This book focuses on the unique needs of college students who are undecided regarding a field of study and/or career path, and the various approaches that advisors and counselors may take. The text draws on extensive research, both recent and historical, and explores what is most effective in successful universities today. The text explores the many and varied reasons that lead college students to be undecided, and the different solutions that will assist the student in coping with their circumstances and reaching a successful resolution. This updated version includes many ways in which the Internet serves as a useful tool for assisting gathering resources for the undecided college student. Advisors, counselors, and faculty will all glean useful theoretical and practical information from this text that can be applied in individual counseling, group settings, and workshops.

This book focuses on the unique needs of college students who are undecided regarding a field of study and/or career path, and the various approaches that advisors and counselors may take. The text draws on extensive research, both recent and historical, and explores what is most effective in successful universities today. The text explores the many and varied reasons that lead college students to be undecided, and the different solutions that will assist the student in coping with their circumstances and reaching a successful resolution. This updated version includes many ways in which the In.

One of the challenges in higher education is helping students to achieve academic success while ensuring their personal and vocational needs are fulfilled. In this updated edition more than thirty experts offer their knowledge in what has become the most comprehensive, classic reference on academic advising. They explore the critical aspects of academic advising and provide insights for full-time advisors, counselors, and those who oversee student advising or have daily contact with advisors and students. New chapters on advising administration and collaboration with other campus services A new section on perspectives on advising including those of CEOs, CAOs (chief academic officers), and CSAOs (chief student affairs officers) More emphasis on two-year colleges and the importance of research to the future of academic advising New case studies demonstrate how advising practices have been put to use.

In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year—nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of “guided pathways”—clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students’ choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America’s Community Colleges offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.

Strong academic advising has been found to be a key contributor to student persistence (Center for Public Education, 2012), and many are expected to play an advising role, including academic, career, and faculty advisors; counselors; tutors; and student affairs staff. Yet there is little training on how to do so. Various advising strategies exist, each of which has its own proponents. To serve increasingly complex higher education institutions around the world and their diverse student cohorts, academic advisors must understand multiple advising approaches and adroitly adapt them to their own student populations. Academic Advising Approaches outlines a wide variety of proven advising practices and strategies that help students master the necessary skills to achieve their academic and career goals. This book embeds theoretical bases within practical explanations and examples advisors can use in answering fundamental questions such as: What will make me a more effective advisor? What can I do to enhance student success? What conversations do I need to initiate with my colleagues to improve my unit, campus, and profession? Linking theory with practice, Academic Advising Approaches provides an accessible reference useful to all who serve in an advising role. Based upon accepted theories within the social sciences and humanities, the approaches covered include those incorporating developmental, learning-centered, appreciative, proactive, strengths-based, Socratic, and hermeneutic advising as well as those featuring advising as teaching, motivational interviewing, self-authorship, and advising as coaching. All advocate relationship-building as a means to encourage students to take charge of their own academic, personal, and professional progress. This book serves as the practice-based companion to Academic Advising: A Comprehensive Handbook, also from NACADA. Whereas the handbook addresses the concepts advisors and advising administrators need to know in order to build a success advising program, Academic Advising Approaches explains the delivery strategies successful advisors can use to help students make the most of their college experience.

A guide to discovering personal goals and interests explains how to apply that information toward obtaining satisfying employment

In a world of unprecedented opportunity—and pressure—women are struggling more than ever to make career decisions and move forward without second-guessing themselves. Young women graduate from college and believe they have to find the perfect path and then can’t decide which way to go. Undecided is an invaluable guide to this cultural phenomenon of "analysis paralysis.” Looking at both what the media and academic studies have reported on women, careers, and particularly the undecided phenomenon—as well as personal accounts from numerous women—mother and daughter Barbara and Shannon Kelley discuss how we got to this frustrating place, why it affects women in particular, and how today’s culture fuels our fears and distractions. The Kelleys cast a critical eye upon the psychology behind the pressure to choose, and they argue that if women are going to succeed in rising above the often-crippling demands of the modern world they need to take action . . . starting with a serious shift in perspective.