Strengths-Based Advising

Academic advising holds enormous promise as a vehicle for permeating the campus with a strengths-based approach to student success. Where else does every single student have the opportunity for an ongoing one-on-one relationship with a faculty or staff member?

At its heart, academic advising is a relationship--and we know that taking a "strengths approach" to learning and student success works best in the context of healthy relationships. Good advising helps students get the most out of their college experience by connecting who they are and who they want to become to the pathways that will enable them to reach their goals.

But after 25 years in higher education, I have to confess that I'm pretty frustrated with the academic advising systems on most campuses. My fellow faculty seem to think advising is nothing more than course registration--and that it can be done in about 15 minutes. Too often they see it as an interruption of their work, a hassle that comes once a semester complete with long lines of students outside their doors or urgent last-minute e-mails from students who need to register. What would happen if we realized the transformative power that advising has to impact student learning and engagement?

In his book Making the Most of College (2001), Richard Light points out that "good academic advising may be the single most underestimated characteristic of a successful college experience." A powerful statement! And a challenge for us as educators working within a system that rarely provides the time for or the recognition of the importance of advising. In research I've done with the Student Satisfaction Inventory, we see the same pattern year after year: students rate advising effectiveness as second only to teaching effectiveness in importance to them, yet faculty rate advising effectiveness near the bottom of institutional priorities.

Taking a strengths-based approach to advising means we do some things differently! It means we start with a different foundation for the advising relationship: we start with the assumption that our purpose as advisors is to help students identify and develop their strengths so that they get the most out of their college experiences. Sure, course registration is an activity that happens as part of this, but it's a very small part. The much bigger part of our role is to help students become the persons they were created to be. Good advising spotlights the seeds of talent already in students and then helps them identify paths they need to take to develop those talents into strengths so that they reach their goals. It's not about identifying talents just so they feel good about themselves; it's about identifying talents as the foundation for excellence, as the best way of becoming a college graduate.

Chip Anderson and I wrote an article on strengths-based advising for the 2005 special issue of the National Academic Advising Association Journal that highlighted advising theories and models. From this article, I've expanded on some of the practical ways of taking a strengths-based approach to advising. On May 16th, The Gallup Organization and The Noel Academy for Strengths-Based Leadership and Education are co-sponsoring a webinar on strengths-based advising, so you're welcome to check out some of these strategies there. For more info, see www.strengthsquest.com.

I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the challenges you face in advising, as well as strategies you use in advising that seem to work!