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How do you know that you have made a difference in the education of your advisees?

Steven Estes, Northern Illinois University

Editor's Note: This article was selected as the winning entry in the Mentor's sixth annual Academic Advising Writing Competition. Steven Estes, the author of the entry, will receive a $500 cash award. Steven Estes earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in psychology from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Since 1996 he has advised students in Northern Illinois University's College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. In addition to advising, he teaches a first-year course called “University Experience.” Mr. Estes can be reached at T30SLE1@wpo.cso.niu.edu or 815-753-0114.

Potential Minus Interference: The Difference in Academic Advising

Within the past year, I took advantage of our excellent music program by beginning private saxophone lessons. Just before the first lesson, my nerves gave me an instant reminder of what my advisees experience prior to their first appointment. I didn't know what the teacher would expect of me. I was concerned about how he would evaluate my limited mastery of the horn. I wondered if he would be patient enough to understand the meandering path I took to return to saxophone playing after many years with no formal training.

After a few lessons, I began to trust that my teacher was showing me a more direct path to reach my musical goals. Nevertheless, there were moments of frustration. One such moment caused me to do a little research in the music library where I discovered The Inner Game of Music (Green & Gallwey, 1986). The book contains a formula expressing Performance (P) as being equal to potential (p) minus interference (i). Before I thought about what that meant as an aspiring saxophone player, my mind jumped to the obvious ramifications for advising. I began considering how this formula clarifies the role of adviser as a catalyst to help students reach their performance goals by maximizing their potential while reducing interference.

In most cases, removing interference exceeds the scope of our abilities. If students experiences financial interference, I certainly cannot pay their bills. I can, however, ask myself if there is more I can do to help them communicate with the financial aid office. Am I aware of jobs located close to campus so students don't have to commute two hours per day? Perhaps merely offering some advice about how to talk to their parents about their financial dilemma would help considerably.

Some parents, instead of serving as a source of support, have recently been characterized as a form of interference labeled as helicopter parents. The phrase, of course, refers to how these parents seem to “hover” in various ways, ranging from constant phone calls to arriving for advising appointments on behalf of the student. Often, these students take advantage of campus support services only when prompted by their parents. Students who represent the first generation in their family to attend college may not even be aware that such important campus services exist. Other students whose siblings have been to college before them may have been given misinformation about the nature of such services.

Misinformation is probably the most common form of interference an adviser will address in any given appointment. Although they do not usually intend to misguide others, friends (and the misinformation they sometimes supply) are a readily available commodity on popular social networking Web sites. In fact, the very act of accumulating friends on such Web sites has been a source of addiction for some students, in addition to the more frequently discussed drug and alcohol problems. Roommates may also contribute to misinformation or create stressful living conditions.

Sources of interference are almost limitless in number, and most students face multiple sources of interference at once. What about potential? Is it limitless as well? For college students, one might quantify their potential as their SAT or ACT scores combined with their high school grade-point average. Every adviser is acutely aware that such measures alone do not adequately account for true academic potential.

A simplified version of the concept of potential energy in physics might shed some light on this variable. Potential energy is a relationship between the mass of an object (m), the gravitational pull (g), and the height of the object (h). In other words, an apple in a tree on Earth has more potential energy than a marble on the surface of the moon because the apple has farther to fall and more mass than a marble, and the Earth has more gravitational pull than the moon.

Where our students are concerned, the m might represent their ever-changing amount of mastery of skills and knowledge. The g could represent the relatively unchanging gifts and talents they possess. Finally, the h would represent the hunger or motivation to take their mastery to a higher level, such as graduate school or professional employment.

Although the potential of a given student is sometimes thought of as being fixed or unchanging, this model suggests that change is possible. Indeed, as advisers, we help manipulate these variables to some extent. We identify areas of mastery that need improvement, and we refer students to tutoring or recommend remedial course work. We help students identify the gifts they bring to college and we recommend courses, majors, minors, and careers that allow them to express and use those gifts and talents. Whenever possible, we try to motivate students and make them hungry for more of what higher education has to offer now and beyond graduation. Sometimes the very act of finding a major or career vision motivates students to improve their mastery and find ways to reduce interference as they become more goal-oriented.

Implicit in the student application of the P = p - i formula is the notion that performance is expressed in terms of grade point-average. It could also relate to the number of years to graduation or even the number of graduate school acceptance letters or job offers a student receives following graduation. Most students seem to think P should represent their starting salary, while most professors and advisers I know believe that it should somehow reflect more intrinsic educational rewards. All of these approaches have some validity, but how do we know we are making a difference as advisers? What does P represent for us? Does it represent the number of our students who graduate? Does it represent the number of times we hear “thank you” from our students? Can it be quantified at all?

Musicians are often asked the question, “Who were your influences?” Saxophone players will typically suggest that listening to and transcribing the works of John Coltrane or Charlie Parker, for example, made a difference in their development. However, every saxophone player knows that these jazz legends are drops in an ocean of influences that grows deeper each time we hear music of any kind. Players may not even be explicitly aware of all of these drops in this ocean or the waves they produce as they fall. Hearing a particular chord may seep into their subconscious, covertly prompting them to start playing a song one day, leading to a complete change of style the next day.

Likewise, as advisers, we may strike a chord in a student's heart or mind without either adviser or advisee being fully aware of the waves of change that follow. We cannot always quantify these unknowns, but being aware of the variables that affect student performance ensures that we are making a difference that is more than just a drop in a bucket.

Charlie Parker was a huge proponent of improving his mastery of the alto saxophone and had tremendous motivation to apply his gifts toward that end. It is impossible to know what his impressive performances would have been like if he had lived a life free of interference from drug and alcohol abuse, which tragically limited his life to only thirty-four years. Still, he left us with amazing musical innovations and beautifully summarized how to make a difference in our own lives and the lives of others when he quipped, “Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.”

Reference

Green, B., & Gallwey, W. T. (1986). The inner game of music (p. 12). Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday

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Published in The Mentor on February 1, 2007
On the Web at www.psu.edu/dus/mentor/
Copyright 2007 Center for Excellence in Academic Advising
Division of Undergraduate Studies
The Pennsylvania State University