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Copyright © Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Thu 5/1/2003 3:26 AM
Random Thought: Purposeful Advising
Well, advising has been on my mind lately. As Co-Chair of the
University Strategic Planning Committee on Student Learning and Retention,
all week I've been responding to a report by a University Committee on
Academic Advising. I've been sharing my ideas and recommendations about
advising with the members of both committees, our Strategic Planning
Officer, President, and Vice-President of Academic Affairs. When I
thought I was finished with the topic, I received a letter under my office
door and an e-mail message on my computer. The first was a heart-tearing
self-evaluation from a student. It read like a biography of Humpty Dumpty
lying at the base of the wall. I wish I could share it. It is a
unsettling synopsis of the daily pressured adjustments and confrontations
students are having with who they were, who they are, and who they will
be. I'll just say without betraying a confidence it shows how students
are being pulled in a thousand family and personal and academic
directions, struggling to live up to everyone else's expectations, finding
themselves in a bubbling cauldron of testing, being tested, questioning,
being questioned, doubting, being doubted, discovering, challenging and
being challenged, pressuring and being pressured, be discovered,
examining, being examined; how they find that college life isn't a pretty
brochure or a glitzy tour; how they get bitten on their butts by growling
reality; and, how they have freedom and responsibility and independence
thrust upon them with little understanding of how to handle them or their
subsequent obligations and consequent consequences. This distracted
silent lamb desperately was asking both if I could be one of the king's
men and help her be her own king's man. Then, there was a message from a
faculty member at a southwestern university. I had been in an exchange
about faculty workloads. (Don't get me started on that one.) Anyway, he
asked me if I thought advising is so important that faculty should "have
to take on the onus of this extra job and take time away from more
important responsibilities." Probably a question more of our colleagues
on our campuses ask then we care to admit. He went on to ask in a tone of
"I shouldn't have to and don't really want to do this" just "what is the
purpose of advising? Can't the students schedule their own
classes themselves? After all, they're adults."
His was not a rhetorical question; nor was he the lone faculty
voice in the dark. Why is it that so many faculty so depreciate the value
of advising and reduce it to a meatless and spiritless skeleton of mere
scheduling and so limit it to one week a term? I suppose if you believe
you're in the information transmission business it would be a valid
position. I suppose if you believe your major responsibility was to
research and publish it would be an acceptable position. And, if you
convinced yourself that these kids are worldly adults, or the
non-traditional adult students are stalwart persons, it would be
understandable. And yet, why is it that Richard Light at Harvard said in
the fifth chapter of his book, "Making The Most Of College, Students Speak
Their Minds," that good advising may be the single most underestimated
endeavor to help insure a successful college experience, that "we care"
advising plays an important role not only in student retention but also in
student collegiate success, that purposeful advising positively influences
individual growth, development, and that purposeful advising generates
overall satisfaction with the faculty and the institution? Advising,
then, "purposeful advising," if we listen to Richard Light, should not be
a box-checking job you reluctantly or perfunctorily perform or a
burdensome assignment you have to bear, but a calling you hear and follow.
Notice Richard Light used the term "purposeful advising" and this
inquiring professor asked about the purpose of advising. Purpose. Why.
Asking for the purpose of advising is a good question. Asking for a
purpose of anything we do is a good question, that is, providing our
answer isn't the traditional bunch of bland, vague, meaningless, empty,
impersonal, punchless catch phrases taken from the "It Sounds Good" book
that we find strung together in mission statements. No, a purpose has to
be personal; it has to have heart; and, it has to zip if it is to have any
purpose. A purpose is an empowering force. It is a tether. It anchors
you against being thrown about by the forces of the random winds and the
haphazard circumstances that buffet our campuses. It steadies and focuses
and resolves. It steadies when we want to vacillate. It calms when we
want to be impulsive. It strengthens us in the face of timidity,
insecurity, and fear. It offers determination to persevere through the
distractions and dissuasions. A purpose is both an empowering "being" and
"doing." It's there in every moment of each of our decisions. It forces
us to put first things first, to head due north following our moral
compass, to maintain our authenticity and integrity. It gives that moment
to moment meaning we all need in what we do and who we are. Our purpose
is the most important thing we can have. Like the earth's deep inner core,
it's a deep inner sustaining fuel.
My answer to this professor was short and simple:
"My purpose is to serve."
I offered him my even simplier specific two-word purpose statement
though that especially was a long time in developing:
"cultivating people."
The full sentence of my purpose reads:
"I exist to serve by cultivating people."
For me that defines, "purposeful advising," as well as "purposeful
teaching," and "purposeful administering," not to mention a "purposeful
institution."
I have become a servant teacher, a servant adviser, a servant
educator living in the service of each student hoping that my university
someday will become a true servant institution of higher education existing
in the serve of each student. If my President has his way, it will.
Understand that my purpose statement is not just a "to do" on the
list of things to be done. It's not to be filed away and brought out and
waved about at those times we consider salary increase, promotion, or
tenure. I assure you, as illustrated by my good friend and colleague, Pat
Burns, head of the University's first year experience program, when you
have that purpose, you don't need a line on your resume; you don't need to
be important; you don't need to be famous. It is enough to know you're
doing important things and that you're making a difference.
For me, my purpose statement has become a powerful determinant.
In my capacity as an adviser, which to me is an every day responsibility
and activity, I exist to serve by helping a student become aware of his or
her full potential, and I don't mean just academic potential. It links my
purpose of advising with my purpose of teaching, that is, to be that
person who is there to help a student help him/herself become the person
he or she is capable of becoming. It also links up with the purpose of
any educational institution, that is, to build up people. Cultivate
people as an adviser and/or as a teacher and/or as an administrator and/or
as a staff person and you will create the future.
Without that sense of purpose how can we have a vision? Where do
we get the power to see beyond what's in front of us today, to imagine, to
invent, to create, to have a dream snapshot, to hold on to an inspiring
hope. to become what is yet to be, to have a view into the future rather
than live in memories? And, without that sense of purpose how can we have
a mission, that is, doing today what we need to do today to fulfill and
express our purpose and get us closer to our vision? Only when our
purpose, vision, and mission are aligned, are we right on our purpose's
head and exist to serve to cultivate people.
And so, in answer to this professor and with that student in mind,
at our institutions the true advisers, the "purposeful advisers,"
whomever they be, officially or unofficially, are more than mere
schedulers. They should not be little more than ignored or tolerated
"second sons." They are critical. They are "purposeful" people. They
are wisdom developers. They are people with a for-profit brain to help
each student learn how to make a living and a not-for-profit soul to help
each student learn how to live. We need to help students acquire wisdom,
not just create a class schedule or decide on a major. Class schedules
and majors will not offer any student the art of living or working
skillfully in whatever situation he or she finds him/herself. Wisdom
will.
So I ask. What is your two word purpose statement for whatever
you do--for your advising, for your teaching, and/or for your
administering, for whatever you do at your school?
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