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Annual Meetings
University of Michigan, 2001

Notes:  Evaluation of Advisors and Advising Services
Alice Reinarz, Chris Kearns, Jullian Parrott, Peg Steele, Steve Wiet, Eric White, Dennis Bowling, Paula Kerezsi, and Keith Marshall

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University of Michigan

• Professional advisors and connections to departments and programs in college.
• Info exchange - All academic advising problems just get directed to Alice (director)
• New Personal director at UM which means new forms and workplans
  1. Workplans are created and discussed with supervisor
  2. Continuous and ongoing coaching.
  3. Interaction is throughout the year between supervisor and peer.
  4. Annual evaluation process and coaching element
• Student input comes from a couple of ways.
• Either students who are unhappy will change their advisor
• Advisors awards are student driven, not merit based
• Student survey was out sourced because advising center doesn't have the time to develop one.
• One key question - Relative to your appointment with the advisor, did you do something different?
• Only 35% return rate
• Timing of survey is key. Also advisors played a key part in the focus group.

Indiana University

• Decentralized system
• Advisor is evaluated by department and chairs
• There are broader issues about evaluations across campus
• Web based survey regarding college advising as a whole is being developed for the Fall

Purdue University

• Students, by giving their social security number, are able to complete advisor evaluations.
• These surveys allow school to look into advising in general and look into students who have completed these surveys, regarding grades
• Students who take the time to complete these surveys either have a complaint or other extreme

University of Minnesota

• Three way system
  1. Departments evaluate advisors
  2. Centralized advising annual evaluation (2 categories)
     • Union advisor
     • Professional advisor, no union
  3. Feed back - electronic survey sent to student the day after meeting with an advisor. Survey asked about the wait, advise, and whether the student would recommend the advisor.
• At first the advisors were worried about the responses, but found them to be quite positive.
• Had trouble out sourcing. Advisors and Administration discredited the source and the outside source didn't speak the same language.

Penn State

• Student surveys are a waste of time. It doesn't raise level of what Advising is about. Advisors aren't here to deal with student satisfaction
  1. Define goals and objectives of advising in your particular college. What do they want the results to be with each student.
  2. Once you have figured out your Goals and Objectives, how to measure them? (Ask the student if something changed after their visit with an advisor?)
  3. Best to complete survey in the Spring / Keep it limited in time / send out reminders to students / Design it to be as simple as possible
  4. Try to send it out under a key figurehead (Assoc Dean, Director, etc.)
  5. Students did have to divulge their SS#. Allowed the ability to connect student with advisor. SS# didn't hurt the response rate.
• Elements:
  • Assoc. Dean would only get aggregate data by department
  • Department would only get aggregate of advisors
  • Advisors could get their own personal data
• Tell where the hot issues are
  • Gender differences and GPA difference with advising experience
  • Faculty are more comfortable looking at students then themselves
  • Also focused on undecided students
    1. What are the desired outcomes of interactions?
    2. How many times a student saw an advisor
    3. Why student didn't see an advisor
  • Students need to be web savvy. Found more responses to be from women then men
• Retention -
  • A top factor at several schools in the Big Ten
  • Can't compare retention between schools because students are different from one school to the next. Top students may have shoddy advisors, but do very well and vise versa.
  • Advising can be seen as an easy target by administrators
  • Merit increases should be based individually, not through retention
  • Unions within schools do demand extra work regarding benefits, job security, and merit.

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Last revised March 5, 2002