Is Faculty Advising Teaching

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Is Faculty Advising Teaching?

• or
• A tongue-in-cheek tale about raised hopes, dashed
  dreams, and a successful yet dissatisfying end to
  a five-year-long attempt to redefine the role of
  faculty advising on my campus
• Rhonda Sprague
• Division of Communication
• University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
• rsprague_at_uwsp.edu

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I. Raised Hopes

• Money for Advising!
• A Vice Chancellors Request
• Reality Check

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The Response

• If we decide to give these awards, faculty
  members will then have to put as much effort into
  advising as we already do into Teaching,
  Scholarship, and Service. We dont want that
  extra responsibility. Were already doing
  enough.
• Faculty members shouldnt be advising anyway.
  That should be a job for an Academic Staff
  person.
• Shouldnt I get as much credit for advising
  student organizations as I do for advising
  individual students?
• Whats so hard about advising? You get students
  their classes and send them out the door. Why
  should we give an award for that?

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II. A Councils Dream

• The Council of Advisors
• The Suppression of Advising as a Faculty
  Responsibility
• The Need to Increase the Visibility and
  Importance of Advising in the Universitys Mission

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III. Our Four Proposals

• Option 1 Keep advising with Service
• Option 2 Create a fourth category for
  retention/promotion Advising/Mentoring
• Option 3 Two categories Advising/Teaching and
  Scholarship/Service
• Option 4 Combine Advising/Mentoring with
  Teaching and maintain Scholarship and Service as
  separate functions

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IV. The Path to Glory

• Provost and Interested Parties
• Pros and Cons
• Wait
• Wait Some More
• A New Dream from the Provost

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V. Academic Affairs

• October 3, 2005
• October 10, 2005
• October 24, 2005
• October 31, 2005
• November 7, 2005
• November 28, 2005

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Some AAC Comments

• But everyone does advising a little bit
  differently.
• My department already does that.
• It should be left up to the departments.
• Advising takes a significant amount of time and
  should be considered part of teaching.
• If you make advising a separate category, it
  looks as though everyone should be doing it.
• If we put it with teaching, we can arrange for
  release time to do it well.
• NACADA places advising under teaching. (!!!)
• What if a student gets mad about bad advising
  and give someone a bad score?
• None of these options will actually improve
  advising.
• The entire movement to improve advising here
  could come down to one motion.
• Are departments going to need to revisit their
  personnel policies?

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VI. Faculty Senate - February 15, 2006

• Motion advanced.
• Motion passed.
• Next item

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VII. Realization

• New Handbook wording
• Departments and functional equivalent units, in
  consultation with appropriate students, shall
  establish policies and procedures to support
  commitment to and assessment of individual
  advising. Where appropriate, departments shall
  specifically include advising as a component of
  university and department service in merit
  considerations.

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VIII. Is Faculty Advising Teaching?

• Of course it is!