Presented analyses regarding academic-advisor job satisfaction are based on data from a survey administered to NACADA members in July 2005. Advisor job satisfaction in various environments and differences in satisfaction across personal demographics were studied. Academic advisors report high satisfaction overall as well as with student and supervision aspects of the job. Advisors are most satisfied with work variety, job benefits, and teamwork, and they are least satisfied with salary, recognition, and support for career opportunity. Environment variables most strongly related to job satisfaction were variety, empowerment, and teamwork. Advisors were least happy with the environment element of salary. Of the advisor variables, years of experience and advising style showed the strongest relationship with satisfaction.

Relative Emphasis: practice, research, theory

The interrelationships between motivation for choosing a program of study, intention to access academic advisors, academic difficulty, and actual appointments with academic advisors were based on student self-reports of motivation and intentions. In addition, academic achievement measures and data on student access to academic advisors were obtained. Motivation level at the beginning of enrollment and academic difficulty at the end of the semester were not significantly related to intended or actual appointments with academic advisors. However, subtle trends indicate that students with higher levels of motivation, including those in academic difficulty, saw academic advisors more than did their less motivated peers. Notions of expectancy value, self-worth, goal orientation, and self-concept were the theoretical frameworks used in the analysis.

Relative Emphasis: research, theory, practice

We studied first-year students through an integrated group workshop and longitudinal interviews that focused on students' transitional experience at the university as well as the strategies they developed to adjust to university life. Four themes emerged: the challenges of forming connections to other students with similar interests during the first few weeks on campus, the need to balance competing demands, varied experiences of connection with faculty and staff, and the need for translation of university life for minority students. To address the issues and concerns that emerged from our findings, we offer a number of advisory recommendations and programmatic initiatives.

Relative Emphasis: research, practice, theory

Dr. Harvey Wall began his career in clinical psychology in the early 1950s. In March 1986, Dr. Wall retired from his position as director of the Division of Undergraduate Studies (DUS), an advising unit at Penn State University that enrolls freshmen and sophomores exploring a variety of majors and advanced students needing advising assistance with changes in their academic plans. Dr. Wall was the first director of DUS, which started in 1973. In many ways Dr. Wall's professional experiences parallel the development of academic advising nationwide. For those new to advising, Dr. Wall's remembrances of things past, although personal and local, should provide powerful insights into the present status and procedures of advising, regardless of location or type of institution. The interview was conducted by NACADA Journal Editor Ed Danis.

Academia clings to several myths about higher education and its effect on students. This article outlines 10 of these popular myths—myths about effective teaching styles, indicators of quality education, and the value of faculty research for undergraduate education, to name a few. The authors cite extensive research calling these myths into question and challenge readers to rethink assumptions about higher education.

Human capital, defined as any characteristic of a worker that contributes to that worker's productivity, is presented in this article as a unifying theme for academic advising in higher education. Five categories of human capital—formal education, adult education, on-the-job-training, health, and geographic mobility—and academic advising issues related to developing students' human capital in each category are presented. Students' vocational interests are identified with developing their human capital, and the principle of maximizing human capital is introduced as a basis for students' choices of academic curricula and particular courses and programs.

Reflecting the conference theme, a brief history of NACADA is presented and personal vignettes shared to lay the foundation for understanding the organization's role at the turn of the century. Specifically addressed are the characteristics of tomorrow's students and evolving issues in higher education—including the role of faculty and information technology—that affect advising. Futurists predictions for meeting the challenges of the changing education environment conclude the presentation.

Developmental academic advising has become a widely used descriptive term about which a great deal has been presented and written. Recent scrutiny of this concept, however, has prompted us to examine some of the fundamental principles upon which this concept is based.

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.