In an effort to improve its advising system, the University's College of Arts and Sciences is shifting to a pre-major advising model that will pair all incoming first-year students with trained advisors based on students’ expressed interests. The College is presently hiring new advisors known as Advising Fellows for this program and plans to launch the new model in full during the Fall 2025 semester, according to Director of Undergraduate Advising Meira Kensky.
The shift to the new system is already partially underway, as this fall’s first-year students are paired with a variety of different advisors — either COLA instructors, volunteer faculty who have received the same training as Advising Fellows or one of the 13 Advising Fellows that have been hired — who support them in selecting classes and making the transition from high school to the University. After students select a major, typically by the end of their second year, they will be paired with a faculty advisor in their major department.
As of this summer, all advising fellows and related faculty regularly attend workshops and advising trainings. Advising fellows and faculty completed two workshops focused on case studies and small group discussion in preparation for this semester, and the College will continue to host monthly workshops for advisors throughout the academic year.
The initiative to improve advising in the College has been in the works since spring 2023, led by Christa Acampora, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The College worked with management consulting firm Huron Consulting to survey and interview students and faculty on where pre-major advising could be improved. Administrators began to form an advising model April 2024 that connected pre-major advising with the first-year Engagements program.
Currently, as part of the general education requirements in the College, first-year students participate in the Engagements program, which requires students to take four small, seminar style classes focused on giving an introduction to liberal arts education. In the new advising framework, every first-year will be assigned to the instructor teaching their first quarter Engagement class, allowing advisors and advisees to see each other face to face on a weekly basis.
Kensky said that the College will fully shift to the new advising framework in fall 2025, at which point they plan to have hired about 13 more Advising Fellows. Beginning that fall, all first quarter Engagement courses will be taught by either the Advising Fellows, who will also serve as advisors for students, or a group of faculty with the same training who volunteer to advise.
Other professors known as Non-Advising College Fellows, who will not serve as advisors, will teach Engagement courses during the other three quarters of the academic year.
According to Kensky, up until this year, incoming first-years were assigned a faculty advisor whose department required them to advise. Second-year College student Meredith Kershisnik said that under this previous advising model, she felt her first-year academic advisor, who works in the Department of Art, was not able to give her advice in her specific academic focus.
Kershisnik said that while her advisor provided specific help relating to her interest in adding a studio art minor, he has been unable to give the same level of support for her major as someone interested in STEM.
“[My advisor] is in the art department, and so as a STEM major, it's been difficult for him to answer the questions that I've had,” Kershisnik said. “I know that he's had other students come in who are in the same position that I am, so he's relayed advice and information to me from hearing their side of things, but he specifically hasn't been able to give me STEM-specific advising.”
First-year students in the College also currently have the option to choose their own advisor through COLAs — one-credit seminars on a variety of topics offered to all first years during their first semester. When a first-year is enrolled in a COLA, their teacher in the class is also their advisor — similar to how the new advising model will work.
Second-year College student Natalie Dike, who took a COLA class during her first-year, said she appreciated being able to speak with and see her advisor more frequently, but that her COLA professor was not in her academic area and was not able to provide intended major-specific support.
“[U.Va.] said it would help with getting a closer relationship with your advisor, which I do think happened.” Dike said. “It was nice to actually be able to talk to him face to face. [I have] friends I know that only met with [their advisor] once or twice a semester when it was time to pick their schedule. But I don't think [taking a COLA] necessarily helped me get an advisor more in my [academic] area.”
Where advisees in the old system were sometimes matched with advisors who could not provide specific guidance related to their academic interests, the new system takes new measures to connect students with advisors familiar with their areas of academic focus. According to an August update about the advising system, all first-years will be paired with advising professionals and receive advice designed to prepare them for their majors.
According to Kensky, another aspect of the new advising model that benefits students is having advisors teach classes, as it lets them interact with advisees regularly. Kensky said she has seen this type of advising model work in her previous position as Director of Advising at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“The goal for this is that advisees get to see their advisor several times a week … they make connections,” Kensky said. “When I was teaching a first-year seminar [at my previous institution], that was incredibly valuable because I could see my students in class and [learn] what they were interested in, and then we could have real conversations based on my knowledge of them from the classroom.”
The College’s new advising framework is similar to the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s current advising model, which the school implemented in the fall of 2023. First-year Engineering students take a series of “Engineering Foundations” courses throughout their first year, and much like in the College’s new model, these courses are taught by students’ own academic advisors. Furthermore, these Engineering advisors are members of a specific group of recently hired faculty whose main responsibility is advising, rather than a randomly assigned faculty member who teaches other courses in addition to advising students.
Leyf Starling, director of the First Year Engineering Center — which runs the first-year curriculum for Engineering students — said the School of Engineering’s first-year advising model allows students and advisors to build closer relationships. He also said the Office of the Dean has received increasingly positive feedback on the new advising model from students as compared to survey data from 2016.
“It's a great opportunity to build those relationships, but more importantly, build that understanding of students’ [strengths and weaknesses].” Starling said. “And when they come in saying they’re stressed out about X, Y or Z, I'm much more equipped to advise them, because I know them better. The more you know someone, the more you can help them.”
Kensky said she hopes to make students’ experiences at the University stronger through the new framework. She also said she believes this initiative will bring more attention to how important quality advising is.
“Advising is teaching, and it's a critical part of student growth [and] student development,” Kensky said. “It's where a lot of planning for the future happens, where students really can think through how to make plans for the future [and] how to turn those plans into reality.”
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