University of North Carolina

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University of North Carolina - 18 April to 21 April 2011

All incoming Freshman students enter Arts and Sciences and stay in this college for up to two years or until they declare their major. UNC has around 16,000 UG and Graduate students.

Advising happens in a range of locations across UNC. The Undergraduate Academic Advising Centre provides advice to undecided students as well as all Freshman. Students enrol into General Education subjects in year one.

Student advisers in Arts and Sciences have a case load of around 600 students. There are 26-27 full time advisers. There are also some faculty advisers, but this has decreased somewhat over the past few years. There are some part-time departmental advisers who work in the Undergraduate Advising Centre, particularly in the bigger schools (Business). Departmental advisers can be faculty or student services staff.

Students come to an orientation with their parents in Summer. There are about 13 or 14 sessions and students are then taken into smaller groups (1;20), then 1:6, then 1:1 to start making their subject selection. Parents are allowed to join students at the original large information session, after this they go to a separate parents information session.

Students need to pick around 40 to 50 subjects as their first choices are often not available. A First Year Guide is available on-line and provides a comprehensive outline of the information students need to enrol.

All advisers have walk-in appointments (10am to 12pm and 2pm to 4pm) and scheduled appointments using an on-line appointment booking system. They also have approximately 10 hours a week of administration tasks. Specifically, they sign off on graduating students. Interestingly, the demand for walk in's is so great that it is impacting the staff capacity to provide 1:1 appointments.

A satisfaction survey is distributed centrally and sent to the Dean. Survey's are also istributed after appointments.

Advisers post notes onto a share drive so that other staff have access to information that relates to academic advising. The university uses PeopleSoft and has a degree audit. This allows staff and students to enter what they've completed and it tells them what they need to complete. It also has a "what if" functionality whereby a student can put in a scenario to complete a different major and the system will tell them again, what they need to complete that major.

There is a seperate retention office and they also have access to the advising notes. There is also a 1st generation retention co-ordinator and scholarship program that also sits under Dean May.

Scheduling is open all year long.

Lecturer/Adviser positions

These positions are quite new and I spoke with one Lecturer/Adviser who was very positive about the program. Basically these are non-tenured staff who take on the role for a period of 3 years. They do not have any research requirements, but do still teach. They advise for about 10-12 hours per week and co-ordinate their time with the Dean of Academic Studies who is responsible for advising in departments. The staff advise in the Undergraduate Advising Centre and work closely with the professional advisers. There are 8 lecturer adviser positions across the University.

Spoke with Gidi Shemer who is a Lecturer Adviser and teaches, but has no research requirements. The training, which takes 3 weeks for Lecturer/Advisers take is undertaken by the Assistant Deans who work in the UG Advising Centre. the training includes things like the requirements of the degrees etc. The lecturer/advisers are assigned to students within their discipline and so act as mentors and advisers, but are employed as lecturer/advisers. People apply for these roles and are on 3 year contracts. They would return to their teaching positions after the three years.

Orientation

Orientation is compulsory for all students and it's at this time that they register for Fall Classes. This is quite like how we manage orientation. Parents are also invited to attend a general education overvioew, but are then taken off to seperate parent information sessions. They have Orientation Leaders who are paid and trained students, this is organised through the orientation office.

Study Abroad

Spoke with staff in the Study Abroad Department look after all Study Abroad and Exchange for the University. There are also some departmental SAEX staff.

One thing that they suggested would be good for incoming students into Melbourne was more information about the differences in demands of the Australian system For example, the differences in language: tutorials = resitation/seminars. What's required when writing an assignment? We don't have on-going assessment.

US students also take their responsibilities quite seriously and they all sign an honour statement which basically says that they won't misbehave. This can be used to temporarily cancel a student if the offense is serious.

Social and Behavioural Sciences - Divisonal Meeting

There was some familiar discussion about policy interpretation. There was also quite a bit of discussion about the walk-ins. Staff reported that they preferred to be rostered across days rather then have all of their walk-ins on one day. There was also quite a bit of discussion about the fact that the walk-ins take away from the appointments. It was agreed that walk-ins would be reduced to between 3 and 4.30pm during summer. A discussion about changes to majors was also discussed - communication between the departments and schools and the central advising unit was not always great and often staff are hearing about changes from students. Deaprtments are responsible for all curriculum changes and one way that they share information is to have brown bag lunches. This is an important point if we are to consider a central advising unit.

There is a high level of coperation between the centre and the departments and the departments are quite happy for the advising unit to make decisions and be the keeper of policy.

Roxanna McGraw - North Carolina State University

North Carolina State has around 30,000 undergraduate students and 2500 graduate students. Roxanna is closly associated with NACADA and is a wealth of information. She heads up OASIS (Office of Advising and Student Information Services). The OASIS centre acts as a bridge between colleges and provides services such as, change of majors, re-admits, academically ineligible,academic warnings, "Pack Promise" i.e First generation and Low SES, select a minor/double major, college liaison people for each college. Undergraduate Academic Affairs and Student Affairs are being restructured and coming together.
The University is made up of 10 colleges and each has it's own advising model and every college has it's own Pack Promise co-ordinator. The OASIS team track these students GPA and also survey students.

The University has a new Chancellor and this is expected to result in a number of changes across the University.

Training of advisers is well developed here with key competencies in place and templates for each level of adviser. For example, the training is built into the PD process and includes things like, presenting to NACADA, or attending a couple of NACADA webinars, for a more senior adviser. Third year adviser could be expected to assist at an ATEM conference or similar to assist speaker. Need to recommend to Neil that we become far more actively involved with ATEM and NACADA.
University of Texas has a very prescriptive staff training model that is also worth looking at.

Also a People Soft University and also uses the "What if" degree audit functionality.

Advising Awards

There are a number of awards (6) that provide around $750 per adviser. The students nominate staff and a committee meets to decide who will receive the awards. There is an endownment that funds this initiative.

Retention Coordinator.

This area provides intensive outreach into schools and community colleges. They provide a 3 credit point seminar for transfer students . Sophomores from 4 year colleges do quite well. The students who struggle most are those from Community Colleges in North Carolina. The class sizes are much smaller at the colleges and the support is more individualised.

CCSTEP: Community College Step from College to University program.

This area also works very closely with students on probation.

There are around 750 students on probation most in Fall. Two full time and one graduate assistant follow up with probation students with special cases. They take the students through an on-line assessment, contract and personal inventory. Twenty %!o(MISSING)f the first year population are first generation. There are 800 transfer students in Fall. There is also a Student Association outreach program for students.

A monthly brown bag for staff to train in areas such as dealing with mental health issues, de-escalating an upset student. Bounce back program for all students on probation deals with wellness and living a healthy lifestyle. These students are more successful than other students.

Business Adviser

Business school is a small school with 9 staff and 330 students.
As a business adviser she works 6 hours per week in the undergraduate centre advising 1st and 2nd year students who may be looking at moving into a business major. The associate director of admissions also advises in the UG advising centre.

Training was comprehensive and included, study abroad training, business school majors training, training in the undergraduate centre including students at risk, policy, forms and procedures. There is a booking system whereby students can select an adviser based on the major that they're interested in. No academic staff advise in the Faculty, however, they do have office hours and small class sizes mean that they can advise in class. This is a great model that brings the expertise from the departments into a central advising unit.

Fred Clark and Michael Highland

Fred and Michael run a program for low SES and First generation. The program is funded by the university and donors and attracts quite a lot of funding. The centre provides a 24 hour/7 day per week service whereby students can contact Michael at any time. They also take students through a range of social events, including dining out (students may never have been to a restaurant), movies and plays. This would be a great model for the Marrup Barack students.

Careers

Career advising is provided centrally and within the colleges. The central unit provide a range of resume services and a huge number of peer to peer programs. They use peers for triage and workshops. The peers are volunteers and are fully trained.

They are setting up a space for entrepreneurial endeavours. Students will work together developing businesses.

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Photos

UNC
Equivalent of South Lawn