Guide To Advising and Mentoring of Students

Version 2022.1

This section addresses how to create strong programs for advising and mentoring students in your department. Advising refers to helping students successfully navigate the path toward their degree, identify and overcome obstacles, and select course sequences. Advising includes both prescriptive advising, in which an advisor provides advice on a student’s academic schedules and requirements, and developmental or

Proactive Advising

An advising model designed to support first-generation and at-risk students, in which advisers work to build relationships and proactively connect with students before they struggle rather than wait for students to seek help. Proactive advising was formerly called “intrusive advising.” It is a component of “developmental advising,” which is based on student development theories and focuses on supporting the whole student by looking at needs holistically, including whether they are in a safe living environment, have access to the resources they need for success, and are fulfilled in the major they have chosen. Developmental advising is contrasted with “prescriptive advising,” which focuses on providing students with advice on navigating their academic schedules and requirements. Articles about proactive advising and different theories of advising.

, in which an advisor proactively addresses the broader needs of a student as a whole person, which must be met for that student’s success. Mentoring includes supporting students’ physics skills development, professional growth, career preparation, access to institutional resources, and psychosocial well-being. Many faculty serve as advisors; however, only some faculty serve as mentors, and those who do will need to practice more advanced skills to effectively support students. Training is available for both. This section begins with practices that all advisors should know, continues with practices that can improve advising and are critical for mentoring, and finishes with details of setting up a strong mentoring program. This section does not address mentoring of faculty, which is addressed in the section on How to Be an Effective Chair, or mentoring of research students, which is addressed in the section on Undergraduate Research.

Benefits

Advising and mentoring play a critical role in student success and happiness. Proactive and informed advising and mentoring enable a climate of support and caring that is critical to ensuring that students see themselves as competent and are prepared, successful, and happy in your program. These factors can dramatically improve outcomes for students and graduates. Advising and mentoring can improve student retention and success by providing mechanisms to learn about and address barriers to student success that span academic, interpersonal, and social interactions. Strong mentoring also supports students from

Marginalized Groups

People of color and others with marginalized ethnicities, women and others who experience misogyny, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and others who have traditionally been marginalized in society and in physics. According to the TEAM-UP Report, marginalized groups are “groups of people defined by a common social identity who lack adequate social power or resources to design, build, or perpetuate social structures or institutions that reflect the centrality … of their identities, proclivities, and points of view. … They need not be underrepresented or numerical minorities, but often are.” We use the term marginalized groups, rather than minorities, underrepresented groups, or other commonly used terms, because people in these groups are not always minorities or underrepresented, and in order to convey that underrepresentation is the result of marginalization rather than a statistical accident. Another common term is minoritized groups. While we use this general term for brevity and readability, it is important to recognize that the many different groups encompassed by this term face different challenges and have different needs that should be addressed individually whenever possible, to learn the terms that people ask to be called, and to recognize that these terms may change over time.

in integrating into the academic community.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action

Effective Practices

Effective Practices

  1. Develop a structure to support quality advising within the department or program

  2. Support all advisors and mentors in developing personal and supportive relationships with students

  3. Support all advisors and mentors in learning about and sharing resources for students

  4. Have a formal structure that supports mentoring within your department or program

  5. Recognize how mentoring contributes to the department or program

Programmatic Assessments

Programmatic Assessments

General resources on advising:

  • V. N. Gordon, W. R. Habley, and T. J. Grites (editors), Academic Advising: A Comprehensive Handbook, 2nd Edition, National Academic Advising Association (2008).
  • NACADA: An association of professional advisors, counselors, faculty, administrators, and students working to enhance the educational development of students. NACADA provides a Clearinghouse of Academic Advising Resources including an overview of theories of advising and a collection of advising syllabi resource links.
  • Berkeley Advising Matters: A website that provides resources at the University of California, Berkeley, many of which are general resources that are useful for supporting advisors elsewhere.
  • Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS): Standards for academic advising programs.
  • E. K. Ohrt, “Proactive Advising with First-Generation Students: Suggestions for Practice,” The Mentor: Innovative Scholarship on Academic Advising 18 (2016): An overview of how to implement

    Proactive Advising

    An advising model designed to support first-generation and at-risk students, in which advisers work to build relationships and proactively connect with students before they struggle rather than wait for students to seek help. Proactive advising was formerly called “intrusive advising.” It is a component of “developmental advising,” which is based on student development theories and focuses on supporting the whole student by looking at needs holistically, including whether they are in a safe living environment, have access to the resources they need for success, and are fulfilled in the major they have chosen. Developmental advising is contrasted with “prescriptive advising,” which focuses on providing students with advice on navigating their academic schedules and requirements. Articles about proactive advising and different theories of advising.

    .

General resources on mentoring:

  • Reference 1 in Evidence below provides guidelines for effective mentoring in an online format and a pdf report.
  • APS National Mentoring Community Resource Library: A part of the APS National Mentoring Community providing references to a variety of mentoring practices and links to other organizations that support improved mentoring.
  • B. W-.L. Packard, Successful STEM Mentoring Initiatives for Underrepresented Students: A Research-Based Guide for Faculty and Administrators, Stylus (2015): A book that provides practical research-based advice for faculty members and individuals building mentoring programs, with an emphasis on practices that can recruit and retain underrepresented students.

Mentoring training and education programs:

Validated assessments of mentoring:

  • M. Fleming, S. House, V. S. Hanson, L. Yu, J. Garbutt, R. McGee, K. Kroenke, Z. Abedin, and D. M. Rubio, “The Mentoring Competency Assessment,” Academic Medicine 88(7), 1002–1008 (2013): The Mentoring Competency Assessment (MCA) includes surveys for mentors and mentees to assess the skills of mentors.
  • R. A. Berk, J. Berg, R. Mortimer, B. Walton-Moss, and T. P. Yeo, “Measuring the effectiveness of faculty mentoring relationships,” Academic Medicine 80(1), 66–71 (2005): The Mentorship Profile Questionnaire (MPQ) is a survey for mentees to evaluate the mentoring relationship, and the Mentorship Effectiveness Scale (MES) is a survey for mentees to evaluate the mentor.

Two National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus study reports include summaries of the benefits of mentoring:

  1. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM,” The National Academies Press (2019). See Chapter 6, in the section on “Mentorship Outcomes.”
  2. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, ”Undergraduate Research Experiences for STEM Students: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities,” The National Academies Press (2017). See Chapter 5: “The Role of Mentoring.”
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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 1738311, 1747563, and 1821372. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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