Guest Editor's Introduction
Dean Baldwin
LET'S FACE IT: ADVISING IS THE STEPCHILD OF ACADEMIA. It is the only part of a faculty member's job description for which he or she has little or no training. In all instances I know of, it is assumed that, after a quick review of the college's and the department's requirements, any faculty member can successfully advise undergraduates. After all, if tricky questions arise about what course to take or whether a certain course fulfills a particular requirement, there is always a more experienced advisor down the hall to clear up the mystery. Most of us are evaluated on our teaching. Nearly all of us are evaluated on our scholarship and research. But advising? Has anyone ever been denied tenure or promotion because of inadequate advising?
We can respond to this state of affairs in one of three main ways. The first is to do nothing and simply accept the status quo as a desirable state of affairs. The second is to turn academic advising over to "specialists" hired solely for that purpose. The third, and the one to which this issue of the CEA Critic is dedicated, is to reform our concept of advising so that it becomes not a trivial or annoying chore but an integral part of how and why we teach English to undergraduates.
In practice, the first two alternatives are more closely allied than many of us may realize. The inability or reluctance of faculty to do academic advising has already led to the creation of advising offices and specialists. Especially at mid-sized and larger state institutions, a great deal of academic advising, as well as career counseling, is performed by "professional" advisors in specially created advising centers. These advisors are rapidly turning what they do into an academic specialty of its own, complete with a professional association (the National Academic Advising Association or NACADA) and a burgeoning number of professional journals and conferences. For those not familiar with their activities, a visit to NACADA's Web site at <http:llwww.uvc.ohio-state.edu> or simply typing "academic advising in colleges" into a Web browser will reveal an astonishing body of literature on the subject.
Closely related to the professional advising center is the increased reliance on computers to guide students on everything from course selection to career paths. Computer-generated "degree audits" have been around for a decade or more, although if my experience is at all valid, one of their main benefits is to frighten students into seeking help from human advisors. Clearly, however, the technology exists to eliminate much of the routine work of advising: Degree requirements, general education requirements, and lists of courses offered are already on computer at many colleges, and computerized course registration is equally common-place. There are, of course, disadvantages to computerized systems, particularly when the system “crashes” or becomes so overloaded at peak periods that neither faculty nor students can log on. Nevertheless, it is difficult to argue with a computerized advising system that is available not just when faculty happen to be in their offices but twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. As science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke has said, any teaching that can be better done by computers should be done by computers, and that would seem to apply to many of the routine tasks of advising.
The drawbacks of relying on professional advisors and computers, however, are very real, particularly for the liberal arts. Professional advisors may be able to steer students through the labyrinths of degree requirements and provide useful advice on career choices, but they may have no commitment to liberal education and certainly no dedication to English. Their knowledge of a college or university is often second-hand, rather far removed from the classroom, the faculty, and, above all, the day-to-day interactions with students that faculty routinely enjoy. Faced with a student interested in a business career, for example, they are likely to offer the simplest advice--major in business. That English majors can and do enter the business world and succeed there is not of special interest to such advisors, nor have they any particular motivation for discovering what English majors have done in the past or what they may likely do in the future. Usually overworked themselves, they are likely to advise the path of least resistance when it comes to helping students choose a major, recommending courses, arranging career days, organizing internships, or advising about career opportunities. When it comes to advice about graduate school, these advisors can refer students to reference works and Web sites, but neither of these can provide the inside view of graduate work that a PhD or MFA faculty member can offer.
In my view, students are best served when career placement offices, computer programs, and staff advising are adjuncts to, not replacements for, well-informed faculty advising. Moreover, effective advising is in our own--and the profession's--best interests. It is no secret that fewer and fewer students are choosing the humanities, including English, as their undergraduate major. We all know about the disastrous declines in the hiring of PhDs in English and the corresponding rise in the use of part-time faculty, especially for freshman composition and "lower-level" English courses. And anyone who has worked to recruit English majors knows all too well that the prejudices against majoring in English are still rampant among parents and career-minded students. The illusion that the only career path for English majors is teaching remains firmly embedded in the popular mind.
Unless English faculty write the computer programs and appoint English majors to staff positions in the advising centers, these trends and perceptions are unlikely to change. Therefore, it is crucial for humanists in general and English faculty in particular to become effective advisors in every sense of the word. If we do not spread the message that a degree in English is excellent career preparation, if we do not learn what we need to know about graduate school preparation, if we do not form contacts with employers, sponsor career workshops and seminars, and advertise the successes of our graduates, no one will do these things for us. And my fear is that if we do not do these things, English as a major will continue to decline in enrollments until we in English become as marginalized as our colleagues in the classics.
"As the articles collected here testify, . . . good advising can make a significant difference in students’ academic careers at college and in their working careers afterward."
As the articles collected here testify, however, good advising can make a significant difference in students' academic careers at college and in their working careers afterward. Ned Scott Laff's article, "Seeking the Elusive/ Illusive English Major," contains ideas that radically redefine the role of the academic advisor. What he outlines by way of helping students use their general education, elective, and major courses to forge a course of study that meets their own educational and career objectives is something no computer or professional advisor can do. Showing students how we as academics integrate various branches of learning into our own research and teaching is an exciting approach for generating interest in interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary thinking about students' curricular choices. Furthermore, such an advising strategy is genuinely student-centered, helping each student to discover the ways the rich resources of the university can be used to further the student's vision of curriculum and career.
Closely related to Laff's approach is James Norton's "whole-language" model of advising. In his system, described in "Advising English Majors: A Whole-Language Approach," the student becomes more than a passive recipient of information on what courses to take. The student creates a portfolio of notes on all the courses taken during an academic career, notes that encourage the student to make connections among courses in various disciplines and to discover his or her academic and professional goals. Combining the ideas presented by Laff and Norton would make the student a full partner in advising.
"Selling the Truth: What English Majors Need to Hear"--by J. Rocky Colavito, Lisa Abney, and Suzanne Disheroon Green--looks at the advisor's responsibilities beyond course selection and examines the advisor's role (indeed, the department's role) in helping students find a career path once they have chosen to major in English. Acknowledging that only a small minority of our majors can reasonably aspire to an academic career, the authors offer a long list of ideas for helping students find a career and, more importantly, helping them achieve what they want. Obviously, no one advisor can undertake all the activities these authors suggest, but departments that coordinate their advising responsibilities and expertise and who make full use of the services provided by campus career centers can overcome the stereotype that English is not a practical degree that can lead to satisfying careers.
Similar to the approach of Colavito, Abney, and Green is the model described in Mark Smith's essay, "Advising English Majors: Myths, Truths, and Dirty Little Secrets." Smith rightly identifies English majors as their own worst enemies. Many advisors can help students who have a clear vision of themselves and at least a general idea of the careers they would like to follow; however, students who are clueless about their identities and prospects pose a particular challenge for advisors. Smith's presentation of statistical information on the careers open to English majors and his practical advice about using this information to motivate English majors to tackle their own futures with direction and motivation make a potent combination for advisors to use.
In "Beyond Academic Advising: The Stages of Student Anxiety and Advising Help for Undergraduate English Majors," Philip Egan provides yet another perspective on the advisor's role by suggesting concrete steps advisors can take to encourage students to think about their lives after college and to suggest paths students can take while in college to define and further their goals. A particularly valuable part of his article is the annotated bibliography of materials that advisors should have at their fingertips. The usually haphazard way in which advisors are trained (or perhaps not trained) makes it easy for us not to know that a considerable body of literature on advising English majors exists and can be extremely helpful.
Nina Tassi's essay "What Should I Tell My Mother?" uses Tassi's own career as the basis for advising creative writing majors about the pitfalls and possibilities of trying to make a living as a writer. Such personal testimony is valuable far beyond the anecdotal level because it puts a human face on what is all too often presented as an abstraction: that elusive thing called "a career." Offering ourselves as examples of success may seem arrogant on the one hand and misleading on the other, since careers like ours are in short supply. Newer faculty may be better in this respect than those of us who have been in the profession for years, since they have faced and successfully overcome the odds against success as writers, as academics, or as both. Tassi is right in suggesting that our experiences are relevant to students' aspirations and that we need not retreat from the challenge of presenting honestly the very real difficulties--and rewards--that face us.
Taken together, the articles in this issue make it clear that as advisors we can do much more than explain academic requirements and sign forms. In cooperation with our advisees, we can encourage curricular choices that give direction, coherence, and interest to a college experience that otherwise can seem fragmented and arbitrary to students. Beyond this, not only through individual advising but also by organizing seminars, workshops, and internships, we can help students discover the possibilities that an undergraduate degree in English opens up to them.
I am convinced that advising is increasingly important to our students and to the future of the undergraduate English major. For advising to be truly effective, however, it needs to be regarded more highly by institutions and the profession. Pre-med advisors have formed a professional organization that has functioned effectively for years, helping pre-med students negotiate the exhausting process of applying to medical schools. It may be time for advisors in English to form a similar association, not just to help with graduate school applications but also to assist in all the aspects of advising that the contributors to this issue have raised. Whether or not such an association is eventually formed, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the contributors to this issue who have so clearly shown us ways we can become more helpful and knowledgeable advisors to those under-graduates who look to us--sometimes almost desperately--for guidance.
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College