Research suggests that academic advising has great significance for students' personal, academic, and social lives in the U.S., and advisors impact first-year students' social integrations and retention. Although the ratio of advisor to student remains low, scholars assert that if advising programs succeed, they increase the number of graduates. For these reasons, researchers emphasize positive influence of academic advising on students' persistence, skill acquisition, development, aspirations, and satisfaction with both academic and career decisions.As a result, it is a general wisdom within the U.S. that universities must offer academic programs, services, and academic advisor assistance that will enforce student success, retention, and completion. However, previous research has not been abundantly concentrated on exploring how academic advisors and supervisors acknowledge their roles with regard to their knowledge, competencies and qualifications; skills and abilities; the importance of the contribution they may make in student transition into higher education.In Azerbaijan the education system is centralized, and the higher education system remains essentially not much changed since its inception. Four-year institutions do not provide undergraduate students, including freshmen, with academic advising. Students oftentimes struggle during the first year because of missing academic support. Students are not ready for the space and community; they do not know where to go to get support or help of any kind. Instruction alone does not help students grow in the ways that will help them to be successful. Through the dissertation, I argue that academic advising is a missing social structure that needs to be established in higher education institutions in Azerbaijan.Using constructivist and interpretivist frameworks, I have conducted a qualitative exploratory and descriptive interview-based study to understand the organization and delivery of academic advising in a four-year public institution in the U.S..I found there were not any fixed or long-established ways to advise first-year students, except Academic Orientation Programs and First-year seminars. This research happened to occur right in the middle of a year of significant change in advising at DSU. A few years ago, the organizational change happened in the College of IT, Technology, and Machinery. Loosely coordinated and decentralized advising practice in the college transitioned and moved under the Undergraduate Studies Office. There was a big shift in the structure to make academic advising delivery somewhat consistent and centrally coordinated and overseen at DSU.The academic specialists' evaluation and assessment of advising delivery were not completely centralized and unified across DSU's campus. There were not fixed or established benchmarks either. The evaluation forms and templates differed from college to college, even departments. Recently, a new rewarding component was incorporated into the assessment process. The leadership tended to conduct centralized student surveys and analyze the data for the future to be used as the base for changes by a task-force. The departments individually launched student surveys to measure student satisfaction on academic advisors' performance. Professional development activities, academic advising training programs, and delivery of advising were aligned with NACADA core competency areas. In addition, recently launched a brand-new Advisor Portal was not used by all academic advisors as it was supposed to be.Based on these data, I have also developed an advising model to be embedded in higher education institutions in Azerbaijan. I am certain that academic advising will help undergraduates, particularly freshmen, gain clarity of expectations and get ready to achieve academic, personal, and career goals.
Read
