Around 27 percent of colleges and universities said their advisers have a caseload of between one and 50 students each; the next-largest sum was advisers who had a caseload of between 251 and 500 students. The national median number of advisees for a full-time adviser, as of 2011, was 296, according to NACADA data.

Among respondents, 98.2 percent say first-year students are required to engage in first-year advising, and 38 percent say students are required to meet once each semester.

common-reading programs can create space for critical scholarship, narrative voice and instilling a sense of belonging in learners, institutions have not seen a return on investment in their resources.

conducted between May 2023 and September 2023 and captured data from staff and administrators at 334 institutions, representing all 50 states and Puerto Rico. One in five institutions were minority-serving institutions (ANNH, AANAPISI, HBCU, HSI, PBI). The largest number of institutions were four-year public institutions (40 percent), followed by private four-year institutions (37 percent) and public two-year institutions (21 percent), and fewer than 1 percent were for-profit institutions.

Around 77 percent of institutions offer some type of first-year seminar, a five-percentage-point increase from 2017 data. However, this number has shrunk since 2009 (87.5 percent) and 2012 (89.7 percent).

From Conventional PracticeTo Program Onboarding Academic and career exploration assistance is mainly limited to information on websites and self-directed search. Every student is asked about their interests, strengths, and aspirations and is guided to programs and people at the college with similar interests.

Ask phase, every student is asked about their interests, strengths, and aspirations by advisors or admissions counselors.

Ask-Connect-Inspire-Plan framework will benefit students generally, but it is likely to be especially beneficial to students who have not been served well by the education system in the past and may not have had guidance and support to explore their interest and develop a plan from family and peers. Thus, rethinking the new student experience using the program onboarding model is important not only to increase student persistence, but also to ensure more equitable outcomes.

The plan should show students what courses they need to take and in what timeframe to complete a program aligned with their goals for employment and further education.

In our program onboarding model and as a follow-up to the “ask” stage of the process, students are introduced to faculty, students, and others with whom they share interests. At the same time, faculty and program area personnel actively reach out to students beginning in orientation through activities designed to help expand students’ understanding of academic and career opportunities in their fields (including liberal arts and sciences) and to recruit students who share interests.

conversations with advisors and faculty about what programs would enable them to pursue their interests and goals. Typically, students are encouraged to consult the college website, take a career assessment, and generally find their own way into a major

We conceive of “onboarding” as a process that may take students’ entire first year: It starts before a student even enrolls and extends until they have chosen a program direction, passed program foundation courses, and created an educational plan. The goal is to help students choose a program of study; connect with a community of faculty, students, and others with similar interests; take a course that “lights their fire” for learning; and build a full-program educational plan that shows the courses and timeline for completion.

a tradition of telling African stories in the West: A tradition of Sub-Saharan Africa as a place of negatives, of difference, of darkness, of people who, in the words of the wonderful poet Rudyard Kipling, are "half devil, half child."

I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria