We present a theoretical basis for engaging in academic advising as friendship and offer examples of the applicability of friendship in advising. We begin with interconnections between civic friendship and personal friendship in the context of academic advising. Next we overview theoretical work on communication and friendship that offers characteristics and ideals of friendship relevant to academic advising. Then we provide a dialectical framework describing six tensions that potentially emerge in the advising relationship viewed as a friendship. We argue that advisors and advisees must negotiate the tensions and benefits that potentially arise from practicing the academic advising relationship as friendship.

Strengths-based advising is proposed as a new lens for higher education, one that enables advisors to see diverse groups of students fulfill their potential and achieve excellence. Based on research from social work, positive psychology, and the business world, this approach enables advisors to identify and build on the inherent talents students bring with them into the college and university setting, teaching students to develop and apply their strengths to new and challenging learning tasks. This explicit focus on students' natural talents builds the confidence and motivation necessary for achievement and persistence in college. We contend that this approach to advising represents a much-needed paradigm shift within higher education.

The field of philosophy has much to contribute to academic advising, both because of the kinds of training philosophers typically receive and because of the sorts of projects on which they work. Because of these factors, philosophers have the potential to make excellent academic advisors, and they can broaden and enrich the theoretical investigations into the nature of academic advising. Philosophers can and should embrace the field of academic advising, both as a practice that is critical to a successful academe and as a potential research area. The reverse is also true: Any advisor would benefit from the study of philosophy.

Nussbaum (1998) proposed that Socratic activity is a worthwhile pursuit with regard to academic advising relationships. While it offers the promise of certain benefits, such as the development of critical thinking skills, Socratic activity arguably cannot be universally applied to all advising relationships. In presenting and analyzing issues related to the Socratic method, I offer support for a model of quasi-Socratic activity in advising as first identified by Hagen (1994). Referred to as “beneficial dialectic,” it can function from a more contextual standpoint than the traditional Socratic questioning method because through it advisors can consider factors such as level of student development, learning environments, and individual proclivities.

Since the mid-1990s, social norms theory has become prevalent in student development literature and research. Subsequently, social norms interventions to change student behavior have spread across campuses nationwide through marketing campaigns. Theorists and practitioners have applied the social norms approach to primarily health-related student behaviors such as drinking, smoking, violence prevention, and sexual assault. While documented social norms interventions have changed attitudes and behaviors of varying kinds, significant research into its impact on students' academic behaviors and attitudes has not been completed. This article was written to start a conversation about the potential applications of the social norms approach to academic advising.

On a daily basis, advisors encounter various types of interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict. Through this article, the reader will better understand conflict, its positive and negative impacts and the approaches of the actors experiencing conflict, and the means whereby conflicts arise, escalate, and come to resolution in advising situations. Particular emphasis is placed on describing the neurology of conflict escalation and de-escalation. Practical tips for seeking resolution in stressful encounters with students are included within the discussion of de-escalation processes.

A philosophy of advising referred to as the learning-centered paradigm is described and compared to the dominant developmental paradigm. Through the learning-centered paradigm, one can explain, better than through the developmental theory, how advising is, or can be, similar to teaching. Under the learning-centered approach, the excellent advisor plays a role with respect to a student's entire curriculum that is analogous to the role that the excellent teacher plays with respect to the content of a single course. He or she also helps the student to understand, and in a certain sense, to create the logic of the student's curriculum. Thus, the advisor's instruction in the logic of the curriculum elevates the advisor's work to a central role in enhancing a student's education.

A learning paradigm can transform the field of academic advising. Ten organizing principles answer the two core questions raised by a focus on learning. What should the student learn through advising? How might the learning take place? The first three organizing principles define a curriculum for academic advising and are based on the premise that the goals and values of advising should be derived from the institutional mission statement and assist advisees in developing higher-order thinking skills. The other principles focus on pedagogy: creating and organizing situations that assist students in meeting learning goals. We draw upon progressive, constructivist, and social constructivist theories of education to study both the learner and the learning context.

A shared perspective on the extant and ideal organizing principles for an institution's advising system is important to the overall effectiveness of advising. In this essay, I develop a vision of advising as educating, and from that vision, derive some higher order principles for an institutional advising system that will accommodate the widest range of prevailing theories and practices of advising and still allow for meaningful assessments and evaluations of advising effectiveness. Seven basic principles for organizing and managing institutional advising systems are identified.