Ashley Newsome University of Alabamaannewsome@ua.edu

Kirsten PitcockUniversity of Tennessee, Knoxvillekpitcock@utk.edu

Catherine PrestonUniversity of South Alabama cpreston@southalabama.edu

"My biggest problem is when I go in to talk to people they all say, 'Relax, you're on the right track, don't worry about it.' That reassures me, but I would still like some direction.”

Advising

Advising and the College of Arts & Sciences Largest and most comprehensive unit

Approximately 465 tenured and tenure-track faculty in 23 departments and 2 schools

7,000 undergraduate students enrolled

“Major” advising takes place within departments by *faculty members

Advising Services provides advising for all first-year, full-time declared majors up to 45 hours, and for all undecided, undeclared, and transitional students (exploratory)

Advising Services Staff 1 Director, 2 Associate Directors, 1

Assistant Director 5 Professional Advisors (30 hours

per week) in A&S 4 Professional Advisors in an

Academic Departments 8 Graduate Assistants (20 hours

per week)

Sophs – Why Do We Care? We lose half as many sophomores as

we do our freshmen (from the same cohort)

We want better graduation rates Do we do enough for sophomores? Sophomores aren’t connected to their

majors yet, aren’t connected to our College yet, how can they be retained?

There are a lot of people at UT worried about student success

uTrack All full-time degree seeking students

starting fall 2013 Tracking a student’s progress

towards degree completion Student’s declare major from day 1

(exploratory is an option), must meet established milestones in the major to progress

Off-track, now what? This is what drives our current and

future initiatives

Second Year Strategies at UT SophoMORE Task Force– Campus-wide representation– Established learning outcomes– Access to data & assessment– Ideas? Living Learning

Communities, Undergraduate Research, Sophomore Course

Institute on Sophomore Student Success (April 2013)– “Tradition”

Notable Campus Events:– Sophomore

Boot Camp: Each Spring

– Welcome Week Event: SophoMORE Fest

Resources

Spring 2013 - Sophs

Sophomore Step Up

Initiative of our Dean Way to connect or reconnect

second-year students to faculty in their major

What about the exploratory student?

All departments and IDP’s represented, as well as specific student centers

Annual spring event

Budget High cost– Departmental banners– Booking the location for event

Medium cost– Food and drinks– Lapel pins

Low cost – Printing posters, bookmarks, and flyers– Swag• Krispy Kreme Doughnuts• SSU T-shirts• I love A&S Stickers

Marketing Who is our audience?

– New student cohorts: Fa13, SP14 – Second-year A&S students– A&S and University Exploratory Students – Transfer students– Students released from other majors… Engineering,

Business, etc.

Advising appointments– New-student orientation & multiple advising

appointments… plus tabling, posters and flyers – Increased presence on the A&S website and social media

accounts (IG, Twitter)– Required event

Email Communication– Early emails and text messages via GradesFirst– Parent Association, Office of First-Year Studies– Scholarship chairs and/presidents of sororities and

fraternities– Rec Sports, Multicultural Student Life, you name it!

Our Time Commitment 2 Professional Advisors:

80 hours (40 hours each)

1 Associate Director: 60 hours– Curriculum review– AD coordinates pre-law

for the campus– Advising appointments – Career Path– Teaching FYS 101– Facilitating INPG 100– Conducting Pre-

Professional File Meetings

Volunteers Faculty

– Showcase majors and minors– Recruit undergraduate advisors

A&S Staff – Provided tips and information to prepare for 2nd year

appointments

Dean’s Student Advisory Council– Recruiting for tabling prior to and the day of the

event

Support Services – Career Services, Center for Student Engagement,

Programs Abroad, Pre-Health, Pre-Law, A&S Advising Services Undergraduate Research, Teaching, Vols Teach

– Highlight services

Year One- Agenda/Event DayPlanning Agenda

November (2013)– Event is created– Committee formed to begin the

planning December (2013)

– Start ordering all needed supplies

– Began emailing targeted students about event

January (2014)– Tabling and marketing to

promote event– Sent out more emails to

targeted groups of students for event

February (2014)– Final email sent out– More tabling to spread the word

about– Event Day

Event Day Students check in Step Show Dean’s remarks Guest speaker Dean releases the

Students Students meet

with faculty and other departments

Year Two- Agenda/Event DayPlanning Agenda

February (2014)– Debriefing from previous event

Summer (2014)– Brainstorming and pre-planning for 2015

SSU August (2014)

– Dividing up responsibilities for planning October (2014)

– Talked about event in advising appointments

November (2014)– Started emailing targeted students about

event December (2014)

– Emailed targeted students– Ordered special event day gifts

January (2015)– Tabling to market event– Emailed target student– Finalized catering

February (2015)– Final email push for event– Tabling to market event– Event day

Event Day Students check in Guest speaker Dean releases

students to their departments

Students get food/meet with departments

Call out raffle winners throughout event

Faculty Feedback– Have instructor mention SSU in their classes to help with

publicity.

– Encourage departments to send their most experienced

students or undergraduate advisers to share advice  and tips.

– Do not tell the students it is a required event because there are

not ramifications if students do not attend.

– Do not have a guest speaker.

– The conversation with freshmen and sophomore students were

exactly the kinds of conversations we would like to have (but

had previously been impossible).

– Great event… it’s hard to get students to try new events.

– The time and energy that was poured in paid off… this was the

best SSU!

**From email responses after the 2014 & 2015 events

Student Feedback– I visited many tables because I wanted to get a better feel

for the options being offered

– I was able to network with faculty in my major and met my

advisor

– I got advice on how to double major

– It’s enlightening and really helps if you don’t already have a

major

– Not really a whole lot because I have a clear idea of what I

want to do

– More intimate setting… make it longer… make it shorter

– It was a time waster. I could have met a faculty member at

an adviser’s meeting

**From a 5 question survey using SurveyMonkey one month after the 2015

event

Things we learnedYear One

Skip the step show

Imperative to start early!

MUST have faculty and staff support

Need student buy-in

Year Two Skip the speaker Don’t use the

words “required” or “mandatory”

Faculty can really make or break the event

Students don’t like pizza!

Creating Your Program

Keep this in mind…–Purpose –Support – Incentives –Outcome–Legacy

ResourcesMain Arts & Sciences Advising Page:http://artsci.utk.edu/advising/

Sophomore Step Up: http://artsci.utk.edu/what-is-sophomore-step-up/

Sophomore Advising Syllabus:http://artsci.utk.edu/advising/ways-to-prepare-for-academic-advising/second-year-students/

https://instagram.com/utk_artsciadvising

https://twitter.com/StepUpUTK