New Article in “The Mentor” Academic Advising Journal

I am excited for my most recent journal article which appears in the The Mentor: Innovative Scholarship in Academic Advising. This article co-authored with my frequent collaborator Dr. Shelley Price-Williams (University of Northern Iowa) and former student Tiffany Shemwell (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville). In this article, we distill results from a qualitative study about academic recovery programs from interviews with mid-level academic advising administrators with responsibility for these programs. Academic recovery programs are intended for undergraduate students placed on academic warning or probation. We found that mid-level academic administrators use collaboration, policies, and programming to facilitate program implementation. These administrators were particularly challenged to implement their academic recovery programs which were often reactive and they cited a lack of institutional support and resources as barriers to successfully implementing or creating their collaboration, policies, and programming. Collaboration was necessary because of a lack of institutional support with other academic advisors, supplemental instruction, and the counseling center. Policies were often inconsistently implemented and administrators were critical about notification and grade point average calculation. Supplemental programming typically featured some prevention efforts which included first-semester student success workshop series or group advising sessions themed by major interest or clusters for first-generation students. Intrusive supplemental programming involved mandatory student success seminars. Administrators felt like they were using a “shotgun” approach in which they used combinations of all these approaches because they did not have sufficient data to determine program efficacy. We conclude the article by discussing implications for practice and suggestions for improving academic probation and recovery programs.

A copy of the article entitled “Collaboration, Policies, and Programming: Advising Administrators’ Perspectives on Academic Recovery” is available open-source from The Mentor.