By MARTY LEVINE
Pittsburgh is hosting the national conference of NACADA (founded as the National Academic Advising Association) for the first time next month.
“This is a big deal for us regionally,” says Chris Kirchhof, the Swanson School of Engineering’s director of Undergraduate Recruitment and Transfer Student Services.
Kirchhof is co-chairing the event — which has been five years in the making — with an academic advisor from the University of Maryland. “It is drawing people to the area who maybe have not come here before, and allowing us to highlight universities in the region,” he says.
About 3,000 attendees are expected at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center Oct. 27 to 30 for this 48th annual NACADA conference, this year titled “A Beautiful Day in the Burgh: Championing Advisors as Helpers.” Everyone from graduate students considering a career in advising to current academic advisors and advising administrators are expected to take in its offerings — pre-conference workshops, 300 conference sessions and opening and closing keynote speakers — plus perhaps experience the hospitality of Pittsburgh for the first time.
“It’s really a time to network,” Kirchhof says of the conference, which draws a lot of first-time attendees as well as many with three or fewer years in the profession. “It’s so important to see how other universities are working with students, helping them move into the workforce.”
Joining Pitt in 2009 as an academic advisor in the Swanson School, Kirchhof worked with first-year students at the beginning of his advising career, then added transfer and prospective students. Today he speaks to potential and accepted students and meets one-on-one with transfer students to offer advice on what they will need to succeed here. He also teaches Swanson’s Engineering Transfer Seminar.
“Transfers might only have two years or three years at Pitt, so telling them what resources are available is even more crucial” than advising first-year students of Pitt’s offerings, he says.
He started working with NACADA the year he arrived at Pitt, attending conferences himself and rising to chair conference committees.
NACADA is particularly valuable to Pitt: “There’s going to be a lot of growth in the advising positions on campus over the next few years,” he says, pointing to the 2024 Undergraduate Academic Advising Coordination initiative of the provost’s office. Beginning this year, it says, “the University of Pittsburgh will move, over the course of the next few academic years, to a shared model of advising on the Pittsburgh campus … to standardize collaborative and holistic advising practices for every student.”
“As a trend, we’re seeing a lot of holistic advising,” Kirchhof says. “There are a lot of challenges first-year students face. The advisors are the people on campus who can (say), ‘I know who you need to go to, to ask this question. I know who you need to go to, to get help.’” They also can explain that “it is OK to stub your toe as long as you know a way out of it.”
NACADA, from its headquarters at Kansas State University, has sent its own staff to Pittsburgh in the run up to the conference, to make sure everything goes smoothly, from budgeting to food service, convention center space to hotels. Kirchhof and his co-chair have had a committee of 16 from regional universities at work alongside them.
“It’s kind of fun how it’s challenging,” he says of organizing the conference.
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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