Advising

July 15, 2024

Starting this summer, the IU Bloomington campus will begin to implement a plan designed to support student success through integrated advising practice and infrastructure. 

“While higher education often faces criticism for churning out credentials without delivering a meaningful educational experience, IU Bloomington is dedicated to offering not only a rich academic ecosystem, but a robust advising infrastructure that emphasizes relationships and holistically helps students navigate their years here and beyond,” said Provost and Executive Vice President Rahul Shrivastav. 

Interim Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Vasti Torres and Assistant Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Dan Turner have led a comprehensive review of the state of advising on the Bloomington campus — soliciting feedback from the academic advising community, academic deans, undergraduate associate deans, and vice provosts. 

Over the course of the review, the Academic Advising 2030 Implementation Workgroup found opportunities to connect students to their intended majors, provide stronger continuity of advising, and ensure holistic academic advising support for students who are undeclared or interested in exploring major options.  

“This was an amazing group of dedicated faculty and staff who are committed to students and their success at IUB,” Turner said. “And I am grateful for their contributions.” 

The redesign of advising at IU will consist of three major efforts: 

“All of these efforts — in combination with the enhancement of a campuswide, faculty-initiated early alert system and the rollout of new technological tools for students — will require deeply collaborative relationships between academic advising and career services communities, as well as consistent attention to the unique culture, needs of students, and structure in each school and major,” Torres said, nodding to the implementation workgroup’s attention to prioritizing agency of affected staff and students. 

Required semesterly academic advising of all undergraduate students will necessitate a standardized process across schools and academic units that ensures equitable advising experiences across majors. 

In the facilitation of the new requirement, all advising units will work toward establishing more standard student-to-advisor ratios, based on recommendations from NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising and the Boyer 2030 Commission. The campus will also prioritize connecting students to their intended major advisor — within the intended academic home — earlier in their academic career to achieve greater consistency and develop stronger advising relationships. The new Advising and Major Exploration Services (AMES) will serve as the advising home for students pursuing limited-capacity majors (pre-business and pre-nursing) and exploratory students and will provide support for students changing majors. 

AMES will provide holistic advising to assist students with identifying their interests, strengths, goals, and values and how these connect to majors, careers, and other academic opportunities at IUB. 

Program advisors in the Groups Scholars Program, Hudson and Holland Scholars Program, Hutton Honors Program, Intercollegiate Athletics, and the 21st Century Scholars Program have demonstrated a significant positive impact on student success, retention, and graduation and will continue to support students alongside colleagues in academic units and AMES. 

As advisors from University Division and SIT transition into supporting students in AMES, a campus-wide advising structure responsible for providing support, training, and professional development opportunities for advisors across campus is being developed. This structure will also cultivate and sustain an academic advising community of practice, create a campuswide promotional structure, and conduct ongoing analysis of advising data. 

“A transformation of this scale will take time and will present challenges along the way,” Shrivastav said. “But I am confident in the capacity and drive of the IUB community to do what it takes to support the highest degree of student success.”