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 Academic advisers should be evaluated by their advisees. Major
corporations include interns in evaluating managers and supervisors. Why
would academic advisers be excluded from being accountable for the
quality of their work? Individuals who seek academic adviser assistance
deserve to evaluate the quality of the academic adviser. Some might
argue that advisers share unwelcome advice and would be negatively
impacted in an evaluation.A well-constructed evaluation instrument that is valid and reliable should be constructed to evaluate academic advisers. The instrument should measure those characteristics needed to be a successful academic adviser. The characteristics should reflect criteria established by an expert panel of advisers who understand the constructs of quality academic advising. My daughter's academic adviser left a message on my home answering machine. The adviser was abrupt and rude because my daughter asked to meet her adviser via e-mail. My daughter asked for several dates and times but the adviser was not available any of those times so she demanded my daughter stop by the office to schedule a meeting time and not e-mail a request. The adviser was unpleasant at best. Was she having a bad day? Was she always this rude? Who knows, but she was not very professional. Or had my daughter irritated her by not showing up for other appointments or was she late for other appointments? Was my daughter waiting for the last minute to complete her work? My immediate impression was to be angry at the adviser. Then I paused and thought maybe they shared some responsibility for the rude message? The adviser should have been professional and taken the high road. Maybe the adviser and the advisee failed to communicate? So what happens on a simple evaluation instrument completed by the advisee? Does the adviser have a rebuttal for negative advisee comments? Crafting an instrument that accurately measures the interaction between the adviser and the advisee must be completed and piloted before an evaluation system is put into place. I recommend highly that advisee input into adviser evaluation would serve to make good advising better. ~ Barbara K. Wade, Ph.D., Penn State University, March 18, 2005 I do think advisers should be given “report cards” hopefully in the same spirit that faculty get report cards on their teaching—as a means for improvement. For students, the course with its report card is over, whereas advising/instruction continues. There will always be some comments advisers won't want to hear and can make “excuses”—real or otherwise—to account for a student's perspective, but I do believe if something consistently comes up, there may be reason for reflection. If there is a particular problem with a unit's advising—timing, availability, then the unit can look at their advising services as a whole. The focus group means of assessing programs (this issue) may also be another way for a “report card.”~ Jeane Novotny, Indiana University, March 18, 2005 I do believe that assessment of an adviser's performance is important and should be monitored. Currently my office utilizes a yearly review format for assessment. I find this to be insufficient for most advisers who have been on staff for less than two years.As long as the report card measures goals that are agreed upon by all advisers under the system and the goals adequately reflect the purpose and strengths of all advisers (not focusing in on any one skill in particular as the basis for judgment), I support the idea. I think a bi-yearly system would be most helpful. ~ Josh Morrison, IUPUI, March 18, 2005 I think advisers should be evaluated by students—for the reasons others have already given, and also because at my institution where most advising is done by faculty, I wanted to raise the profile of advising in tenure and promotion decisions. So several years ago I started pushing for this to be done. Because we are in a collective bargaining environment, the details needed to be negotiated with the union. After several months we worked out a mechanism and an instrument.But student participation is voluntary—and weak. We provided an incentive in the form of earlier registration times for those completing the evaluations, but return rates remain very low. For many faculty the results don't seem to be statistically significant. So I'm not sure we accomplished what we wanted to. If other institutions are doing this and having more success, I'd like to know. ~ Marc Lowenstein, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, March 21, 2005 I agree that advisers should be evaluated. However, I think we should keep in mind that students evaluate faculty after spending a semester in a learning relationship with them. Academic advisers, unless the tool is appropriate, run the risk of being assessed after each and every meeting and having the assessment be based solely on their responsibilities of the partnership. Will the student(s)' responsibility of the learning partnership be accounted for? Would the student(s) see that academic advising is a learning process that requires time to develop?~ Jeanette Wong, Azusa Pacific University, March 25, 2005 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 | |
