Editors's note: This is the second article in a multi-part series on advising and academic support services at postsecondary education institutions in America's urban communities. Future articles will address planning, assessment, multicultural competence, organization, staffing, budgeting, and other topics relevant to advising and academic support on the urban campus.

Introduction

Advising and academic support services are now often charged with developing learning services and retention programming that respond to the needs of individual students as well as address the requirements of the urban campus. Therefore, advising and academic support services within the urban campus must:

Whatever the future holds for urban postsecondary education, advising and academic support services must be responsive to societal changes and the needs of individual students enrolled at the urban campus (Shaffer, 1993).

As urban postsecondary education moves into the new millennium, the role of advising and academic support services will continue to evolve and grow in further and profound importance as the mission and goals of an urban campus change. Advising and academic support specialists must be proactive in developing and providing services needed by urban campus students as well as reinforce and support the teaching and learning community. Moreover, interpreting the urban campus to both prospective students as well as the surrounding urban community is a vital role for advisers and academic support specialists.

Likewise, advisers and academic support specialists must offer programs that address the academic pursuits of the urban campus student as well as encourage opportunities for student involvement in citizenship, leadership, recreational, social, and cultural activities (Hoover, 1997). In the role of adviser as educator, by encouraging students to participate in community-based activities, students learn about what comprises a community, how it is created, and how it functions. Historically, urban campuses have not adequately prepared students to live as active, participatory citizens and assume leadership roles within an urban community. People create communities, and if not nurtured, maintained, and supported by an educated populace, the urban community will collapse (Smith & Vellani, 1999). Therefore, the urban campus plays an integral role in the health and well-being of the surrounding community through the education of its students.

Failure to be accountable in advising efforts, assisting with student enrollment, and increasing responsibility and oversight of student retention could lead to replacement of advising and academic support specialists with other personnel, such as student affairs administrators, who will attempt to meet the needs of the urban campus and its student body. Examples already exist of:

However, when a clearly defined enrollment planning paradigm is in place, advising and academic support services along with their sister units (student enrollment, student finances and records, student orientation, student tutoring) have been absorbed within academic affairs/provostal divisions, a trend that began in the late 1990s and presently continues on many urban campuses.

While continuing to adapt to changes in the urban environment, advisers and academic support specialist must become proactive by assisting the urban campus in determining how to meet institutional missions and goals as well as carrying out primary and necessary advising services. Through these efforts, advisers and academic support specialists can help interpret the urban institution to prospective students, their families, and other constituencies within the urban community. In a recent open letter to the advising and academic support services community at the University at Buffalo, provost Satish Tripathi (2006) wrote:

“As a community, the University at Buffalo is refining our institutional academic expectations and goals for the future ... To realize our institutional vision, we have enlisted our academic advisement community to cultivate high expectations throughout our undergraduate student community. As advisers and educators, you play an important role in advancing our institutional pursuit of academic excellence. This is manifest, in part, through your efforts in helping our students to frame and to challenge their intellectual, academic, and personal expectations so that they can be successful in their academic pursuits. As academic advisers, you reinforce the knowledge, skills, and values necessary for our students to become responsible and informed citizens. As a campus community, we rely on you to encourage our students to participate fully in their undergraduate education; and we rely on you to empower [University at Buffalo] students to become active and responsible learners capable of achieving their baccalaureate and post-baccalaureate and career goals.”

As urban postsecondary education institutions exist and attempt to maintain relevance in the new millennium, a great deal depends upon how they demonstrate flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness in meeting the needs of the urban society (Shaffer, 1993). This need for relevance applies to advising and academic support service units at urban postsecondary institutions as well as to the rest of the urban campus.

Delivery of Advising and Academic Support Services

Advising and academic support specialists must provide basic as well as comprehensive academic services on modern urban postsecondary campuses. Moreover, it is not just what services are provided, but how they are provided that demonstrates visibility and relevancy (Hoover, 1997). The primary services that advising and academic support services are actively involved with include:

Advisers must work to serve the mission and goals of the urban campus; advisers must strive to fulfill the needs of prospective as well as enrolled students; and they must work to fully support the teaching and learning environment. Because of factors found on the urban campus, advising and academic support services must evolve as student needs change. Administration and faculty must be involved with development and implementation. Advisers, as educators themselves, can ask faculty to participate in programs developing learning skills, tutorials, mentoring, and various other urban campus retention efforts so that faculty have the opportunity to get acquainted with students more personally (Hoover, 1997).

Increasingly, public urban campuses are being challenged to justify what they do. Concerns have been raised about student graduation rates, matriculation rates, and time-to-degree completion (Smith & Vellani, 1999). In some states, policymakers are questioning the role of academic remediation on the urban campus. Focused advising and academic support services that demonstrate as well as justify their value will have a continued place of importance within the urban campus as integral services that support student learning.

Student Admissions and Enrollment

Beeler and Moehl (1996) state that “enrollments in public urban universities are particularly susceptible to demographic changes and market-driven local labor needs” (p. 1). Unfortunately, many urban campuses pay little attention to student recruitment and subsequent support or to the extent to which students are retained, until student enrollment begins to decline (Beeler & Moehl, 1996). Advisers and academic support specialists in urban communities understand that the age distribution is often widely distributed, with the traditional eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old cohort taking classes with the non-traditional students age twenty-five and older, creating two distinctly different student populations. Therefore, most urban campuses struggle to meet the needs and expectations of their students. Moreover, a myriad of urban campus student subcultures exist within the various age groups, including:

The differentiation becomes even more complex within a given group, and Rhatigan (1986) encourages urban campuses with a large commuter population to ensure that advising and academic support services are available at times and methods readily accessible to commuter students.

Once an urban institution has a better understanding of the students currently enrolled, as well as the various urban populations it serves, plans can be developed to both enroll and retain students. Advisers as educators play a critical role as they coordinate resources of the urban campus to educate students, their families, and other support groups about the value added of urban students attending postsecondary education. In addition, advisers at an urban campus must stress the importance of general education as part of a student's academic development. Moreover, a general education program on an urban campus should have an information technology and knowledge management component infused within the undergraduate curriculum, as no one can be a functional citizen in today's environment without having a solid grasp of information technology as well as an understanding of the role it may play in transforming the urban community (Smith & Vellani, 1999).

Schuh (1993) reported that many of the traditional eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old urban campus students come from:

Advisers as educators on the urban campus also need to engage people on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder: those on some form of public assistance and/or those under the jurisdiction of the court system (Smith & Vellani, 1999). When considering 50 percent of African-American youth between eighteen and twenty-four are under some form of court-ordered supervision, challenges loom large for urban campuses located in environments with large African-American communities (Smith & Vellani, 1999). Therefore, as the numbers of these varied student populations increase, additional advising and academic support services will be required (Schuh, 1993).

Student Advising and Retention

Advising and academic support specialists must be positioned within the urban campus so they can assist populations in need of assistance, and they must be fully integrated within academic services of an institution. Partnerships between advising and academic support services along with student affairs administration can facilitate urban campus goals for student success. Likewise, a partnership between the faculty and advisers is of fundamental and paramount importance. It should not be assumed that faculty understand the profile of the students in their particular academic units. When advisers as educators help faculty know the urban campus student better, faculty are more likely to adjust their instructional teaching methodologies and personally assist students with learning (Hoover, 1997).

Data collected through the Public Urban Universities Student Affairs Data Exchange demonstrate that attrition is typically higher for undergraduates enrolled in urban postsecondary campuses when compared to national attrition and retention averages (MacLean, 1996). Changing the high attrition rate of the urban campus student can be difficult, costly, and sometimes elusive. Nevertheless, aggressive programming in advising and academic support services has been developed at many urban campuses, resulting in improved student retention, but these programs:

One way to offer individualized attention for selected student populations is obtaining external funding from state and federal government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the United Way, the Urban League, the Salvation Army, etc. (Elliott, 1994). Additional funding sources include state and/or local government, philanthropic organizations, religious societies, and other community development corporations (Martin, 2004). Some of these institutions are supported primarily by fees and voluntary donations, but many are also tax-supported. As with the urban campus, they all have a common mission—to help change and improve the quality of life within their urban communities. Likewise, as with the urban campus, these organizations have a mission linked to the urban environment, and opportunities exist for supporting academic partnerships. Such partnerships could create programming in support of urban campus student retention as administered by advisers and academic support specialists.

Advisers and academic support specialists on an urban campus must be equipped to assess the academic needs of students. Urban campus student populations must be defined as well as clearly understood, and only then can the appropriate academic support services be designed, developed, and delivered. Data analysis regarding the impact on student retention is critical to demonstrate the need for future funding as well as maintain campus support for advising initiatives. Likewise, such data reporting can be used by advisers and academic support specialists to convince the faculty that teaching methodologies and time invested by knowing students are critical to student retention efforts (Hoover, 1997).

Student retention has a direct impact on financial considerations on the urban postsecondary institution. Many urban campuses are generally enrollment-driven, and given the highly competitive postsecondary education marketplace (as well as shrinking and competing demands on financial resources), faculty release time from teaching and instructional duties—even for ways to enhance urban campus student learning and subsequent student retention—can be difficult to justify. Again, advisers as educators can advocate for and assert the importance and justification of such efforts on the urban campus (Elliott, 1994).

As previously mentioned, advisers and academic support specialists must be part of the decision-making process that defines the mission and goals of an urban campus. Advisers as educators interpret much information to prospective students and their families. When new students understand what is expected and, perhaps more importantly, what is offered and available, students can adjust their individual expectations in terms of what is attainable. Advisers as educators can help facilitate reasonable expectations for both the urban campus as well as the student. Students who feel at home on the urban campus, have a sense of connection, and experience academic success are more likely to be retained by the urban campus (Hoover, 1997).

Conclusion

Leadership, partnerships, and collegial relationships are required for advisers and the urban campus to be effective in attaining the result of increased student retention. Without a commitment and institutional support by all constituencies of the urban campus to maintain and retain a diverse undergraduate student body, only minimal gains can be achieved by advisers and academic support specialists alone. Therefore, advisers as educators must work towards:

Learning to appreciate other points of view, treating other students (as well as a faculty and staff) with respect, and valuing academic integrity are all philosophies advisers as educators can share with the urban campus student through advising and academic support services. This is a vital role in urban postsecondary education as long as its professionals look to the future as agents closely attuned to the diverse urban campus student populations they serve (Hoover, 1997).

Definition of Terms

The purpose/functions of academic advising and educational counseling as defined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization:

  1. To assist students in developing educational plans that are consistent with their life goals.
  2. To provide students with accurate information about academic progression and degree requirements.
  3. To assist students in understanding academic policies and procedures.
  4. To help students access campus resources that will enhance their ability to be academically successful.
  5. To assist students in overcoming educational and personal problems.
  6. To identify systemic and personal conditions that may impede student academic achievement and developing appropriate interventions.
  7. To review and use available data about students academic and educational needs, performance, aspirations and problems.
  8. To increase student retention by providing a personal contact that students often need and request, thereby connecting them to the institution (UNESCO, 2002).

Academic support services, for the purposes of this and future articles in the series, may comprise and include:

Metropolitan: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a city with a population of at least 50,000 (Levy, 2000).

Urban: An incorporated place such as city, town, or village with a population of 2,500 or more; the rest of the nation is defined as rural. Therefore, the U.S. Census Bureau's use of the word urban is not synonymous with the word metropolitan (Levy, 2000).

Urban campus: According to the Higher Education Act [U.S. Code Title 20: Chapter 28, Subchapter VII, Part C, § 1139g], an institution of higher education (or a consortium of such institutions, any one of which meets all of the requirements of this paragraph) which: