An Overview of The President’s Task Force on Advising

By Isabelle Guthrie | Published November 9, 2023

On Oct. 16, the President’s Task Force heard the students’ frustrations on advising and presented their recommendations to potentially solve their issues.

Students have had issues with advisement for quite a while. Some problems include scheduling with an advisor, the information they provide, or even the advisor they get.

Many students feel they can advise themselves and ensure they graduate in the year they expect. Juliet Bauer, a global business major and senior at Kean, stated her feelings on advisement and advisors.

“I feel that advising has helped me in the past but has led me in the wrong direction in some cases. I had one advisor that I found helpful, but when my advisor switched, I found them to be much less helpful and knowledgeable on what classes I should take,” Bauer said.

Bauer also stated her experiences with advising, and they weren’t good.

“I’ve had a few bad experiences with advisement. For example, I took ASL that was not a language compatible with the global business language requirement, and my advisor did not tell me that,” Bauer stated. “I’ve had other issues where I was not told the scheduling of major capstones and had to join the class late because my advisor did not inform me.”

Another student, Christopher Nudo, a business management major and senior at Kean, believes that advising at Kean is helpful for quick questions about registration, graduation, etc.

Nudo has found his questions being bounced around from department to department if they were more advanced. Nudo also explains his experience with advisement and the issues he’s had.

“The one issue I did have with advisement during my time at Kean was a registration issue that was not clearly communicated between the business department and the online registration website,” Nudo said. “My advisor was used as the middleman, relaying information back and forth. In the end, everything turned out well, and it was a positive experience.”

From these complaints, President Lamont O. Repollet Ed.D. and members of the Task Force knew that they had to do something to fix and improve this problem.

The co-chair, Dr. Joseph Youngblood, the Senior Vice President of Transformational Learning and External Affairs, stated in the beginning a technology tool they could use to improve the advisement process.

“Midway through this process, one of the content areasstarted to understand that maybe there is a learning technology tool that we could benefit from now,” Youngblood stated. “We found ourselves forced to make a qualitative decision around the benefits of implementing that tool, which is Navigate.” 

Kean had initially thought that they wouldn’t be at the phase where they were adopting a new advising technology tool, that maybe that would happen two years after the fact.

“We saw the impact it could have on our students. Ultimately, phase 1 of the piloting ofNavigate is already underway,” Youngblood stated. 

The President’s Task Force made it clear that they wanted this to be a student-centered environment that they had students to aid in their research on two different aspects.

One of the students, GlynnisTan, a global business major and senior and this year’s class President for the SGA, explained her duties on the task force and how she was part of an app recently introduced to help students and advisors with the process.

“I was on the technical side of the Task Force; I was part of the Navigate App Technology Task Force. The Navigate Tech Teams consist of students, faculty, and staff. We commenced since June every week and spoke together in making decisions and configurations with the platform,” Tan stated.

The Navigate App was introduced this fall for the College of Business and Public Management majors and students in the CPPM supporting courses, for example, Psychology majors taking Criminal Justice courses and so forth.

Tan also introduced another app with Navigate, Navigate Leverage, and explained how both systems worked to aid the students.

“The Navigate App is a student success management system designed to support student success by helping manage the network ofcoordinated care and connecting students to support services across the Kean community,” Tan stated. “Navigate Leverage is appointment scheduling and reporting, appointments and messaging campaigns along with academic alerts.”

The second student of the Task Force is Megan Engels, a 2023 graduate who majored in honors history education and is now an Academic Specialist at the Educational Opportunity Foundation. Engels also contributed and focused on the clicks it took to get to advising from Keanwise.

Engels found that there are so many clicks for students to get from one place to another, making it inconvenient. They are trying to get Navigate, so it’s a one-stop shop to make it easier.

Engels was already researching when Kean contacted her to help, and Tan was asked if she was interested in helping. Most importantly, Kean wanted an undergraduate’s viewpoint. 

An interesting statement from Dr. Mensah Peterson, Associate Vice President for Student Success and Retention, is that resources are limited for advisors and to hire even more.

“When you are thinking about how you are going to implement this plan with limited resources, we know that we don’t have an infinite amount of resources to hire 30 or 40 advisors, right now, we don’t, one of my recommendations is going to help you get there,” Peterson stated.

It’s unfortunate because these complaints haven’t been recent, and they should have had resources in the very beginning or some sort of training program for these advisors before rather than coming up with ideas now. 

Peterson states his recommendation in that case is group advising.

“So how do you do that when you may have resource constraints? Think about your high-flying students who are your first-year students who have all of those indicators that tell you they’re are going to be fine,” Peterson states. “Group advising may be a case management tool you use to help your human resource go farther.”

Faculty members attending the presentation were attentive to all of the recommendations provided. They were welcome to participate ina Q and A offered at the end of the presentation for any concerns.

It is still an ongoing process. This report itself took about 2 years to put together. The overall report with recommendations is available on Kean University’s website, along with a QR code where students can leave feedback.

Many recommendations were provided, and students are heavily encouraged to speak out and say what they feel to see if this can be implemented.

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