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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Strategic Plan seeks advising overhauls

The Strategic Plan’s Undergraduate Life section includes an objective to ensure student success through high-quality and technologically advanced advising.

“We will adopt best practices and metrics for academic and career advising across our campus to support student completion, success and life and career goals,” Executive Vice President and Provost Lauren Robel said in the Strategic Plan.

Dennis Groth, interim vice provost for undergraduate education, said the advising department will expand their emphasis on best practices, training and professional development activities for its advisers.

“This helps us remain coordinated and adapt more seamlessly to new initiatives,” Groth said.

At the town hall meeting March 4, an academic adviser for undergraduates expressed the need for educating parents and students about the importance of a liberal arts degree.

“We have to provide them with a set of structures and ways into liberal arts education,” Robel said at the meeting.

Concern was also expressed for the need of more resources and undergraduate advisers.

There are times when the advising staff isn’t enough for all students, Groth said.
“One of the challenges always with advising is that it has some times of the year where peak demands outpace available resources, and other parts of the year where the resource demands are less acute,” he said.

Groth said concerns about whether additional resources are needed to meet the Strategic Plan’s objectives will be addressed during the implementation stage.
The  Student Success Collaborative, an analytics program, is already in place and provides a predictive model for advisers to see how students are progressing in a degree, Groth said.

The program shows if a student hasn’t taken a required class, taken a class by the recommended time or if they don’t have the grade they need in order to stay on track to graduate, he said.

“We have developed, are developing and are adopting new systems to support academic advising and student success,” Groth said.

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