May 2013 – Tucson Arizona
The theme for this year’s NACADA Region X conference was “Advising Under the Stars”. This theme reflects that fact that the location of the conference, Tucson, is considered to be the astronomy capital of the U.S. This title also seems appropriate to me when considering the conference presentations that I attended. In each case presenters took a broad and expansive view of the subjects they covered and did an excellent job tying in their specific topic to the underlying philosophy and goals of advising.
My favorite presentation was the first of the day, “Best Practices in Transfer Student Transition.” This presentation laid out the details of a transition class offered jointly by Pima Community College and the University of Arizona. The relationship of these two schools is very similar to that of SLCC and the U, and I think I could easily pull ideas from the presentation if I ever wanted to create a similar class. While I appreciated the hands-on ideas that I got from the presentation, it was the discussion about bigger issues like transfer student development, higher education access, and transfer transition issues that I really appreciated.
Another presentation that I enjoyed, “Advising First Generation Students: Trailblazers to the 21stst Century” also took a broad view of its subject. The presenters gave a wonderful review of student development and advising theory in relation to first generation students. The presenters were both from Pima Community College and had a unique 2-year perspective on working with these students that I appreciated since most of my contact with this group is at SLCC.
I also enjoyed the common reading (thanks Sharon!). The article we read took a really big-picture approach to advising. It focused on encouraging advisors to empower students to make their own meaning; to develop in their ability to make decisions and to take control of their own lives. The discussion with advisors from other schools about the article was particularly enlightening.
As always, my favorite part of the conference was meeting advisors from other schools. There seemed to be a particularly large number of advisors from Arizona’s 2-year schools in attendance, and I learned a lot from talking to them about their roles and their relationships with colleagues at Arizona’s 4-year colleges and universities. I attended a presentation on advising probation students put on by Northern Arizona University. At one point we broke up into a group to discuss how we work with these students at our own schools. One of the community college advisors in the group began the conversation by talking about how advisors at her school were like silent partners with advisors at the local university when it came to working with probation and suspension students. She felt this was the case because, often after getting in academic difficulty at the university, these students were sent (or chose) to enroll themselves at her open enrollment community college. She said she wished that advisors at both schools could connect and talk about these students so they could work as a team to help the student get back into good standing and return to the 4-year institution to get a degree. I realized then this could have been an SLCC advisor talking to me about our probation and suspension students that end up at her school. I don’t know that I had ever really thought about the SLCC advisors as part of our scholastic standards advising “team” but I think it makes sense to do so.
