FACULTY GUIDE TO LEEP CENTER ADVISING
OVERVIEW
What is LEEP Center Advising?
LEEP Center Advising is designed to assist undergraduate students in achieving their personal and professional goals. LEEP Center Advising complements academic advising by encouraging students to explore the linkages between academics and the world, ensuring that they understand the significance of co-curricular and extracurricular activities within the context of their academic interests, and helping them plan and prepare for experiential as well as post-baccalaureate opportunities.
Starting in fall 2013, all incoming students are assigned a LEEP Center adviser with whom they will work for all four years. Juniors and seniors can meet with a LEEP Center adviser upon request. The model will be phased in and eventually every Clark student will have a LEEP Center adviser.
Students are welcome to meet with their LCA whenever they choose. The LEEP Center also offers a range of additional resources – including workshops and webinars – that are available to all undergraduates.
LEEP Center staff serves as LEEP Center advisers, and will continue to offer assistance in their areas of expertise: Academic Advising, Career Services, Community Engagement, Study Abroad, and the Writing Center.
Academic Advisers and LEEP Center Advising
· The core responsibilities of the academic advisers do not change. Academic advisers (pre-major, major, minor, concentration and pre-professional [law, engineering, and health advisers]) will maintain their long-standing responsibility for guiding a student’s academic decision-making and planning.
· What’s new is that the academic advisers – and the student – have an added support structure. The two types of advising will work together in a range of ways, depending upon the student’s needs and the adviser’s knowledge. Appendix A illustrates several of these possibilities.
The Guide that follows offers further details on the advising model, a rationale, examples of how students might be assisted, and more. The Table of Contents is hyperlinked for your convenience.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
OVERVIEW 1
What is LEEP Center Advising? 1
Academic Advisers and LEEP Center Advising 1
LEEP Center Advising in Detail 3
Who are the LEEP Center advisers? 3
Rationale 4
How will faculty advising change, given the advent of LEEP Center advisers? 5
Communication among advisers 6
Advisers and CU Web/Banner 6
LEEP Center adviser assignments 6
LEEP Center Advising in the context of Clark’s advising support structures 6
LEEP Center Advising programming 7
First-year students 7
Upper-level students 7
How will we know we have succeeded? 8
Conclusion 8
Contact 8
APPENDIX A: Examples of how students might benefit from LEEP center advising 9
APPENDIX B: LEEP Center opportunities, resources, and personal and professional skill-building 10
APPENDIX C: Differentiating advising resources 11
APPENDIX D: LEEP Center organizational chart 14
APPENDIX E: LEEP Center staff directory 15
LEEP Center Advising in Detail
LEEP Center Advising is designed to assist undergraduate students in achieving their personal and professional goals. LEEP Center Advising will complement Clark’s traditional academic advising by encouraging every student to explore the linkages between academics and their interests, ensuring that all students understand the significance of co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities within the context of their academic interests, and preparing them for experiential as well as post-graduate opportunities. We will be rolling out and continually refining this model over the next four years. Specifically:
· All undergraduate students eventually will have a LEEP Center adviser to guide them during their four years at Clark. During academic year 2013-14, all first year students have been assigned a LEEP Center adviser; sophomores, juniors, and seniors will have the opportunity to meet with a LEEP Center adviser individually at their request. In subsequent years, each incoming class will be assigned LEEP Center advisers, and by fall 2016 all students will have an assigned adviser. In addition to one-to-one advising, students will be supported through a variety of activities, specifically:
· The LEEP Center will offer workshops and webinars throughout the year, focused on encouraging students to explore their interests, and prepare them for co-curricular opportunities.
LEEP Center Advising is different in both content and approach from more traditional, better-known forms of academic advising as well as from career counseling. LEEP Center Advising, while offering answers, primarily asks questions of students, encouraging them to fully engage with and reflect upon their developmental trajectory and future plans.
Who are the LEEP Center advisers?
LEEP Center Advising is provided by staff in the LEEP Center, which is comprised of the following offices: Academic Advising, Career Services, Community Engagement, Study Abroad, and the Writing Center. Each of these staff has expertise in a particular area of student support and has been working closely with undergraduate students for many years. Additionally, all have master’s degrees or are working towards one. Their training to undertake the new model of LEEP Center Advising has been ongoing over the past year, and will continue as the model unfolds.
LEEP Center advisers have knowledge of: 1) theories of academic advising, career counseling, and student and young adult development; 2) Clark’s academic requirements and resources; and 3) national and global best practices.
LEEP Center advisers will refer students to experts across campus as necessary, and will follow up with students to be sure that their questions are answered.
Rationale
While many colleges and universities are modifying their academic and career advising to reflect changes in the student body and the external environment, Clark’s model is uniquely comprehensive as well as connected to our underlying approach to education, Liberal Education and Effective Practice (LEEP). Whereas LEEP goes beyond the curriculum to envision undergraduate education as an intentional, developmental process occurring in multiple settings, LEEP Center advisers will assist students in bridging curricular and co-curricular activities, developing strategies for integrating their experiences across settings, articulating what they learn from these experiences, and working towards accomplishment of their short term and long term goals.
This may sound familiar – the best faculty advisers have done this for years, especially for students who chose an academic path, since that path is familiar to faculty. However, we need to make sure that all Clark students benefit from individualized comprehensive guidance, no matter their passion or their future plans. This is what encouraged us to create the LEEP Center Advising model and to situate it in the LEEP Center where it is tied to a broad array of co-curricular opportunities, academic support services and career guidance.
What we now refer to as LEEP Center Advising was first articulated in the 2009 Undergraduate Task Force Report and was included in the 2011 Academic and Financial Plan. The Undergraduate Task Force Report, in the section on Academic Advising, addresses, in two separate sections, the importance of linking and integrating the curricular with the co-curricular (highlights added):
C. 6. Another important advising function is promoting special opportunities for students. An approach to strengthening this aspect would be to create a tighter integration between many offices (academic advising, career services, fellowships, internships, study abroad, student leadership and programming, volunteering, and so on) and to align these areas with the goals laid out in our statement on liberal education. The new developmental three-phase model and focus on communities of effective practice also suggest tighter ways to connect alumni to the academic program, building on the successful “alumni in residence” program (p. 12).
VI. The pace and scope of cultural life today means that students now have a wide range of significant experiences, including classroom learning, educational experiences outside the classroom, social networking, and co-curricular activities in clubs, organizations, and residential life that all contribute to their educational environment. As we broaden our understanding of liberal education to include more “out of the classroom” educational activities and emphasize the importance of integrative learning, the need for us to address the interplay of curricular and co-curricular activities will only grow. We believe that Clark needs to take steps now to begin bridging the various domains through which students move to create a comprehensive approach to the student experience (p. 13).
Consequently, Goal 2 of the Academic and Financial Plan specifically identifies advising as a critical component of the LEEP initiatives: (pp.16-17)
LEEP Advising: Significantly enhance undergraduate advising to help students to better construct pathways through their undergraduate experience into careers or graduate and/or professional schools.
Beyond Clark’s strategic plan, it is important to reiterate that LEEP is situated in the national endeavor to revitalize liberal education, a movement being led by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). The AAC&U is quite vocal and persuasive about the fact that “It takes more than a major…” to find meaningful employment and to flourish after college. Therefore, it also takes more than academic advising to help students find their passion, prepare them to contribute to their communities, and ensure that they achieve their goals.
While Clark’s new model of advising is particularly innovative, we are not alone in our efforts to restructure and rethink our services to students. Higher education is increasingly being held responsible for student outcomes, including post-baccalaureate employment as well as teaching students how to live meaningful, purposeful, successful lives. This way of thinking represents a larger shift within higher education research where, historically, the emphasis has been increasing access to college, and less about getting them through and beyond.
How will faculty advising change, given the advent of LEEP Center advisers?
Academic advisers (pre-major, major, minor, concentration and pre-professional [law and pre-health advisers]) will maintain their long-standing responsibility for guiding a student’s academic decision-making and planning. LEEP Center advisers will primarily address co-curricular opportunities and post-baccalaureate planning, though the extent of which will vary depending upon the student’s needs (as described below).
v The core responsibilities of the academic advisers do not change. Academic advisers will meet with students at least once per semester on course selection, schedule periodic advising conversations to address intellectual and academic goals and concerns, and in some cases will discuss co-curricular activities and post-baccalaureate plans. Students will start with an FYI-based pre-major academic adviser, then (usually) change advisers when they declare a major.
v What’s new is that the academic advisers – and the student – now have an added support structure. LEEP Center advisers will augment academic advising with information and expertise, as needed. Students will be assigned a LEEP Center adviser upon matriculation, and stay with that adviser until graduation.
v The two types of advising might work together in a range of ways, depending upon the student’s needs and the adviser’s knowledge. For example, a student who is thinking about a career as a physicist or historian may find the majority of assistance is provided by her major adviser, but may rely on her LEEP Center adviser to strategize about the application process and identify possible funding sources. Alternatively, a student who loves philosophy or social activism but has not yet determined a major (not to mention a post-baccalaureate direction) may work more closely with his LEEP adviser to explore interests, determine appropriate experiential activities, and reflect on how his passions connect with his academic path.
v The two types of advising might work together differently during each of the three developmental phases upon which LEEP is designed. First year students need to transition to their new community and understand academic expectations, and they rely on their FYI faculty for this, though many others on campus will have a role to play. After settling in, their developmental task is to explore – this might mean testing out different majors or concentrations, a task for the academic adviser; or it might entail exploring via a service project or international internship placement, in which case the LEEP Center adviser can be of most assistance in aligning interests and opportunities. In the third phase, action, the student is expected to integrate classroom learning with demonstrations of effective practice, and here faculty advisers might direct an honors thesis, while LEEP Center advisers can suggest an alumni-sponsored LEEP Project. The possibilities are numerous.
v See Attachment A for examples of student concerns that might be addressed by the LEEP Center adviser.
Communication among advisers
With regard to the nature of communication between the faculty advisers and LEEP Center advisers, the relationship will be up to the advisers themselves, based on the needs of the student -- just as it has existed in the past between, for example, pre-law advisers and faculty advisers, or between faculty advisers and the Dean of Students. Faculty advisers may contact a student’s LEEP Center adviser directly, and vice versa. We anticipate that the student will be a primary conduit, and the message to the student will be, “You should consult with your academic/LEEP Center adviser about that.”
Advisers and CU Web/Banner
CU Web (Web for Faculty and Web for Students) has been modified so that students can be assigned multiple advisers. This will include LEEP Center advisers, as well as second major advisers, minor and concentration advisers, probation advisers and more. All advisers and students will be able to view the names of assigned advisers on the screens.
Faculty advisers are still the only adviser type who will be able to release the student’s course registration PIN.
LEEP Center adviser assignments
LEEP Center advising assignments are made on the basis of FYIs – all students in an FYI will have the same LEEP Center adviser, and each LEEP Center adviser will have approximately 50 students (three to five FYI classes). FYI instructors might consider inviting the LEEP Center adviser to class field trips or course-related on-campus events.
The extent of the LEEP Center adviser-faculty adviser relationship is up to the faculty adviser.
LEEP Center Advising in the context of Clark’s advising support structures
Clark undergraduates benefit from a rich and varied network of advising and support, in addition to their faculty advisers. Incoming students are assigned a peer adviser and a residence hall adviser; upper class mentors work with ACE and Connections participants and with international students; athletes have coaches; and student organizations have faculty or staff advisers. Depending upon their interests, students may consult a pre-health or pre-law adviser; depending upon the course they take, they might have a PLA and/or TA; and depending upon their grades, they may have an academic probation adviser. All students have student accounts counselors. Students who have campus jobs will have a supervisor. Students who decide to complete LEEP Projects will have mentors. A number of students will receive assistance from the Counseling staff. Finally, the Academic Advising Office assists students in understanding Clark’s academic policies and with graduation requirements. LEEP Center advisers will join this network, adding specific expertise and filling previously identified gaps.