Skip to Content

National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition

  • Advising Success Network logo

Advising Success Network

The National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition is pleased to be a core partner in the Advising Success Network (ASN), a grant-funded initiative aimed to elevate advising as a priority, improve advising practice, and ensure success for all students, particularly low-income students and students of color.

Advising Success Network

The Advising Success Network is a dynamic network of five organizations who are partnering to support educational change and improved student outcomes through a holistic approach to addressing operational, programmatic, technological, and research needs of colleges and universities in direct support of a more equitable student experience.

Learn more about the Advising Success Network

 

 

Guidebooks - Using Data and Evidence to Lead Holistic Advising Redesign

The first volume of Using Data and Evidence to Lead Holistic Advising Redesign focuses on the first challenge, Systems, and provides evidence-based strategies focused on improving the use of systems designed to gather and interpret evidence on academic advising.

Read this guidebook

This volume of Using Data and Evidence to Lead Holistic Advising Redesign focuses on the second challenge, Culture, and provides evidence-based strategies focused on creating a culture of data use around academic advising in your institution.

Read this guidebook

This volume of Using Data and Evidence to Lead Holistic Advising Redesign focuses on the third challenge, Resources, and provides evidence-based strategies focused on improving the human resources needed to use data more strategically.

Read this guidebook

 

HBCU Newsletters

This is the first issue in a newsletter series that will serve as a report and thematic summary of content shared in the National Resource Center’s multi-pronged engagement of HBCUs in their work with the Advising Success Network.

Read this newsletter

Because HBCUs must often look around campus and off campus to find support for students, a willingness to collaborate is vital – something the Symposium’s presenters and other participants made clear. The examples given also illustrate these institutions’ willingness to innovate – by making communication more transparent, using technology to expand course options, and overhauling traditional housing assignments for students and instructors, to name a few initiatives.

Read this newsletter

A culture of care might still lack a formal standard at higher ed institutions, but the current movement toward organizations showing consideration for openness, proactiveness, and vulnerability should be encouraging for students and institutions alike. The examples given from the National Resource Center’s Symposium involve nontraditional approaches to learning, a move toward serving students holistically, a willingness to be vulnerable and open at all levels, and an emphasis on relationships, among other initiatives.

Read this newsletter

 

Case Studies

The goal of this project began as an opportunity to amplify  voices and practices in the field which merit replication and  advance quality advising practices. Specifically, our collection was aimed at capitalizing on the rich diversity and varying approaches to academic advising, knowing that promising practice looks different based on student experience, campus context, academic major, etc. One of the greatest strengths of academic advising is its horizontal nature, requiring collaboration from faculty, staff, and  students across all areas of the institution. Advising has the power to introduce, develop, and unify the entire campus community. External forces such as funding, organizational hierarchy, and policy will likely always coexist, yet quality advising may be the single most underestimated characteristic of a successful college experience (Light, R.J., 2001). In a pandemic and politically polarized society, advising is one of the critical unifying tools in higher education which promotes holistic student success. We hope this collection will serve as a catalyst for considering academic advising as a transformed landscape for student success and educational equity as well as raise the standard for equity as a deliberate and intentional basis for supporting students.

Light, R.J. (2001). Making the most of college. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Read this case study

Career advising, like all advising practices, requires a multifaceted and multiphase approach. The scope of career advising extends from helping students access career information to the teaching of a career-planning course for academic credit, mentorship, and beyond. Several areas on campus may be involved in providing a comprehensive career-counseling and information service to students such as advising and counseling services, career-planning and placement centers on campus, and even the library system. Therefore, integrating academic and career information is an important part of the advisement process. This volume on Career Advising as a Tool for Student Success and Educational Equity is the second of a three-part series of case studies concerned with demonstrating innovation, institutional transformation, and advising initiatives focused on advancing equity. It is our goal that this volume serves as a catalyst and encouragement for the work of practitioners who seek to support student futures.

Read this case study

This three-part collection, representative of qualitative research examining holistic support for Black men at 5 HBCUs in North Carolina, four HBCU advising case studies (featuring Elizabeth City State University; Fayetteville State University; Albany State University; and North Carolina Central University), and a content and literature analysis on the The Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transitioncoverage of Black student experiences, is intended to foreground best advising practices rooted in a culturally relevant framework that affirms HBCU students and their unique perspective, lived experience and need for community connections. The collection’s contents examine a range of advising models—centralized, decentralized, and hybrid—that yield positive outcomes for HBCU students.

Read this case study

 


Challenge the conventional. Create the exceptional. No Limits.

©