Veterinary Professions Advising Center: An innovative approach to pre-veterinary advising for Animal Science students

Veterinary Professions Advising Center (VetPAC) is a unique undergraduate advising center that combines Career Center services with pre-professional advising for pre-veterinary students at North Carolina State University (NCSU). During the past 10 years, VetPAC has created five distinct internships, three annual study abroad courses, a competitive annual high school summer camp, provided holistic advising, and hosted large-scale advising events that consistently provide resources to more than 800 students annually. The VetPAC provided outreach to an average of 13 local high schools per academic year, and educated over 300 visiting students about VetPAC and pre-veterinary life at NCSU since 2015. NCSU College of Veterinary Medicine has had a minimum of 26% and a maximum of 45% DVM students in the incoming classes who accessed VetPAC resources and advising. This article presents the impact VetPAC has had on pre-veterinary student success at NCSU, and provides an outline of VetPAC’s first 10 years of development as a model of combined career services and pre-professional advising for peer institutions.

Impact of Technology-Mediated Communication on Student Evaluations of Advising

The field of academic advising lags behind other similar fields in the use of technologically mediated communication modalities shown to improve academic outcomes. We investigated student satisfaction with undergraduate advising by examining the ways communication methods, such as social media, between student and advisor relate to student satisfaction. Results showed that although advisors rarely communicated with students via social media, text messaging, or instant messaging, the number of face-to-face advising meetings was positively predicted by advisor use of instant messaging and text messaging and negatively predicted by their use of Facebook. Furthermore, e-mail communication positively predicted a student's positive view of the advising experience, but communicating through Twitter predicted negative views of advising.

Improved Advising Ratings in an Undergraduate Psychology Program

During the late 1990s, the psychology department of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis made investments in its undergraduate advising program in terms of additional professional personnel, a new orientation course, an experimental intrusive advising track, innovative peer activities, and expanded physical facilities. Against this backdrop of innovations, from 1995 to 2001 an exit survey of graduating seniors ( N= 311) showed improved evaluations of departmental counseling services. Ratings of the obtainability of advising on courses and the quality of course and career advising all showed significant upward shifts over the seven years of study. Regarding a specific innovation, students who completed a 1-hr. orientation course gave higher mean counseling ratings than those not enrolled.

Mission Impossible? Advising and Institutional Culture

The structure of undergraduate advising at private institutions that offer degrees beyond the baccalaureate level is considered. Shared advising models are found to be suitable for highly selective, extensive doctoral institutions with sizeable full-time undergraduate populations and relatively basic programmatic structures. Similar but more pro-grammatically complex institutions with larger full-time undergraduate populations might benefit more from the decentralized satellite model. Smaller, less selective, more residential, liberal arts institutions may find the decentralized faculty-only model most appropriate.

Faculty Advisors and Advising Programs in Agricultural Economics Departments in the Northeast

This paper summarizes selected findings of a study of faculty advisors and advising programs in departments of agricultural and resource economics. Undergraduate advising program characteristics in the Northeast are contrasted with those in other regions. Interdepartmental advising loads, advising budgets and allocation of advising resources are measured. Differences were found in advisor selection, training, support, coordination, rewards and evaluations. Advising programs were generally strong in advisor accessability and weak in career follow-ups. Advising faculty members in the Northeast generally earned lower salaries and taught more terms during the year than nonadvising faculty members. Continued program documentation, support and rewards are recommended.