NACADA Journal Volume 40: Issue 2

As we finalize this issue and send it to press, the editorial team is reflecting on the continued quality of the submissions received by the NACADA Journal. As we know, scholar-practitioners are encouraged to contribute to the literature in their field as reviewers, writers, researchers, and editors. During 2020, these scholar-practitioners and faculty members were called upon to contribute in new and different ways as institutions across the globe dealt with COVID-19. Our colleagues and friends met the challenge of student engagement and empowerment by utilizing different tools and technologies while continuing to identify research questions, write articles,

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.

In prior scholarship, researchers identified barriers students with disabilities encounter in accessing academic advising, such as social stigma and hesitance to disclose. Through our study, we sought to inform advising practice by exposing the perceived deficit in services toward this population, uniquely evidenced by large data. The National Survey of Student Engagement academic advising data from 55,945 first-year students and 260 institutions were analyzed through multilevel models to measure differences in academic advising behaviors toward students with disabilities (10.12%) and the general population based on student self-reporting. Results illustrate that even when accounting for student backgrounds and institutional characteristics, academic advising behaviors were perceived as lower for students with disabilities, highlighting the need to intentionally improve services for these students.

This study examines the structure of an enhanced advising program (EAP) through the perspectives of academic advisors. Utilizing a qualitative research design, interviews were conducted with 12 primary-role academic advisors employed within an EAP at a large, urban community college in Texas. Thematic analysis of the interviews identified the following distinguishing characteristics of EAPs: (1) improved student participation in academic advising; (2) stronger student engagement with advising; and (3) proactive construction of an educational plan. This study expands the literature on EAPs by providing additional context and description from the practitioner perspective and by delineating the EAP's strategy to strengthen advising programming at the community college level.

From the Co-Editors

If Advising is Teaching, What Do Advisors Teach?

Measuring the Differential Effects of Behaviors of Academic Advisors for Students with Disabilities

Insider Information: Advisors' Perspectives on the Effectiveness of Enhanced Advising Programs for Community College Students

Examining the Relationship Between College Advising and Student Outputs: A Content Analysis of the NACADA Journal

Promises and Realities: Academic Advisors' Perspectives of Dual Enrollment Credit

Inviolable Norms of Primary Role Advisors

Administrator Perceptions of Academic Advisor Tasks

From the Co-Editors

Understanding Athletics Academic Advisors’ Experience with Job Burnout

Rural College Students’ Academic, Financial, and Health-Related Obstacles During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for Academic Advisors

Career Advising in a VUCA Environment

From the Co-Editors

THE URSINUS COLLEGE FRESHMAN ADVISING PROGRAM

CAMPUS LEAVING BEHAVIOR

APPROACHING A DEFINITIVE POSITION ON ACADEMIC ADVISING

THE ADVISOR UNDER STRESS—FIRED UP OR BURNED OUT?

WHAT YOU'D REALLY LIKE TO SAY . . .