By SHANNON O. WELLS
A recent presentation on Pitt’s shared advising model project, which emphasizes a more centralized coordination of student advising — augmented by faculty mentors — prompted a question of how many advisors/mentors a student studying in multiple Pitt schools might have.
John Stoner, teaching professor and undergraduate advisor in the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences’ Department of History, posed the question following a shared advising model presentation at the March 28 Educational Policies Committee meeting.
“Let’s say that there’s an engineering and Dietrich student right now. How many advisors/mentors are they going to have?” asked Stoner, committee co-chair. “That student will have a dedicated advisor, both in engineering and, let’s say, in Dietrich, as well as faculty mentors in each of those spaces?”
Addressing co-presenter April Belback, Stoner added that sometimes it’s difficult to get students “to see one person, let alone four or more, when you add in the resource advisors and the other advisors you describe.”
Belback, associate vice provost for student success and advising, said this is among topics to be addressed in upcoming hands-on workshops related to advising to “help us figure out some of those things.”
“I think there’s going to be a difference between requiring a student to see an advisor to … get some things done, and then us talking and collaboratively understanding what the faculty mentorship role is,” she explained.
“Are there points of the student’s experience that we absolutely want them to see a faculty mentor? It might be every semester for some majors, absolutely, but for others across the institution, it might not be.”
Advising’s involvement in such a new approach might come during “different points of the student experience, or when a student is interested in a certain opportunity,” she added.
“This is an opportunity for us to think deeply about this and what it looks like at Pitt, and it could look a little bit different in one college than it does in another college. This is the collaborative process that we’re really trying to work through, and it’s going to take a little while.”
Belback and Adam Lee, vice provost for undergraduate studies, led a discussion for the committee on approaches to improving and streamlining undergraduate advising services at Pitt.
They also led a similar discussion at Faculty Assembly last fall, when Provost Joe McCarthy talked about fresh approaches to undergraduate advising as a pillar of the strategic Plan for Pitt 2028.
“Cultivating Student Success,” which McCarthy said he considers perhaps the most important pillar of the Plan for Pitt, contains specific call-outs for enhancing student support services to improve retention, graduation rates, and ultimately post-graduate success.
“When we thought about launching a project around advising, which is really an advising coordination plan,” he said last September, “the goal is really to improve the student experience, provide wrap-around supports for students as they navigate an increasing number of academic offerings that span multiple schools and centers.”
That includes “how we might standardize University-wide holistic advising practices and ultimately boost the student success for every one of our increasingly diverse student body.”
Breaking down silos
In the presentation for Educational Policies, Adam Lee said the streamlined advising goal would ideally result in every student having a “full-time dedicated staff advisor” to ensure a “continuity of experience while still maintaining contact with the faculty who provide that important disciplinary knowledge that only the faculty have,” he said.
To understand the intention of the goals, Lee said it’s important to think about Pitt’s current decentralized advising structure.
“This means that every college, school or unit within the institution has established its own approach to advising. … At research institutions like ours, this can often cause siloed academic units, and the campus community feels disconnected, leading to inconsistency in policies and practices,” he noted.
“This is particularly apparent for students who are pursuing multiple credentials and they have different experiences with each credential, or students looking to change majors or change schools.”
The new approach, he explained, is “additive in nature,” and leverages the complementary expertise of primary-role staff academic advisors and “highly engaged faculty mentors” as disciplinary experts.
“It focuses on standardizing the supports that students receive from units across the campus,” Lee added, “and aims to develop more comprehensive connective tissue across units (and) across the University to ensure collaboration that is necessary to support the success of our students.”
Defining roles
Another question came from Kevin Shaver, teaching associate professor of economics, who was considering students who are “oftentimes bewildered by the large number of choices and not knowing where to go for help.”
Thinking about his own experience as an advisor, he said questions often arise about who’s taking the lead in certain circumstances or areas.
“When you have multiple people that have oftentimes ambiguously defined roles, it’s unclear where a certain advisor’s responsibility stops and another one begins.
“Do you all have a sense for what that might look like?” he asked of the proposed shared advising approach.
Noting how many Pitt students are either affiliated with two colleges or transitioning from one field of study to another, Belback said the goal, in terms of coordination and communication, is to provide advisors access to “standard training, so that everybody is able to tell the student the same kind of things.
“So, Kevin, if you’re seeing a student in one place, and someone is seeing a student in another college, everybody has the same information, so that you both feel comfortable and competent to do that … if you’re the advisor or the other advisor.”
One challenge the advising-reform team faces involves the structure of Pitt Pathways, a coordinated effort of faculty, staff and academic leadership to utilize the Education Advisory Board’s Student Success Collaborative platform.
“When a student (goes) into Pathways, there’s a list of people,” she said. “Part of this is absolutely defining who should be the one who goes in and takes care of that academic referral versus who should be the one to kind of think about (other responsibilities). Right now, we don’t have those responsibilities laid out.
“That’s another very important part of this plan that we’re trying to collaboratively work on,” Belback added, “so that everybody does understand their responsibilities in this space and can feel more confident and comfortable about those kinds of things.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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