Professional Orientation

Academic advisors must regularly seek to educate themselves on literature, theories and trends related to college students’ personal and academic development. Keeping up to date on how to better advise ever-evolving student groups  is vital in providing relevant and impactful advising for your students.

Additionally, it’s important to be self-reflective. To understand and support others, one must understand and accept oneself. Using theory to understand students and their stages along theoretical vectors or stages of development is enhanced when you have thought about that theory in relation to your own thoughts and development. Student affairs professionals must be lifelong learners, not just for their students, but for themselves. Introspection will help you to understand and humanize a theoretical lens and see the nuances that may exist for yourself and others.  Keep this in mind throughout your research and practice.

Another orientation to keep in mind when working with students is the Student Personnel Point of View. This reminds us that a student’s academic and professional development does not happen in a vacuum, and advisors should be cognizant of the ways personal development is inextricably linked to other forms of development for students. It is therefore important that we seek to guide the “whole student” to reach their potential (Patton and al. 2016, p 10)