ACA Advising Expo

During the week of September 27th - October 1st ACA held its annual event called "Advising Week 2010" that featured a host of events sponsored by departments, colleges, schools and programs across campus.  Although some of the events had to be cancelled due to the tragic gun situation, the cornerstone event of the week - Advising Expo - went off without a hitch.  Co-Coordinators Jeffrey Marsh and Kelly Strait pulled off an excellent event that gave students, staff and faculty an opportunity to learn about many of the advising and student services available on campus in a 'one-stop-shopping' format. I'm sure each of you has a story about how a stop at an advising or student services table changed the academic path for a student, and isn't that exactly what it's all about.

For more details on the event, please visit the UT ACA Events Blog.

Event Co-Chairs Jeffrey Marsh & Kelly Strait.

Welcome Address from our ACA President Andi Poag

Building Relationships

Good Morning,

I hope everyone survived another summer of orientation and another beginning of the semester.

Welcome to our first meeting this year.  This afternoon, President Powers will give his State of the University address so I felt that it would fitting for me to do a State of ACA address.

First off, I would like to thank Patty for her leadership last year.  I would also like to thank each of you for your service to ACA by being on committees or volunteering.  As an organization we grew in membership as well as visibility on campus.  We also had individuals and programs recognized on the national level for their excellence.  Congratulations to our organization and its individuals for their success.

Now we move forward to this year.  This year’s ACA theme is Building Relationships.

HOW ARE WE GOING TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS?

Last year, ACA was represented on 3 campus-wide committees.  As of today, we are represented on 7 but this number continues to grow.   This is a perfect example of ACA building relationships on campus.

The current campus-wide committee’s include:

·         Provost’s Council on Academic Advising

·         Educational Policy

·         Student Dean’s

·         Revision of Student Records

·         Council on Academic Support Programs

AND

·         Joint Application Development (both Policy & Operational). Both of these groups are helping with the redesign of the degree audit system.

Various members of the Executive Committee are attending these meetings so we can cover them all.  As these committees get more organized and their missions more developed, we will forward more information to you. 

The goal has changed from just getting a seat at the table to actually have a voice that is heard and requested.  Twice this summer, the ACA Advisory Council met with Provost Leslie and Vice Provost Ritter to review our response to the Second Task Force on Enrollment Strategies.  These were very successful meetings with lots of positive and honest communication.

Another way to help build relationships within our membership is to continue to increase the usefulness of the ACA website.  We would like to build on the redesign to create a tool that is helpful for all advisors.  Brad and Alexia are going to take the lead in this area so if you have ideas as to how the website can be more helpful in connecting advising information, please let them know.

We need to continue to organize, promote and execute successful events.  This is where you all can help by volunteering to be on a committee. These events help us to build relationships with students during the Advising Expo, APSA in their partnership of Professional Development Day, with the administration by serving on campus-wide committees and with each other by working as a team of professionals.  Lovelys is going to speak in a minute about the possibility of reaching out to Higher Education graduate students as well.

I know we have introduced this years’ Executive Committee but I would like to mention them once more. 

President-Elect: Theresa

VP / Program Chairs: Megan and Courtney

Treasurer: Sarah

Secretary: Andrea

Historians: Lovelys and Yesenia

Communication Coordinators: Brad and Alexia

Lastly, this is your organization, please don’t hesitate to let us know of any ideas you might have for meeting topics and sponsors. With everyone’s help we can continue to make our organization one that makes a difference on this campus.

I am excited to get this year underway because I know it is going to a great one!

Andrea “Andi” Poag

ACA President 2010-11