The Role of Academic Advisors in Undergraduate Education

The advisor is your key to learning what is available here for you to use and how to make the most of these opportunities. This is a person you can turn to for help when you need direction, advice in planning your elections, evaluation of your study and time management skills, or help in approaching a college instructor. Your advisor is the logical person with whom to discuss your thoughts about possible majors, academic and career goals, or any uncertainty that you might have about where you want to go and what you want to do. Together you can plan how to make your LS&A degree truly a personal design, not just a formula degree.

A general academic advisor will:

• Inform you about degree requirements and college policies and procedures.
• Describe course options and useful campus resources.
• Help you learn better study and time management skills.
• Help you decide upon a concentration best fitted to your skills, interests, and future goals.
• Help you plan strategies to achieve your goals.
• Help you handle any academic difficulty you may encounter.
• Be a skilled contact in making the university work for you.

A concentration advisor will:

• Explain the concentration requirements.
• Determine what transfer credit (including "departmental" credit) can be applied toward the concentration.
• Waive concentration requirements or require additional course work depending on the background and experience of the individual student.
• Assess what courses are still needed to complete the concentration plan.
• Review residency requirements for transfer students who may wish to complete some remaining courses out-of-residence.

An Academic Advisor Cannot:

• Make your decisions for you – tell you what you should concentrate in or what classes you should take. Advisors can describe logical options for your circumstances and your aspirations and give you the information you need to make logical, informed decisions.
• Tell you what is a "good class." What makes a class "good" depends entirely upon your skills, interests, and goals. What's "good" for one student is not necessarily "good" for another.
• Help you very much with specific problems or situations if you wait too long to discuss them. Problems don't go away when you ignore them; they only get worse. Usually there are more options available to correct or improve a situation the earlier you address it.