with our host, Dr. Rachel Yoho. They explain where their work begins and ends, how they partner with faculty, and why collaboration matters more than ever for student success. Faculty listeners will gain insight into how advisors’ unique relationships with students can complement how students show up in classrooms and how partnerships between faculty and advisors can strengthen student referral practices, retention, and holistic student support. In a time of growing enrollment pressures and AI‑driven change, this conversation offers practical perspectives on how faculty and advisors can work together to better serve students. 

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Rachel 0:08

Hello and welcome to the Keystone Concepts in Teaching podcast. I'm your host Rachel Yoho, and I'm very excited to be joined by four guests today, and we're going to have a great conversation about academic advisors. So to get us started, I'll let them introduce themselves and we'll jump right into our conversation.

Kate 0:28

Hi, my name is Kate Keeney. I'm an academic advisor in the School of Art.

Jordan 0:33

Hi there. My name is Jordan Emely. I'm a academic advisor in the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

Jada 0:41

Hi, my name is Jada Crocker. I'm an academic advisor in the College of Humanities and Social Science.

Amy 0:46

Hi, I'm Amy Vaillancourt. I am also an advisor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Rachel 0:54

All right. Well, thank you all so much for joining us today. I'm really excited for this conversation because I think this is a really different and exciting look at how we think about teaching and learning and sort of that broader student experience. So I'm really excited about this. So, to get us started, can you give us a brief overview of what academic advisors do?

Kate 1:17

What don't we do? That's a little facetious, but, um, I think we do it, it can depend a lot on the department, right? There are some departments where academic advisors are very siloed and kept like kind of doing their own thing in their own little bubble. But then I feel like for me, my position, I am very much involved in a lot of parts of the day-to-day running of the department. I'm helping with student engagement and student events. I'm doing some recruiting efforts. I am also helping, I'm not part of the curriculum committee, but I'm offering kind of advice and like that student facing perspective of what I'm seeing from the student end. But obviously the biggest thing that we do as academic advisors is kind of help guide students through their academic journey. So help them figure out degree structures, majors, minors, you know, classes to take every single semester. Larger kind of long-term plans. A lot of them for me, they come to me with questions about grad school because we have like bachelor's accelerated master's program. So we help them kind of figure out how all of those things work together within their degree program and figuring out sort of the shape of it all.

Jada 2:34

I would agree with that, Kate. So yes, of course we do the course registration and the academic planning, but I would even take it a step further. We're actually serve as the student's first line of defense. You know, a lot of the times they come to us with those questions of, You may not be able to help me, but, could you point me in the right direction? So I always say that we're kind of like a student's compass, like we're leading them and guiding them through the journey altogether. So while yes, we focus heavily on the academics, we're also there to make sure that they're connecting across campus as well.

Amy 3:04

Yeah, thank you Jade and Kate. I would add in there a discussion about our career services that we offer, as well as part of that larger discussion of that holistic support for our students. That's definitely something that I'm very interested in as an advisor, is that co-curricular space, whether that's experiential learning, helping connect them to internships or alumni who are doing things that they're interested in or running programs for them. For example, peer mentorship or ambassador programs that connect them to both their colleagues, their peers, as well as alumni from their programs. And I would add that we're their guides that we stand beside them, not in front or behind them. And in that way it's an adventure. We're along for the ride, wherever those individual students may be going. And we never know exactly what we might be talking to a student about in a given day. It might be, Hey, someone got this amazing fellowship opportunity, or it could be that we are connecting a student who's perhaps dealt with an extenuating circumstance, like a death in the family. We might be the first person that they share that with on campus. So I'm always mindful of that I never know exactly what a student's needs are until I open that conversation and build that relationship with the students.

Jada 4:25

Absolutely. I love that you mentioned that we are the student's guides. I come from an athletics background, so one of the things I always share with my students is like, I can be your coach. I can be your cheerleader, but I can't be your star player which I think is something that, you know, students resonate with as well.

Rachel 4:41

Yeah. Great comparison. Thank you. So as we think about this, there's a lot going on here, right? We're talking about everything from connecting with resources to the thing that people might think of most often as like the registration aspects, but career planning, degree development and scheduling, how the courses are going to progress, extracurricular opportunities, like so many things that we're talking about. And so what I want us to maybe think about here is how have you all seen the role of faculty in collaboration with academic advisors changing in recent years? So whether it's, you know, from what it was to what it is now, or maybe what you hope that it will be, anything along those lines.

Jordan 5:27

So I think, I can only state from where I started, which was about three years ago. And so about three years ago is still relatively similar to what it is now, and the faculty are not as involved directly in the planning of courses for our students. You know, obviously they are the ones who see our students face to face most often, right? Like, students don't have to come meet with academic advisors, but, in theory, they should be going to class on a weekly basis.

Rachel 5:52

Hopefully!

Jordan 5:52

Um, so they're the ones who are seeing our students the most. But they're not necessarily the ones who are planning those courses, especially at the undergraduate level. But one thing that I've heard from faculty, just like in my conversations with them in the hallways and everything is like, it used to be that way. And it used to be a place where faculty were the ones who were helping guide students through their course progresses so that they could graduate on time or that they could take classes that were best suited for them in a career path that they wanted to go to because they had those relationship with students. I think that's probably changed significantly, whether that's COVID 19 implications, whether that is just a shifting demographic in who's coming to college or a shifting demographic in our faculty. I think that's changing. But faculty are still important because they are the ones who are giving us insights to our students, right? Like, they're the ones who are seeing those students and they can say, Hey, this person is having a problem, or, this person sounds like a really good fit for this special program that whatever college offers, you know, I wanna help them get there. So they still play a pretty vital role in helping us support our students, but not as direct as it once was.

Rachel 6:58

Yeah, I mean, for me, I think it's a great development to have that expertise from the academic advisors. I mean, I just, from my own perspective, I was a graduate program director at my previous institution and doing the advising piece with it is just, it adds something there that I think, you know, when we have that expertise from the academic advisors who are working across all these areas, I think from my view at least, it makes the student's experience so much better. And I think we're hearing that here as well.

Jada 7:28

I just wanted to add, so specifically in my department, which is Criminology Law and Society, we have an early alert program. So similar to what Jordan mentioned, you know, our faculty now feel comfortable letting us know like, Hey, I really have concerns about this student. And I think that having something in place like that really shows, of course, the collaboration, but how we can support students holistically, as in, of course, you know, I may not see a student every day, whereas, an instructor would see a student at least twice a week, right? They would be able to point those out and say, Hey, like I've referred you to your academic advisor, I wanna holistically support the student. So I think that's one way. But another way is actually just having conversations with faculty members across campus and in our departments, right? They are, of course, subject matter experts. As academic advisors, we may not know the specifics about what we're advising. So being able to speak with professors and faculty members about their areas of interest and their expertise helps us better advise our students and say, Hey, you know, this course is about X. You may enjoy this. Or, you know, this professor has a specific background that may be closely related to what you're interested in. So, you know, just having those conversations with our faculty members to better serve our students as well.

Amy 8:35

Thank you for that. I have a little bit of context to kind of add to this conversation that we haven't brought up yet, which is the fact that professional academic advising is a relatively young profession as well. It's only a number of decades old. Not every university has it, and I know here at George Mason, there are still some departments that have faculty advising versus professional advisors, depending upon a number of variables such as the size of the department, funding at the college level, et cetera. So that's just some context. I think it's important that we all keep in mind as faculty and professional advisors, that the field is growing and there's a lot of opportunities and a lot of area for growth in collaborating with faculty. The other area that I wanted to point out is that I've definitely seen the administrative load go up for all professionals in higher ed, whatever their specific role is, whether that's teaching or research faculty or us as professional advisors as well. And I think the more that we are able to collaborate, whether that's on events or, for example, I've definitely seen that recruitment and enrollment are a growing area. It's a growing shared goal. Lemme put it that way, right? That we have as professional advisors and the faculty, especially in context of the enrollment concerns of higher ed and some of these bigger pictures that we're facing as an industry.

Rachel 10:06

Yeah, I think these are great points and I think we see a really interesting opportunity here, especially with academic advisors. That doesn't mean faculty are not involved in their students career planning or their students academic experience outside of their class. Right? But I think this conversation really leads us well into maybe our next topic of, you know, what are some of the recommendations that you have for instructors on how to work productively with academic advisors since we're talking about this basically like a partnership here?

Kate 10:38

I would say a big thing is that, we are not miracle workers. We're gonna do as much as we can. Um, but if you're having trouble getting in contact with a student, we may also have trouble getting in contact with a student like we try, don't get me wrong, I'm calling people all the time, but if they don't pick up the phone, there's not much I can do there. I do think we have a different relationship to student. Those of us who are professional advisors, we get to have a different relationship to the student because we're not involved directly in the outcomes of their academic life, right? Like we are not responsible for grading them. They're not seeing us as someone who has that control over their kind of future. So they have a different relationship to us and they may talk to us and interact with us. They may be willing to engage with us differently, but like, we can only work with what a student will tell us. We can only work with what we are given. Sometimes short of calling Mason PD, we can't get in contact with a student anymore than you can. So I do think sometimes there is that expectation that like we have some miracle way of like getting students, reworking with students or something like that. And unfortunately that is certainly not the case.

Jordan 11:51

Yeah, I think one thing to note too, that even people outside who might be listening outside of the higher education sphere might need to know is that traditional higher education is kind of split into two houses. There's an academic affairs side of the house, where a lot of the faculty members are gonna live. That's where students are going to class, they're learning things, they're graduating, they're registering, you know, they're doing all that stuff. And then there's a student affairs side of the house where it's like the people who need to support the students through the four transformative years that they're going through, where they're meeting new people and learning new things, and being tested and being challenged on a personal level, right? Like outside of high school, they were being challenged on a personal level. Now as, you know, forming adults, I think academic advisors live directly in the middle. They don't live in one of the houses. They have a foot in both doors of those houses. And so it's really important for faculty and instructors to know that, you know, we can help as best as we can, but we are kind of being split in two, and so it kind of goes off of what Kate said. It's like we can only go so far on both sides of the house because we're kind of being pulled in both of those directions and that can be challenging. But ultimately, like we want to help support students in the classroom. We wanna set them up for success whether that is their goal is to graduate early or double major or whatever that is. Or they need additional support from resources for their personal growth, or any personal challenges that they're helping. Like we wanna help them on both sides. So I think faculty members and instructors would definitely benefit from knowing that we are kind of a good, healthy middle ground between the classroom and additional support.

Amy 13:30

So well said, Jordan. Thank you for that.

Rachel 13:32

Yeah, I think that's a great point. When we think about, not only how the students' academics work, I mean, obviously that is a key part of higher education, right? And the grades and where they're going with that. But the rest of that development, you know, the social things, the professional growth outside of, you know, your Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes, all of those different types of things. So I think that's such a great point. Balancing or maybe even the pole between those two areas, is so important there. And so, I think Kate started us off with the conversation about academic advisors. But we've been talking a lot about what academic advisors do, so maybe we can circle back to that what do they not do?

Kate 14:16

We can't be a therapist. Definitely, I think that's something that like students maybe misunderstand more than faculty, but like there have definitely been a few times where a student starts to talk to me about something and I'm like, Hey, maybe we table this for CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services). We are not mental health professionals. But again, like that does kind of speak to that relationship that we develop with students of like, they see us as a safe place. And as much as I appreciate that, unfortunately, again, we can't go quite to that level with students as we would like to. I think another thing too is we can speak to the curriculum, but we are not curriculum experts. We see it from this very expanded view. I think I know more of the class numbers than most of the faculty in my department, quite honestly. Because

Rachel 15:02

Oh, probably,

Kate 15:03

hone in. Yeah. Like they hone in so far on their area of expertise that, you know, when it comes to the scope of the whole program, like I can see that, but when it comes to what's happening in a classroom, how you teach your classroom, like I can't really speak to that. And so there have been a few times where faculty have come to ask me about not necessarily teaching skills, but like curriculum related things, and I'm like I don't know. However you wanna keep delivering these classes, whatever foundational skills you think are missing in your students, that's maybe something to have with the rest of the department. But I'm telling them these three classes to take in sequence. If they're not learning the things you think they should be learning in that sequence, that's a curriculum question.

Rachel 15:50

You can send those curriculum questions right to us

Kate 15:53

Exactly.

Rachel 15:53

At Stearns Center. We, we, we are ready to jump in there. And for our listeners CAPS, I believe the acronym is the Counseling and Psychological Services.

Kate 16:01

Mason loves an acronym. There are so many.

Rachel 16:03

Acronym soup. Absolutely.

Jada 16:06

I'd like to circle back to a comment that Kate mentioned earlier when she mentioned that academic advisors are not miracle workers. I just want to emphasize and echo that, particularly for our students. So if we have any students that may be listening, either here at Mason or at other institutions, yes, we are here to support you in any way possible, but we are also doing that within the confines and the limitations of what is allowed, specifically when thinking of academic situations. Of course, we are doing so within the limitations and guidelines of academic policies. So there are some things that we, unfortunately, just cannot help or cannot do. So I think there's the need for us to set expectations. So while again, yes, we are here to guide you, we can't necessarily do beyond what is allowed within academic policy.

Rachel 16:57

Yeah, I think that's a great. And I think that kind of leads us into my last main question for the group is, what are some of the strengths and the future directions you see for the advising community?

Jordan 17:09

I think strength wise, we're seeing advisors come into the field who are really focused on the holistic advising of the student. I think academic advising as a whole, you hear that or you see that on a job posting and you're like, Great, I'm going to help a student register for these classes in this order and get them across the stage in four years. And that's not where students are anymore. That's not where the profession is anymore. And so I think you're seeing a lot of students who are in grad school who are coming into professional academic advising say, you know, I want to go into academic advising because I wanna help students do those things academically, right? But I also want to be there to have career conversations with them, or I want to see their student development that they have through their four years of college and help assist them in those things. And I think that's a huge strength. And I think that that's something that academic advising as a functional area of higher education gets to have and gets to exercise a little bit more than other functional areas. So that part and that relationship and dynamic of the job itself is changing, I think is a really bright spot for higher ed.

Kate 18:16

Yeah, it's kind of like Amy's point about the history of academic advising is we are entering the era where it's no longer faculty who transitioned into being full-time advisors or like people who were trying to be faculty and shifted into advising because there were other opportunities in that direction. It's now a group of people who have been in academic advising from the jump, and academic advising, academic policy, student support, that's their career goal. Not necessarily using academic advising as like a jumping off point to become an instructor. Which I do think was something that was happening for a little while. And now we're starting to see a shift away from that, thankfully. As well as, again, a movement out of faculty being forced into advising because of departmental and administrative demands, and so now that we're having people be professional advisors, it is really a chance for developing those student support skills, understanding the field as a whole, really becoming somebody who is a well-rounded professional in this area as opposed to cobbling skills together or pushing people into this area who didn't wanna be here.

Rachel 19:25

Yeah, that's such a great point. It's a huge shift in opportunity. Instead of having faculty who are like, Okay, you get these 18 students, or you get M through Z, or whatever that might look like, and you need to meet with all of them in this 10 day period, something like that. I think here we're seeing a huge opportunity not only for students support, but for that growth of the profession, like you're talking about.

Amy 19:50

Yeah, I wanna add in, especially in this time of AI growth, and as I can imagine that students, and I think I've heard little bits of this here and there, but this idea that a student, why should they see their advisor? Right? Why should they make the time out of their day to, in their busy schedules, they're doing other things, and that's valid. I hear that. Especially if they could say, use AI to build a schedule. They may not need us for that one task. Where they need us and where it goes to exactly what you all were saying, is that the connections that advisors can help the students make, that area, as Jordan mentioned, that in between space where advisors live can really help a student to make those connections, to address those interpersonal relationships with students peer to peer, students to alum, students even to their faculty. I think that's a great area of our strengths is that we are connectors, we are collaborators. We can be a resource for faculty as well as students. And I'm excited to see what that looks like and how that helps support students' return on investment and some of these larger issues that higher ed is facing right now.

Rachel 21:03

Absolutely, and I think that really leads us well into our keystone concept for today. You were just talking about the connections. But I think here also really looking at even expanding on those connections, our keystone concept of growth. We're looking at the growth of the profession of professional academic advisors. We're looking at how we support students' growth through their academic journey. Whether they're coming straight out of high school, whether they're returning for a degree, whether they're coming to a four year degree later on in life, or career changes, whatever that growth looks like. And also the growth across the different areas, whether that's just the courses, but also the other aspects of their professional lives and social lives and all of that. And also I think we're looking at a great opportunity and some growth for our faculty, for our instructors. Not necessarily being the academic advisors, but having more growth in terms of this partnership. Having more opportunity to have a little bit of a different role which seems like a great opportunity for our instructors. Not just to focus on their courses, but to focus on some of that career development, to focus on the partnership of how do we work productively together for those connections, for building those connections and more holistic student success. So thank you all so much for your time. I am so glad we got to have this conversation and schedule this with such a large group. But thank you so much for your time and sharing your insights about academic advising. So thank you so much.

Jada 22:44

Thank you.

Rachel 22:45

And please catch our next episodes. We're posting every two weeks on Keystone Concepts in Teaching during the fall and spring semesters, and you can find us on your favorite podcast listening platforms.