Twenty undergraduates participated in individual, semi-structured interviews concerning their decisions to change majors. We found three common extrinsic and three intrinsic factors related to their decisions. Extrinsic factors included parents who were supportive but not meaningfully directive, lack of familial external guidance, and lack of knowledge concerning chosen majors and future careers. Intrinsic factors included students' difficulty making long-term decisions, desires for a major that meshed well with their personal interests, and satisfaction with majors that met those requirements.

Relative Emphasis: research, practice, theory

Through a case study, I address the position that academic advising can be viewed as a developmental process. I present my specific experiences in applying Hersey and Blanchard's model of situational leadership (1969) during academic advising sessions. The model demonstrates that effective leadership is based on the appropriate balance of a leader's task and relationship behaviors. The leader's emphasis of either the task or the relationship behavior depends on the maturity or readiness of the follower.

Relative Emphasis: theory, practice, research

Intrusive advising has been frequently used to encourage or require at-risk or probationary students to attend advising sessions. The efficacy of intrusive advising targeted to all students has received little attention. We implemented a case-control experiment with 501 first-year students at a large, urban, state university to test the efficacy of nonmandated intrusive advising designed to encourage advising session attendance. Students in three academic units were randomly assigned to outreach or no outreach conditions. Those in the outreach group received a series of reminders to schedule advising appointments. Results suggest intrusive advising was successful in increasing the probability students would schedule and keep an advising appointment during their first semester of college enrollment and in shortening the time until that appointment was held. Implications for broad implementation of intrusive advising are discussed.

With concern over parental involvement in students' academic lives on the rise, research is needed to provide guidance for advisors and parents. In this article, student-parent interactions about academic and career decisions are examined. Data come from the Brown University Office of Institutional Research and semi-structured interviews with students at Brown University. In the interviews, students reported that they rely on their parents for general support and as a source of advice about academic and career decisions. These findings are consistent with institutional data and prior research. Analysis of the findings draws on attachment theory and on Baxter Magolda's self-authorship model of adult development. Implications for advising practice as well as suggestions for fostering constructive parent involvement are addressed.

Relative Emphasis: research, theory, practice

The influence of students' learning styles has been increasingly recognized as an integral component of effective higher education; therefore, application of learning styles to academic advising is equally relevant. As academic advisors address student learning styles in the hope of promoting greater student success, the contribution of advisors' own learning styles has received little attention. In addition to establishing a critical baseline, analyzing the learning style profiles of 30 academic advisors reveals that, although composite advisor learning style scores show substantial congruence with an a priori model, the disparity between any two individual advisor's contrasting styles was as much as 90%, leaving only a 10% learning style compatibility on which to base the advising process.

Relative Emphasis: research, practice, theory