Advising Philosophy & Portfolio Reflection

For my final project in Advising Student Groups, I was charged with creating a brand new student organization on campus to advise. In addition to discussing our personal advising philosophy and reflection of the project, we were asked to include a mission statement, charter, budget, schedule, and recruitment plan as well.

This was a great opportunity to merge leadership development theories, create an advising philosophy, and utilize several courses from the CSP program. I thought I would include some of my project here. (You can see the full assignment as well.)

Advising Philosophy For this student organization, my advising philosophy would be to actively engage with the officers and to passively engage with the other members. Since the executive team would have a large amount of responsibility, access to funds, working with contracts, and planning multiple large scale events, it will be very important to make sure that I am meeting with each person regularly and providing support and guidance. Since it is required for officers to attend weekly meetings with me, I can create a strong relationship with the student, better understand their level of development as a student and leader, and provide the type of support that will fit with that individual. I will not use this time to do the work for them; it will be used to determine if they have the knowledge and skills to successfully complete the tasks on their agenda and provide education or resources when necessary.

I believe it is appropriate to passively advise the active members not holding executive positions. Although this means waiting to be contacted for advice and spending little time with this group, I believe that it will allow the officers more opportunities to connect with the group and excel in their positions as leaders of authority.

My primary function, with all members, will be to serve as a support system and a resource. The methods already listed will give the students greater opportunities for growth. I will help the group be successful by preserving the dignity of the individual officers and members, empower decision making, encourage participation, and advocate for the group (Underwood, 2015). I want to be sure to utilize positive reinforcement, value diversity, and assist in decision making and use mistakes as learning opportunities. I believe that advisors should utilize active listening skills and open-ended questions to encourage communication and build trust and redirect questions or comments to other members of the group in order to keep the focus on student-driven functioning.

As an advocate for the group and its members, I will provided and/or guide various type of training and make sure the board has resources such as time, funds, facilities, and active participation from the entire Greek community. For members who are ineffective, I will either provide support to officers to help alleviate the issue (e.g., quiet or shy members, procrastinators or members who do not fulfill their responsibilities and duties, or aggressively dominant members) or step in when necessary.

Reflection of Final Project Creating an organization in this final project was entertaining for me. During my undergraduate experience, I served as an executive member of the College Panhellenic Council for three years and as my sorority’s delegate or Vice President of Panhellenic Affairs for a semester after the position opened in the middle of the year. I have quite a bit of experience with revamping the constitution, including creating new positions and their respective responsibilities and duties, and with developing budgets.

I have never created a Greek Programming Board; therefore, I researched several universities’ structures, positions, and responsibilities in order to create a student group that made sense for the type of organization I think would be effective. This included the University of North Texas, University of South Carolina, Arkansas Tech University, and Texas State University. When developing a mission statement, I looked to Assessment and Evaluation to ensure that it was appropriate for this organization. My Administration course materials were helpful when developing a connection between the role of an advisor of a student group and the role of facilitators or managers in terms of supporting their employees or committee groups. I also referred to some of the topics included in the textbook for this course when identifying some of the key elements of the advising philosophy: active and passive, determining the needs of the students and culture, and acting as a form of accountability in relation to legal issues.

In my experience, the best way to develop a successful organization or proposal is to utilize the resources that are available to you and educate yourself in areas with which you are unfamiliar. I believe that this practice will help me be effective as an advisor, to continue developing my skills and knowledge, and to grow into being a great advisor for student groups.

#PersonalEthicalFoundations #StudentLearningDevelopment #AssessmentEvaluationResearch #AdvisingSupporting