NACADA SUMMER INSTITUTE NEW FACULTY TIPS
WELCOME to the faculty of the NACADA Summer Institute on Academic Advising. We look forward to a very rewarding experience for you and the participants.
In order to help orient you to the Institute operations, we are developing a faculty handbook and would appreciate your input as you experience this year’s Institute as a first time faculty member. Following are some of the issues that we think will be helpful to you this year and we hope that as you formulate additional questions, you will share them with us to be included in our next edition for Madison!
- Expectations: Your presenter role was outlined in your invitation to serve, and later you were assigned topics based on your entries in the NACADA Expertise Database. Additional roles include:
- being generally available during meals, between sessions, etc. for participant interaction
- Facilitating roundtable discussions as assigned.
- Facilitating small group discussions as assigned.
- Providing one-on-one consultations during assigned time.
- Attending general sessions as basis for small group discussions
- Assisting as needed throughout the Institute
- Attending all faculty gatherings.
- Small group discussions: Your small groups are assigned by institutional type. Your role is to stimulate and facilitate discussion. Leading questions are included in your session guide and will help get the discussion rolling, however you are not bound by these. Especially after the first day, your group may initiate their own discussions around issues they face and you may not need these questions to get everyone engaged. You can take the discussion wherever the group wants to go, however, be mindful that where the most vocal want to go may not be where the majority (or anyone else) may want to go. That is your second challenge: being sure that everyone gets involved in the discussion rather than have it dominated by one or two folks – especially if you have more than one person from the same institution. If there appears to be two or more distinct areas of interest about a topic, you may wish to further divide the group into subgroups and let them have their individual discussions. Divisions might be by topic, by their roles at their institution, or by their institution’s delivery model, etc. It is sometimes difficult not to dominate the discussion (particularly early in the institute before they open up) but keep in mind that you are the facilitator not the lecturer. Faculty often indicate that they learn more from these sessions than they impart!
- Opening ice breaker session: The faculty for each institutional type will devise and facilitate an ice breaker activity for all participants from each type. This allows folks early on to meet others with whom they may want to visit beyond those assigned to their discussion group. Cross-pollination! Veteran faculty will likely take the lead in recommending what has worked well in the past.
- Action Plans: Participants have been told that they will leave the Institute with a Plan of Action for improving advising at their institution in some way. Although they have been told this, few understand the intensity and depth with which they will be asked to pursue this task. Some faculty focus the participants on this task from day one; others remind them of the task but encourage them to think about the topic for a day or two before deciding what they want to do. Most offer both options and work with the group members on whichever they choose. Some come with a task in mind and find that it is too massive, others develop the task from the sessions they are attending and realizing what best fits the needs of their institution. Action Plans have ranged from developing office policies to developing advising web sites, to developing handbooks for specific audiences (parents, students, etc.), to developing a plan to establish a centralized advising center, to organizing an advising council on campus. Samples of past plans are available from the Summer Institute web page – scrolling down to “Action Plans in Action”.
Friday morning is reserved for presentation of action plans. Participants will present their plan to the others in the discussion group and receive group input on additional issues to consider or options to consider. Some faculty do this as a total group exercise, others follow the presentation with having the presenter leave the room while discussion occurs and a set of recommendations is formulated by the others and then given to the presenter when s/he re-enters the room. Others have divided the group into two sections to handle the volume and give more time to each. Of course, some participants will be leaving early and ask to present the day before or be first on the agenda for Friday morning. It is up to you as to whether to permit this. Usually, faculty will leave the last hour of the discussion group time on Thursday to accommodate early departures and will accommodate Friday departures accordingly with the schedule. But, do encourage all to stay as long as possible to give consideration to those who draw the last time slots so they, too, may benefit from others’ advice.
- Roundtable discussions: The roundtable discussions are provided to allow discussions on topics not otherwise covered in the Institute curriculum and are designed as info sharing and group thinking rather than lecture sessions. You will be assigned a facilitator role for the roundtable discussions and the participants will be told that you are to facilitate (ask thoughtful questions, guide discussion, control talkers, etc.) rather than serve as an expert on the topic.
- Consultations: On Wednesday afternoon, participants will have signed up for individual consultations with faculty. These usually follow needs of their action plans and faculty’s expressed areas of expertise. You will be provided the list of your consultations. A sign will be posted on your door instructing folks to knock five minutes before their scheduled time to alert the faculty and participant that they need to wrap it up. You will need to work hard to cut off those discussions and allow the next person equal time. You will be given forms to be distributed in your group that will ask them to summarize their plan and situation so that the consultant can quickly get to any advice s/he has to impart or questions to pose for their further consideration as they finalize their plans. You may be asked by those in your small group as to which faculty member could best help them address a specific issue. The expertise listing will be helpful in making these referrals
- Faculty gatherings: Saturday evening the faculty and staff will have a group dinner to get to know each other and socialize. Sunday morning there will be a faculty meeting to review the agenda and expectations and share tips from veteran faculty. Sunday evening is the welcome reception and dinner. Tuesday evening is the group networking event. Wednesday or Thursday evening will be a faculty dinner to discuss how things are going and socialize. A faculty debriefing will be scheduled for late Wednesday or Thursday to share ideas about what worked and didn’t work and suggestions for improvements.