Meaningful relationships with advisors are critical elements of excellent undergraduate education and degree completion. On a campus with over 26,000 undergraduate students, students may sometimes feel lost especially in those first few semesters when they often take large lecture classes of 300+ students. Advisors are an important point of personal contact for virtually every student. Advisors at UGA are remarkably well qualified, most holding graduate degrees and many holding terminal degrees; many of them have taught as adjuncts and graduate assistants, or bring other skills, such as counseling backgrounds, to the position; and many have developed special programming for students, such as “50 Things To Do With A Science Major” or “Know Yourself, Find Your Major.”
In recognition of the key role played by advisors on campus, UGA hired 25 new advisors; in the summer of 2014 they received extensive training and were distributed among several different schools and colleges on campus. In addition, upon the recommendation of a task force, UGA hired a Director of Academic Advising Services who is providing leadership for university-wide academic advising initiatives and ongoing support for college-level advising services. She is tasked to plan, manage and participate in academic advising initiatives, with an emphasis on university-level projects that advance student counseling and career counseling services at UGA; to oversee assessment of advising campus-wide; to recommend policy to increase retention and degree completion; to help develop best practice guidelines and training for academic advisors across campus; and to advise the administration on ways to communicate with “millennials” to increase their likelihood to stay on track to completion.
