Best Practices for Academic Advisors

The following are suggested practices from the Faculty-Student Liaison Committee.

Before the Semester

Chairs/Program Directors: contact freshmen and transfer students to introduce themselves and their advisors, and invite students to any events organized by the program/department during orientation.

Advisors: identify your advisee list via the portal following this instructional video.

Beginning of the Semester

Chairs/Program Directors: hold a department meeting with students, introducing faculty & advisors; alternatively, email students introducing advisors and clarifying the roles and goals of academic advising.

Advisors: email advisees to setup appointments, remind them of important dates listed on the academic calendar, and clarify their role as an advisee and your role as an advisor as defined by the Griff Center. Please be mindful of using students' preferred names. This policy on how preferred names is updated and can be found here.

Drop/Add Period

Advisors: remind students to assess classes and to reach out to you to with questions or concerns

Progress Report Meetings

Advisors: email students to schedule meetings to discuss progress reports and clarify to the role of these reports.

At the meeting:

• Discuss progress reports with student. Ask student about questions, clarification, any new info that might had surfaced after progress reports where sent.

• This is a great time to touch base with advisees regardless of their report content.

• If progress report is not available or it is unclear, suggest student to contact the faculty to get a better sense of their academic standing.

• Use the meeting to clarify questions and discuss services available to students at the Griff Center and refer students to appropriate offices/services if needed.

• When possible, use meeting to discuss questions regarding major requirements, other majors, and ideas for registration. 
  
  

• Discuss what students should plan to have at their registration advisement meeting such as a class plan and an updated Griff Audit.

• Enter comments in iAdvise. When necessary, iAdvise allows faculty to enter private comments or file “student concerns” report when needed.

Registration

Advisors: email students to schedule a registration meeting and how to prepare for it. Reference Advisement Guide for program requirements and information about courses offered. Please note: larger departments may choose to do group advisement for general questions at this time and use this opportunity to allow students to schedule one-on-one advisement.

In the meeting:

• Go over GriffAudit:

  1. Check progress in the core/honors courses, major(s)/minor(s) requirements, liberal arts credit requirements, credit-hour numbers, and other requirements as noted on the audit

  2. Remind student the GriffAudit shows progress in both core and major, as well as progress towards 120 credit hours are required for graduation   

• Discuss student’s registration plan in correlation to required courses and progress toward major(s), minor(s), etc.

• Clarify questions about major requirements, adding majors, requirements for majors, extracurricular opportunities, etc.

• Release PIN 

• Enter comments in IAdvise regarding registration plans and meeting

Between Registration and Final Exam Week

Advisors: Students of Concern reports can be submitted at any time so make sure to log on to MyCanisius regularly to receive any relevant notifications. It is a good idea to reach out to struggling students to follow up or just to reach out to your students in general to give them a boost as we approach the end of the semester. 

Related Pages