Charting the Path: Exploring the Professional Model of Academic Advising – Pros, Cons, and Best Practices

Session Outline
Join us for an engaging and interactive workshop focused on the vital role of academic advising in fostering student success and institutional flourishment. In this session, we will delve into the essential goals of academic advising—supporting the development of ‘whole’ students (Grit, 2023), empowering decision-making (Ramwell and Farrell, 2023), and nurturing personal and academic growth (Grey and Osborne, 2018).

Through collaborative small-group discussions, participants will explore the professional advising model by comparing and contrasting it with others, such as the pastoral and integrated institutional archetypes (Earwaker, 1992). Based upon our experiences, we will explore the professional paradigm’s advantages, including targeted specialist support and greater consistency, while addressing challenges, involving resource allocation and potential divides between academic and professional teams, among others.

Crucially, attendees will work together to answer critical questions, share insights, and uncover effective ways for institutions to measure advising impact by adopting a round-robin method. In terms of the potential impact of this session, we are keen to probe attendees’ intuitions or attitudes regarding the professional approach and whether these change throughout the discussion, especially with it being less commonly employed within UK Higher Education Institutions (Ramluggun, Mansbridge, and Barbaresi, 2023) and, perhaps, being traditionally viewed more sceptically (Hu, 2020) on account of advising being synonymised with teaching (Appleby, 2008).

This workshop will provide participants with a deeper appreciation of different institutional approaches to advising and will offer an exclusive inside look into the innovative professional approach being pioneered within the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester.