The acclimation of students to the college experience as their “home away from home” is instinctively understood by most of us as an essential ingredient in students' success. Developing relationships with academic advisers can accelerate students' acclimation and help them to feel more at home. I recommend that our relationships with our advisees be seen as a process with stages of interaction. Each successive stage builds upon the work of the preceding one, increasing levels of trust and rapport as students get to know their advisers and see them as having students' best interests at heart.
The first stage is simply contact. Our students are most difficult to reach before the fall term begins, in terms of their not being “in the system” yet, but are also the most open to our reaching. Thus, early contact from advisers—faculty advisers, staff advisers, and advisers of at-risk students—is both crucial and critical for setting the stage for students' success.
Contact is merely letting the advisee know that you are there. In practical application at the University of Rio Grande in southern Ohio, we are so convinced of the importance of this step that we not only strongly emphasize this with our advisers during the first couple of weeks of classes, but we also pursue the establishment of summer contacts between advisers and students we consider to be at risk (for example, students admitted for the fall term who have low high school grade-point averages and low composite ACT scores and who place into two or more developmental courses).
We encourage advisers, when making these contacts during the summer months, to employ methods that accommodate their personalities and time constraints. For example, we printed postcards for the advisers of at-risk students, drafted a sample letter of introduction for the initial introduction of advisers to their advisees, encouraged phone calls of greeting and welcome (some enjoyed this method, and some were not comfortable with it), and even sought to arrange meetings between advisers and advisees at New Student Orientation, held three times over the summer.
Though we contend that the summer is ideal for making contact, it is clearly not always practical. However, these methods are also well suited for those first two weeks of the term. Furthermore, the nature of these kinds of contact is less formidable than requiring students to report to their adviser. This requirement still should be in place but now can build on positive relationships already established.
Secondly, a real connection must take place. An early contact is necessary, but opening the door for a sustained relationship, such as an informal mentoring relationship, makes the contact meaningful. The best advising practices that we have observed on this campus involve not only an open-door policy for students to see their advisers but also an invitation to check in on a weekly basis with no formal agenda other than to touch base.
For these contacts to carry the weight that they should in the building of an ongoing relationship between the adviser and the advisee, it is crucial for the adviser to be knowledgeable of the advisee's background and goals (see our Advisee Profile Form). The adviser should also be continuously updated about the student's current status in classes and in campus involvement overall.
And finally there is community: assisting the student in moving beyond obligatory attendance to full participation in the college experience. Advisers should seek to creatively motivate their students to see themselves as members of the college population with something to contribute. They should share their affirmations for students for even the smallest of their achievements.
In logs of information about their advisees, advisers should make note of advisees' strengths and then play to them as time goes by. If a student is doing well in a class, for instance, the adviser should remark on it without plunging immediately into a criticism (a little bit of flattery never hurt anyone). Advisers may then want to encourage their advisees to be responsibly involved in extracurricular activities related to those strengths (with an ongoing admonition to not overdo them), especially organizations and events that may serve as lab experiences for their career goals.
We will find that, as we deliberately walk our students through this process, college may become part of them as much as they become a part of the college during what may prove to be one of the most important seasons of their lives.