From the Coeditors
We are pleased to share more important contributions to the scholarship of academic advising in this issue, exploring a range of meaningful topics within our field. The first three pieces focused on future directions related to advancing the scholarship on advising as a profession. Following these, Wei shared ways to interject important, deeper developmental content into advising sessions by pushing back on pressure from students and administrators to focus advising sessions exclusively on checking degree requirements and conveying policies. The remaining articles provided insight for advisors in facilitating the persistence and success of different students. We launch this issue with a letter to the Journal coeditors from the editors of the forthcoming second edition of Scholarly Inquiry in Academic Advising. This letter and the following articles challenge us to consider academic advising through different lenses and domains.
In “Toward an Architectonic in Academic Advising: Scholarly Inquiry in Academic Advising (2nd ed.),” McGill et al. focused on the scholar-practitioner identity of academic advisors, and how the second edition of Scholarly Inquiry in Academic Advising will advance research and writing activities amongst the membership. This edition, which will be published before the NACADA Annual Conference in October, builds upon the first by focusing on new methods and modalities of scholarship in our field.
The first article by Mottarella et al., “The NACADA Journal 2010–2020: A Review and Future Directions,” shared insights from a content analysis of articles and authorship in the NACADA Journal within 22 issues published between 2010 and 2020. The analysis encompassed authors, coauthorship, author affiliations, research practices, methods utilized, common topics and themes, types of submissions, and scope of studies (e.g., national, international). The authors suggested future directions for the Journal for the current decade.
Because scholars must have specialized knowledge and skills to ensure their discipline is well-established, McGill et al. explored this in “An Exploration of Graduate Education in Academic Advising: A Case Study Analysis.” They interviewed leaders in academic advising about their perspectives on advising as a profession and conducted a content analysis of graduate programs' curricula (certificates and masters) in academic advising. In relation to inconsistencies found, they noted the importance of mapping curriculum and learning outcomes to the theoretical foundations of advising. They highlighted that academic advising is an interdisciplinary field and called for academic advisors to advance the scholarship of advising to strengthen its recognition as an academic discipline.
Focusing on two-year students transferring to a four-year institution, Lazarowicz and McGill conducted a qualitative study on support for students through this transfer process in “Agents of Support for Community College Transfer Students: A Qualitative Study.” Framed around necessary social support for students, they interviewed full-time, degree-seeking students who transferred from a community college to a large, Midwest research institution. Results revealed that academic advising was one of the most important sources of social support for these students.
Furthering the conversation about advising approaches, Wei introduced the idea of stealth advising in his article “Stealth Advising: How Advisors Introduce Academic Substance into Routine Conversations.” He observed academic advising appointments and then conducted follow-up interviews with students and academic advisors. He sought to weave deeper topics, such as the students' meaning and value of their education, into advising conversations with students. Through short dialogues he observed, Wei shared examples of rhetorical strategies to enhance academic advising practices through this approach of stealth advising.
The next two articles are situated within STEM and health disciplines. In her article “Appreciative Advising to Enhance Academic Major Satisfaction in Prenursing Students,” Burks studied the application of appreciative advising as a proactive approach with pre-nursing students in a freshman seminar at a rural, public four-year institution. Four group academic advising sessions were integrated into the seminar within the first half of a semester, each based on specific phases of appreciative advising. These group advising sessions focused on empowerment and encouragement. Burks studied the impact these sessions had on academic major satisfaction for pre-nursing students, finding satisfaction increased after the completion of the sessions. She found that faculty were pleased with integrating academic advising sessions into the curriculum. Academic advisors found students enrolled in the seminar to be more prepared for academic advising meetings. Given the anticipated critical nursing shortage within the decade, Burks noted the importance of pre-nursing students persisting in the major and the role that academic advising can play in such retention efforts
To wrap up this issue, Loyola and Grebing's article “Department Climate and Student Experience: At the Intersection of Gender and Ethnicity in STEM Graduate Programs” examined department climate and the impact it had on the student experience for women of color in STEM graduate programs (masters and doctoral) at research-intensive universities within a state institution system. Through the lens of intersectionality, they found that climate has an effect. Loyola and Grebing highlighted the areas of chilly climate, growth mindset-oriented microaffirmations, and how departmental support matters in relation to the student experience.
We anticipate your engagement with articles in this issue of the NACADA Journal and hope you will consider contributing to the research and scholarship to advance the field of academic advising. The future of the field is very exciting, as McGill et al. suggested when pondering if academic advising is yet a discipline. In addition, we look forward to the publication of Scholarly Inquiry in Academic Advising (2nd ed.) this fall!
