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Academic Advising Initiative Mission and Vision

University Academic Advising Initiative

Mission and Vision

Achieving MSU's strategic goals through robust, interventionistic, and holistic advising

MSU's advising community, colleges and various associated student success leadership groups have worked to elevate and situate advising as central to achieving MSU’s student success goals. The University Advising Initiative helped to create an academic advising experience at MSU that supports and empowers every student we admit until they graduate.

Intended outcomes:

  • appropriately structure and adequately resource MSU’s advising community across the university and within colleges to meet the diversity of our students’ needs.
  • help students develop their purposes and passions in alignment with MSU academic interest areas and career opportunities.
  • empower colleges to graduate the next generation of Spartans.
  • meet MSU’s strategic goal of an 86% graduation rate with no opportunity gaps by 2030.

The mission of University Advising Initiative:

  • meet MSU’s strategic goal of an 86% graduation rate with no opportunity gaps by 2030.
  • improve advisor-to-student ratios, more evenly distribute advisors when and where students need them and support the migration of students between colleges and majors.
  • introduce intrusive advising practices and academic coaching to increase all students' persistence and graduation rates.
  • support advisors by building a transparent, unified professional advancement structure and opportunities for professional advancement. 
  • administer some university-wide advising functions and support decentralized advising in colleges and departments.
  • recruit and provide professional development to advance advisors' abilities to support student success.
  • provide on-going advising assessment and accountability and ensure the institution is structured to support advisors.

The University Advising Initiative officially began its operational phase in July 2022, with a two-year implementation timeline. 

A comprehensive landscape study conducted by the Office of Undergraduate Education in 2021, which included findings from previous surveys and process mapping, uncovered challenges and needs that only a well-funded university-level initiative could address.

Among needs uncovered by the landscape survey: many advisors were under-resourced; some advisors could benefit from reduced caseloads; MSU’s decentralized advising structure works much better for students who declare a major early than for students with an exploratory preference; availability of professional development for academic advisors could improve.

Improvement to academic advising at MSU must respect cultural and organizational differences among colleges — heterogeneity of colleges is central to a university’s identity.

In order to make the process of crafting the structure and policies of the University Advising Initiative as inclusive, democratic, and efficacious as possible, each Working Group contained representatives from the colleges, including advisors and advising leadership.