by Rebecca Karoff, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, The University of Texas System
On May 17, 2021, the University of Texas System held its fourth annual Advising Institute. Like last year’s institute, this one was virtual. Like the previous three, we invited our eight academic institutions to send teams, composed of professional advisors, advising directors, and the group of administrators with responsibility for leading and overseeing student success initiatives at their universities, including advising. This year, with encouragement from provosts, we opened the team size considerably, leveraging the virtual delivery of the event. Teams of 12 in past years increased to as many as 25 people this year for our larger campuses resulting in a total of 164 participants.
Since its inception, the institute has served multiple purposes to: provide professional development for the UT System’s professional advisors; engage advisors in collective problem-solving and sharing of best practices; and enable both cross-campus and inter-institutional networking. While the UT System provides organizational, logistical, and financial support (whether in person for the first two years or virtually these last two), the institute agenda and content have been determined by small and mighty planning committees populated by institutional staff directly involved in overseeing and delivering advising.
The UT System’s student success framework includes Advising as one of its three student success pillars, along with Finances and Belonging. The framework has been in place since 2017, developed collaboratively with our institutions, and we articulate our pillars as commitments to students. The Advising pillar reads: All UT students will receive the advising they need to help them discover clear pathways to degree completion and beyond.
As part of the framework development process, we convened affinity groups for each of the three pillars. Each affinity group produced a report with recommendations, many of which we have been working on collectively across the System. The Advising Affinity Group recommendations coalesced around the UT System 5E Framework for Advising Excellence, using advising to: educate and empower students; enhance communication between students and advisors; elevate advisor career pathways and advising as a profession; and evaluate institutional advising through continuous assessment and data-driven improvement. This framework has been the centerpiece at each advising institute, and we continue to implement and adapt it based on student needs, advisor needs, and institutional cultures and resources. It has also been the foundation for advising reforms underway at the System’s eight universities, from integration of holistic advising across the colleges at UTEP, to hiring additional advisors, salary increases and career ladders put in place at several others UTs, to on-campus professional development and recognition at UT San Antonio and UT Austin (to name a few).
I’m proud of the leadership, convening and sometimes financial support we can provide from the UT System Office of Academic Affairs where I am located. But let’s get real: the adoption, adaptation and implementation of recommendations is led by colleagues at the institutions. Best practices, strategies and tactics translate into action because of dedicated university staff—executive and mid-level administrators, faculty, in-the-trenches student affairs and support staff like advisors who work with students day-in and day-out. In the case of advisors, day-in and day-out often means 24-7.
Advisors were already front-line staff before COVID. However, their roles, on-call status, and responsibilities have increased exponentially throughout the pandemic. They have made the difference in whether a student leaves the university, enrolls in that next semester, knows how to access financial resources, has had technology (devices, WiFi, carrier) essential to doing college, food to eat, a place to live.
Which brings us back to this year’s institute. Aligned with overall system and national work to integrate and embed an equity lens in all that we do, equity in advising was a central focus on the agenda and woven throughout engagement with the 5E Framework. Also primary was something the planning committee insisted on: those in leadership and decision-making roles at System and the institutions have to better acknowledge and address advisor well-being and mental health. Supporting students 24/7 takes a toll on advisors who are contending with their own health, work, financial and family care-taking challenges, all made more difficult because of COVID.
The 2021 Advising Institute put these topics on the agenda in presentations and through breakout discussions. Obviously, in one day on Zoom, discussion around solutions and action can only go so far. Yet, the institute is a powerful forum for listening to advisors from every university in the system, as members of professional cohorts, and as diverse individuals.
Four years in, it is clear that the impact of the UT System’s annual advising institute has accrued, as we reach more advisors each year, work collectively on continuous improvement and evaluation grounded in the systemwide framework, and stay focused on increasing available resources and support within our capacity to do so, so that every UT student receives the advising they need to help them discover clear pathways to degree completion and beyond.