Advisor of the month: August 2026

Which National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) Core Value resonates with you the most in your position as an advisor and why?

Professionalism. What I was seeing in appointments, conferences, and our yearly employer panel regarding trends of students in the workplace prompted me to pitch the idea of embedding professional development content in our required classes. We have a major gap in the education we provide in terms of preparing students for the workforce – not related to job skills but related to their development as young professionals. Exposing students early in their academic career to the idea of professionalism conveys that the “find a job” process is then a logical progression of key pieces needed at appropriate times to build a much-needed (though not intuitive) skill set, rather than the mad scramble right before graduation. I develop, assign, and grade all assignments, combining the Career Center's newly-launched Toolkit resources with my own generated material. Students repeatedly get the message that we value their development as professionals and are genuinely appreciative of our commitment.

 What advice would you give to other professionals who want to make a difference in the lives of their students?

The main piece of advice I would give new advisors would be that the time and effort it takes to make your advising practice more personal is entirely worth it. We get so bogged down in the administrative pieces of our jobs that it’s ironically sometimes the student appointments that become the thing that interrupts our workflow. Resisting that feeling of trying to get back to the minutiae is key. The student and their experience with you should be the focus above all else.