Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence

This content was published: January 31, 2025. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.

Academic Advisors: What They Do and How It Supports Your Students Academically

Posted by

Presenters: Bonni Goldberg and Cherise Frehner.

Summary

In this presentation, Bonni Goldberg and Cherise Frehner provide an inside look at academic advising at PCC and explain how advisors support students throughout their college experience. The session introduces PCC’s pathway-based advising model and shows how advisors help students connect their academic choices with their interests, strengths, career goals, and personal circumstances.

Academic advisors work with students to create term-by-term academic plans, evaluate progress toward educational goals, connect with college resources, navigate financial aid requirements, and develop strategies for academic success. Because students often work with the same advisor over time, advising can also provide an important sense of continuity and belonging. This ongoing relationship gives students a consistent person to contact when they are unsure where to go for help.

The presenters also discuss how advising can support students when challenges affect their classroom experience. Students may speak with advisors about academic performance, course structure, communication with instructors, personal barriers, or concerns about their ability to succeed. Advisors can help students practice asking questions, draft emails to instructors, review possible next steps, connect with support resources, and build confidence in advocating for themselves.

A major theme of the session is collaboration between faculty and advisors. Faculty bring expertise in their disciplines and classroom expectations, while advisors help students understand academic planning, college systems, and how individual courses fit into larger educational goals. Stronger communication between these groups can help students make informed decisions, address problems earlier, and feel more supported as they work toward their goals.

Slides: Academic Advisors: What they do and how it supports students academically

Presentation Outcomes

  • Describe PCC’s current pathway-based academic advising model and how students are connected with advisors.
  • Identify the ways academic advisors support students with educational goals, academic planning, resource referrals, financial aid requirements, and academic progress.
  • Explain how ongoing advisor relationships can support student belonging, trust, and continuity throughout a student’s time at PCC.
  • Recognize how advisors can support students who are experiencing academic, personal, or classroom-related challenges while connecting them with appropriate resources.
  • Identify strategies advisors use to strengthen student self-efficacy, including practicing conversations with instructors, drafting emails, and helping students evaluate their options.
  • Recognize asset-based approaches that help students move away from deficit thinking and identify the strengths they bring to their education.
  • Develop ideas for stronger faculty-advisor collaboration that can improve communication, academic planning, and student success.

Post generated by CTLE Web Designer Gem on 08/16/2026