What is the Faculty Advising Framework?

The Faculty Advising Framework is an organized array of advising core competencies and best practices synthesized from existing guidelines from The National Academic Advising Association (NACADA), University of California, Berkeley (UCB), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-M) and academic literature on advising undergraduate students. The framework includes knowledge, roles, and skills which have been deemed necessary for effective advising. Our literature search to date efforts indicate that the lack of focus on faculty advising seems to be stark in comparison to abundant theoretical, conceptual and empirical body work on academic advising in general. Therefore, while our framework draws heavily on academic advising, we have attempted to ensure that the competencies and skills most relevant to faculty advisors remain in focus.

Navigating the Faculty Advising Framework

The Faculty Advising Framework is first divided into Advisor and Advisee, similar to the division of Mentor and Mentee within the Undergraduate Research Mentor Framework. Also like the Undergraduate Research Mentor Framework, the Advisor and Advisee sections are then further divided into increasingly more specific practices which can strengthen the advisor and advisee relationship.

Both the Advisor and Advisee sections are further divided into the same five Competencies, which describe broad areas in which specific knowledge, roles, and skills are needed to be an effective advisor or prepared advisee. Within each Competencies heading, the framework divides these broad areas into more specific Skills, which have some but not complete overlap between the Advisor and Advisee parts of the framework.

Each of the Skills headings represent a multitude of Concepts, Knowledge, and Practices. Within this section, the framework lists more specific ideas, erudition, and applications for each of the Skills. The right-most section of the Faculty Advising Framework are specific examples of best practices directly linked to primary literature, case studies, and higher education advising resources. However, not every category has a listed Examples of Advisor/Advisee Success, since this framework is still in progress. References to primary literature and academic literature on advising undergraduate students are referenced to indicate overlaps in content from more than one source. Additionally, extra resources in advising have been collected in order to provide case study examples. These resources can be accessed at: https://goo.gl/UtRu2o.

Guide to the Mentoring, Advising, and Pedagogy Frameworks (PDF)

Faculty Advising Framework (PDF)