As part of her “careers in business” course, Professor Peg Richards has the practice of inviting Castleton alumni to come to class to give a real perspective on the workplace. For a recent session, Professor Richards invited a former student who at 27 has already risen to a senior management position in a local health care organization. The session was particularly memorable for two reasons. First, Professor Richards was “tickled” that her former student was so surprised and delighted at the invitation. But then her message to the students was also unexpected. Rather than talking about the practical business skills that she uses in the workplace, the guest speaker talked about the kinds of empathy that are required to do her job well.
Students recognize when they are learning a concrete skill that they will surely use later on, but their development as human beings is more difficult to track. It takes the guidance of an academic and professional advisor like Professor Richards to help assure that they are on their way to being truly ready for the challenges the workplace may bring.
When we think of advising, what probably comes to mind is the first responsibility of the student’s faculty advisor: assuring that they make steady progress in the major. This is also a contractually assured part of faculty work and responsibilities, codified in the faculty Agreement with the Vermont State Colleges System.
This practice of assuring student progress is centered on a ritual that takes place every term about two-thirds of the way through: preparation for next term’s course registration. It’s a time when all of us who advise students in this formal way can expect to have a meeting with every student. Having the power to grant approval to register is a practice that assures that students will show up for the meeting, but much more can follow from that initial conversation.
Approving the schedule, though, is no small task. Most of us begin by checking in on the student’s progress, talking about current courses (and, sometimes, worrisome midterm grades). And then there is another step in the ritual, reviewing the student’s program evaluation. Professor Richards relays that she reviews the program evaluation with each and every student in every pre-registration meeting. Sometimes there is a surprise: why hasn’t the student taken a key prerequisite course offered only in the fall? Maybe the student planned it but decided at the last minute to take some other course that fell at the same time, or maybe she enrolled but dropped it when it got to be too difficult. Doesn’t the student realize that this course is required to continue the major sequence? And a difficult conversation may then follow.
We have long noted inequity in advising responsibilities. Some faculty advisors can have between 50 and 100 advisees. Even with the practice that Professor Richards describes of doing approximately 90% of her meetings on campus, she still finds time to meet with several students in the evenings over Zoom. Giving each student about half an hour assures that she still has time to discuss matters beyond just the creation of a schedule. Nevertheless, for many advisors, it is a challenge to do more than plan a schedule and assure their progress in their coursework.
From this perspective, we can see how important the classroom is for a variety of informal advising touchpoints. It’s a facet of classroom instruction that many of us might overlook if we weren’t focused on following the interactions of students and academic advisors. In a major like Sport Management in which Professor Marybeth Lennox-Levins teaches, professional advising is embedded in the coursework and, pointedly, in discussion and reflection during a sequence of experiential learning opportunities. At four times in their coursework, students will be required to work in the field. In the early instances, they get exposure and can confirm their career interest or shift to something else. By later required practica, students are consciously developing skills and documenting workplace experiences. At this point Professor Lennon-Levins can focus her advising time with advanced students, helping them to find individualized internships that match their emerging interests.
As a professional representative of her field, the faculty advisor knows the professional landscape. She can help students to imagine what graduate school could be like, or different ways that the student can use their skills, sometimes in a variety of professions. Crucially, the faculty advisor can introduce students to a network of employers and alumni, in relationships that faculty have built and fostered over years. When a Castleton student graduates and enters the world of work, this personal network becomes a first step into any number of careers in the Rutland region and around the state. As Professor Lennox-Levins describes, helping her students to get and keep that entry-level job upon graduation, a first step toward their “dream job”, is at the center of everything she does.
With talk about the change of the advising model for VTSU, faculty are, understandably, defensive of this role in their work with students. It’s not only that this role is a part of the work and position of the full-time faculty member. It is also that the faculty member’s knowledge of the field and professional contacts are products of professional work. They are established by attending Chamber of Commerce mixers, for example, or building networks at professional conferences. This is a facet of a faculty member’s expertise and accomplishment that sometimes goes unacknowledged, but it provides our students with an important first step into the workplace and their bright futures.
