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 “More research in advising can only benefit advisers and their students. Research would be especially beneficial in the area of women in math/science/IT disciplines, fields where women still represent a minority. Women in these fields who do succeed often cite a mentor/adviser as being very important to their success. We need to find out how advisers can develop better relationships with these students; relationships that foster academic and personal success.”~ Cathy Biros Miller, University of Colorado at Boulder, February 15 “One thing we need to do is think more broadly about what we call 'research.' The NACADA Journal invites submissions from many disciplines but it's not called research unless it's an empirical study. Anything else is 'theoretical' or 'critical issues,' etc. It appears that most people in the advising profession have academic backgrounds in the social and behavioral sciences and are trained in certain research methods. When I was working in the field of philosophy my colleagues sure did use the word 'research' to apply to their scholarly work.I'm glad the Journal has published a number of interesting articles that aren't empirical (and so has The Mentor!). I usually find them the most interesting. What about empirical research? The key to doing quantitative studies is that you have to be studying something that you can measure. And it seems to me that the easier something is to measure, the less important it is. (Obviously that's an overstatement.) Suppose you want to measure the effectiveness of an advising technique, or of advising in general. How do you measure that? What student outcomes are you going to identify? And how can you be sure that any differences in outcomes that you've identified are due to advising rather than some other factor? I think when we do empirical research we're at risk of at least two problems: (1) studying something pretty trivial because that's the best way to design a methodologically sound study; or (2) substituting an easy-to-measure variable for the harder-to-measure-but- more-important one. E.g. substituting student satisfaction for effectiveness. But I think it's important for advisers to continue struggling against this problem, partly because there definitely are questions worth answering, and partly because I HOPE that that the answers to some of those questions will be useful in showing the value of our work to our institutions.” ~ Marc Lowenstein, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, February 16 “I believe there should be more research in academic advising. I have been searching for articles, surveys, etc. that would support the statement that academic advising is vital for retention in higher ed. Do you know of any specific study that discusses this?”~ Jennifer Wade, Plattsburgh State University, March 9 The Mentor is published by Penn State's Division of Undergraduate Studies Available online at www.psu.edu/dus/mentor/ Privacy and Legal Statements | Copyright | © The Pennsylvania State University | All rights reserved | |
