The State of Advising - NACADA Executive Directors Panel

What does the future of academic advising look like as we approach NACADA’s 50th anniversary? In this special edition of Adventures in Advising, hosts Matt Markin and Ryan Scheckel take a stroll down memory lane with Dr. Charlie Nutt about NACADA and where the organization has led. Then, Matt and guest co-host Dr. Cheri Souza sit down with Dr. Melinda Anderson and Dr. Kyle Ross for a lively, thought-provoking panel. 

From tackling the enrollment cliff and advisor burnout to the promise (and pitfalls) of AI in higher ed, this conversation dives deep into the challenges shaping our field—and the innovations lighting the way forward. Whether you’re a seasoned advisor, an administrator, or just curious about the future of student success, you won’t want to miss this dynamic exchange of ideas, stories, and inspiration.

👉 Tune in and discover how advising isn’t just student support—it’s a driver of institutional transformation.

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Chapters

• 10:29 [Ad] Half Serious
• 11:19 (Cont.) The State of Advising - NACADA Executive Directors Panel

Transcript

Matt Markin  
Well, hello and welcome to this special edition episode of the Adventures and Advising podcast. This episode serves as the podcast version of the panel session that was done at the 2025 NACADA Annual Conference in Las Vegas, titled The State of Advising: An In-depth Discussion with Past and Present NACADA Executive Directors. This is Matt Markin and I am joined by returning guest of the pod, Dr. CheriSouza from the Stupski Foundation. Cheri, welcome back.

Cheri Souza  
Hi Matt. Thanks so much for having me. Super excited to be back and to be talking with Melinda and Kyle and possibly Charlie.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, absolutely, very excited for this, and we have fabulous guests, so we have Melinda and Kyle that we're going to bring on in a minute. But just to give listeners the abstract of this panel: As the NACADA organization draws closer to their 50 Year Anniversary in I think 2029 so just a few years from now, uncertainty in the academic advising field still looms. What lessons have higher education professionals from various institutions learned about themselves and their students. What new policies and practices are on the horizon? What does the future of advising hold for the advising profession, especially with declining enrollment trends and technological advancements? Where does NACADA fit into all of this? Do you, I don't have answers to any of this. 

Cheri Souza  
I hear what they say, and they have such great experiences spanning so many years. And so we really excited to kind of hear where we go, what's next for 2029 and 2030.

Matt Markin  
So let's bring on our guests, and let's find out these, maybe answers to these questions. So we have Dr. Melinda Anderson, a previous executive director of NACADA, and now at achieving the dream, and also Dr. Kyle Ross, the current NACADA executive director. So Kyle Melinda, welcome.

Melinda Anderson  
Thanks for having us.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, sure. And I are going to throw some probably very tough questions to you all, and we know you'll you'll have some answers hopefully for us, and maybe we'll start out easy and Kyle, we'll start with you, just to kind of give us a foundation, little bit of a history of NACADA and its impact. Can you give, kind of give us a quick retrospective of how Nakata has shaped advising globally, whether you want to throw in any its accomplishments, milestones, anything you want to say about it?

Kyle Ross  
Yeah, absolutely. And it's an exciting time recognizing that we're coming up on 50 years in 2029 for NACADA existence. So it was formally chartered in 1979 the first annual conference took place a little bit beforehand, though, in 1977 so we've got quite a bit to celebrate coming up in the next few years, with our 50th anniversary of the annual conference, and then the 50th anniversary of the establishment of NACA as an association, and it has come a humongous way as an association. And when we think about 50 years, most people think that's a long time, but when you compare yourself to other higher ed associations actually fairly young. Many of the higher ed associations that are kind of really big and broad out there in the universe right now, like NASPA, AACRAO that a lot of people know those acronyms, those are 100 plus years in the making. So looking at us going in 50 years, from a handful of people that wanted to see this organization get established to 14,000 members, where we're currently at, spread across 40 countries, is huge. And I think that that's due to just the sheer passion that people have for academic advising as a profession, for engaging in this community that we offer for people. And so that was a huge just turning point right there is 1979 advising has been around for hundreds of years in different way, shape and form over time, and that's well documented in the literature. But once it was established in 1979 that we have this dedicated Advising Association, the rapid evolution of academic advising as a profession has just skyrocketed since then, since the establishment of the Mikata journal as a peer reviewed source for research on academic advising, for establishing different things like the pillars of academic advising, where we have the concept, the core values, the core competencies, our conditions of excellence, the cast standards, and what will soon be an established formal definition and scope of practice for academic advising. I'm really excited for where advising is now and where it will be. And you know, those the things that people are now asking isn't about, is advising important to an institution? It's how can we maximize the potential that advising has in driving student success? And that's a. A great gear shift as well, and the questions that folks are asking us.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, and this is a panel with the both of you as past and current NACADA Executive Director. I think the other question to maybe ask before I turn it over to Cheri, is, what does an executive director do?

Melinda Anderson  
Kyle quickly muted himself, and then you were like, so what do you do? Kyle, what do you know?

Kyle Ross  
It's a great question. Um, so the Executive Office, um, runs the whole operation of the association, and you know, you need an executive office to manage the day to day operations that, while we rely on volunteers heavily, they have their own full time jobs, right? So they don't have the capability to plan a 3500 person conference day in and day out, while they're also advising 300 to 500 students, right? So you have an executive office to sustain the day to day operations, and the executive director is responsible for making sure all that is running as smoothly as possible, while also being externally facing, so engaging with other associations to make sure our brand is out there in the universe and as widespread as possible, to seek funding and different research collaborations, different opportunities for us to be present in other communities where we would normally not be. So you know, I've been traveling quite a lot over the past couple of years, and to different conferences in different places and spaces where people are just grateful that we're there and can talk to administrators and leaders around academic advising, and they may not always be as knowledgeable that as they'd like to be.

Matt Markin  
And I know I've seen a lot of your LinkedIn posts and the traveling have the conferences and presenting and just among just a little bit of those responsibilities that you have, among everything else. So I hope you're also having your wellness and taking care of yourself too.

Kyle Ross  
Yeah, this year has been interesting, for sure. But yes, I love the job, so that's really fulfilling, and I really I don't ever see myself looking back on the decision I made. It was the best decision I made, the easiest decision I made, and I'm incredibly happy. And it helps when you have wonderful people who went before you, paving the way for a very smooth road. So thank you, Melinda.

Cheri Souza  
We're so lucky to have you, Kyle, and would love to, you know, kind of transition and shift into the theme of institutional change and benchmarking. I'm excited we have so many decades of leadership, you know, amongst the two of you, and I'm sure you've collectively, really seen advising evolved through different eras and challenging challenges. And I'm hoping that you folks can share some innovative ideas and approaches that have stood out to you over the years. I'm curious you know, from your vantage point, what innovative advising practices have you seen emerge that you know are out there continuing to support equity, access, student success, and you know, the gamut of everything that advisors take care of?

Kyle Ross  
Yeah, absolutely. So I think the things that have really evolved in recent times is how to efficiently manage relationships with students, because you need that relationship that matters to the to the academic advising conversation. First and foremost, a student often has one to five points of connection to an institution, and advising is always a consistent connecting point, and sometimes we are the only connecting point where student feels like they they know someone at the institution who is caring about their success and their well being. But the realities that we're facing right now, with funding constraints, limitations around policies and the enrollment cliff have made it so that people have had to look at, well, we can't always have the luxury of every student having an advisor who's available for them within seconds, who can just who knows them in and out, and has hours of time available to meet with them. So they're now looking at, okay, well, how do we make that efficient but still preserve the relationship? And that's where we've seen some innovation coming along with using data, informed, advising practices to know who we need to be, reaching out to more, more intentionally, thoughtfully, differently. I mean, shoot, even note taking systems in the last 10 or 15 years have really allowed for people to actually remember their students are talking to without having to dig through hundreds of files in the cabinet in their office and trying to find that again. So that's all that efficiency making. And so I think that those are some of the innovations we've seen, I think there's some really cool opportunities for AI to complement advising, but not replace it. So as the soapbox I'll probably talk about a couple times is that I know that institutions are looking for making efficiencies with personnel, and while AI is a. Each tool and a great compliment, it cannot replace it. So when people start talking about AI advisors like that may not exist the way you think it can or will. Yeah, but Melinda, what else do you see?

Melinda Anderson  
I agree with you. Kyle, when I hear chat bots, I'm always like, tell me more about that. That sounds very interesting. You know, I do. I think about, for example, why we need NACADA, right? And I think that Kyle, you hit the nail on the head and a couple of areas. Because when we think about how we preserve the relationships, I automatically think about, what systems are we building or keeping in place in our respective campuses? Because when you mentioned the idea of the file cabinet, I think about my advisor in college, and they definitely had a file cabinet where they went to, where they brought out the vanilla folder...I'm look, I'm telling all myself. I started when I was 12. That's how old I am. And so when they opened up that file cabinet and they pulled out that vanilla folder with my name on it, right, like that was their organizational system. And when we think about case management approaches, and we think about what technologies that are in place that are helping advisors do their good work, it's not replacing the relationship. And so when we hear about AI, especially post pandemic, in terms of what's helping to support case management approaches, I always remind people that the tail should not be wagging the dog, right? How do you do your best work and what technologies support you? But I think about the shifting environments that we are finding ourselves in, we know that the value of education has not gone away, but we know that we need to be doing something differently, and so when I'm having conversations with campus leaders, or we're seeing the policy changes, right? I always tell people like, Don't get caught up in the news cycle. What does this mean? And how does this impact me, and what's going to happen to my campus? We always have to go back to being student centered. What do your students need right now? What do you need right now to be able to do your best work? And that's how we remain centered in terms of best practices. And so when I think about all the traveling you're doing and all the conferences you're having, those are the conversations that keep us centered in our work. What is it that you need right now in order to maintain our best practices? And so when I think about how advising has grown, the professionalization of advising, for those who have been and I'm going to tell my age again, right getting our master's degrees, and we're hearing about student development theory, Chickering FYI, and we're thinking about how students develop along this continuum. We know that this is this. These theories have changed in the way that we think about the students that we're currently serving. And so what are those best practices that we need to be putting in place right now on our campuses to support the students that we're currently serving, and when I think about adult learners, especially when I think about my current body of work around community colleges, that is the type of theories that we need to be thinking about to serve students is So Kyle. I agree with you. When we think about, how do we become efficient with our models to serve our students the best way we can. They have different needs, and so what worked for us as students aren't going to work for the students that we're currently serving that are on our campuses in a virtual setting and in person.

Cheri Souza  
Thanks, Melinda. I think those relationships are so important. And one of the reasons I'm so excited to head to the national or the annual conference is to kind of hear those best practices. You know, throughout the conference, I'm curious, you know, question for both of you, how do you define and measure success for advising in today's rapidly higher education landscape? I know you kind of mentioned a couple of things. I'm curious, like, what does success look like? Is, I would imagine there's a tension between traditional metrics such as retention and graduation, with the more nuanced indicators that you're talking about.

Melinda Anderson  
Melinda, well, well, definitely, you know, I will start with the data, and then, you know, because when we say success, you know, I'm student centered, so I am old school in that when I think success, how was a student defining success for them? And when I think about the concept of community vibrancy, and how a community defines success for itself, in my current portfolio area, we think about, you know, rural community colleges. We think about tribal colleges and universities. How did those communities define success for themselves? When students, students come to school, they think to themselves, I want to be successful. I want to be employed. I want to be able to take care of my families. And so when, when institutions define success for themselves, are they thinking about their accreditation standards? When faculty think about success for themselves. Are they thinking about, how am I teaching my students to learn these concepts in their classroom? But Cheri, that's not what you asked me. You asked me how I'm thinking about student success metrics, and I have to also talk about the realities of retention, persistence and completion, but also I have to be honest about students. Students we do not graduate students to not, right, have sustained, you know, to graduate into a position or have a job with with high earning wages, right? My angel baby, I always, often talked about my daughter, who is a transfer student twice. Right, she left one four year institution to go to a two year institution, and now she's back at a four year institution, and watching her journey is it's been very interesting, and she says to me, I want to go to graduate school, and I'm like, You should do that. But then her fear is, will I get a job? Will I be able to buy a house one day? Will I be able to take care of myself? And so these are the realities of our students. People want to get a degree, but they also want to be employed. They want to be able to take care of themselves. And so those are also the realities that we we need to be thinking about. You know, what do those outcomes look like when our students are graduating from our institutions? We can't just stop at, do they have the degree? And so when we think about those, those employable outcomes of our students, we know that that is what the measurement has now moved to, in terms of, is an institution doing well? So when we think about not, and I'm not going to just say career advising, I'm talking about the lifespan right, when we think about even community colleges and people are coming back to retool and to get a different skill set, are we developing on and off ramps for people to come in at certain times, like I'm going to come in and get this credential and I'm going to come back and get another credential. So they look at themselves as lifelong learners. So when I think about the idea of defining success, I always do start with, what is the student coming to school in order to be able to achieve? How are we as an institution designed to be student ready to be able to help that student accelerate and to do well? How are we looking at the financial implications of a student when they are coming to school in order to be able to meet their goals? But then I'm also thinking, from a practitioner standpoint, how am I learning and becoming stronger in these areas to be able to design these systems, to make sure that these things are happening, we have to continue to think differently about the work that we're doing, so we continue to get stronger as practitioners, as leaders, as as administrators. So I feel like I can't always think about one side without the other.

Kyle Ross  
I think for me too, there's some metrics around belongingness that some research has started to come out on. And like, how do we validate the students experiences on campus in their overall situation higher education, and really making meaning of those experiences in terms of navigating complex structures, what skills are can be transferable to the career world. As a result, are integrating things like their understanding of why their general education curriculum is structured the way that is, versus their major and understanding what they're supposed to get out of the entire bachelor's degree or associate's degree, whatever credential that they're pursuing. And so I think we're starting to see some research drill down into those smaller variables as well, like when we think about persistence, instead of just looking at it as an umbrella term. Now we're looking at the likelihood of them stopping out and coming back, the rates of attempting a certain amount of credits versus completion of a certain amount of credits, and then the frequency that they're engaging with an advisor, to determine if that's predictive of all those different metrics that kind of fall into that umbrella of retention, persistence and completion. And then, like Wanda said, I also agree that there needs to be more research into what does that mean for the getting out into the world after graduation. I know that people debate, what is the purpose of higher education? Is it to enrich a person's mind, to develop them as a person, or to get them access to the career workforce, and I'd say all of the above, and especially with the rising costs of college, it's something that you have to anchor yourself into as career success as well, because when some students are walking away With six figures in debt. If there's not something available to them to live their lives and pay off debt, the institution has failed them in that point in time, too.

Melinda Anderson  
We can't make these promises and not be planning for their future. On the other side, I agree here, here,

Matt Markin  
Now you both have, you know, mentioned certain terminology, so like, enrollment cliff, retention, persistence and this could be a great segue to maybe kind of unpack more of that in terms of how advising is connected to that. So I'd love to hear from both of you. Melinda, maybe we'll start with you, and then Kyle, after. Some people may listen to like, these are just buzzwords. You know, I'm hearing enrollment, retention, student success. You know, we're hearing more and more about another enrollment cliff, and sometimes advising gets lumped in as, oh, advising is retention. Or sometimes I'll hear from others that say, like, you know, when something goes great at our institution, advising isn't mentioned. But if something doesn't go as well, then it's like, let's blame academic advising. How do you help unpack all of that?

Melinda Anderson  
My gosh, Matt. Matt. Cheri. Kyle. You're absolutely right. I remember it was like, you know that you know those concepts so, you know? So I've done some research, because I love these questions. And I was just like, Matt and Cheri, so I love these questions that you sent us. So I did write some numbers down, because when I think about, like this enrollment cliff, and you're right, it's, it becomes these buzzwords that people just kind of throw around. So the 2017 census predicted, right, that 18 year old population would rebound. But then they came back and said by 2033 that actually it would decline by 3.8 million by 2039 so what does this implication really mean? So after 2039 this population of college going age group right will never exceed 4 million ever again in this country. So when you think about what that means from a business model perspective, you will only have a certain number of people at a certain number of age group for traditional age going right, that will ever be a certain age. And so what that means is that if the higher education value right, the trend of going to college still increases, the pipeline will narrow, because there's only so many in terms of birth rates, that's essentially what we mean by the cliff. So if this pipeline is shrinking of traditional age, you're going to increase competition right amongst four year institutions for saying, Okay, you're graduating from high school, you should come to this college. And so I was talking to my friend who's a VP of Enrollment Management. I was like, so what is, how do you feel about this? He said, I'm scared, right? Like, imagine that you're now the competition that was already out there. Now it's going to get even fiercer. So I always used to joke when I was doing the enrollment management work. It was kind of like an amenities war, right? The person who had the Chick fil A now is like, you need a swimming pool, and now, instead of a swimming pool, you need to have Valley parking, right? Like, whatever you need to do on your campus in order to attract that student, it's going to increase. But when you think about from an adult learner perspective, there's 100 million adults with some credential, no degree, right now, and by 2030, 70% of jobs will require some post secondary training or education. So the pipeline of traditional age students is narrowing, but adult learners is increasing. So what does that mean for the implications of, you know, advising, right? So thank you, Matt, that's a really good question, what does this mean about us? The way that we support students, it's always going to be different based on who it is that you're serving right. So where do adult learners go right versus where traditional age students go? And so the differentiation in terms of the students that we're supporting, they're going to need different things. So when we think about if the value of higher education is always going to be there because it's tied to employability, like I need a degree or credential in order to have a higher wage in order to be able to achieve different type of personal professional benefits, adult learners are going to have different needs in terms of work, right? They may be working full time. There might be taking care of families or taking care of aging parents. Amen. To those who are listening, who are in the sandwich generation, that is me re skilling career changes, right? There's going to be different enrollment strategies, right, for that adult learner versus that traditional age student. The traditional age students also going to come with parents. Amen, I was in that space, right? Because you're not just talking to the student, you're also talking to the parent. And so do you have implications for advising based on who you're serving, you're always going to be addressing the financial dynamic right of the cost of that degree, and that's regardless if you're serving a traditional age student or an adult learner. So time to degree is always going to be important, right? How much is it going to cost? How long is it going to take me to get through? When you think about other strategies, like dual enrollment for traditional age students, they're going to be coming in with some credits already, so you're going to have less time to completion. So you're going to always be trying to replace that student, right? When you think about an enrollment management but they're going to come in saying, I already have these credits. How do they articulate to the degree? So articulation agreements are going to always become really central for the how you're building or thinking about that student coming through the door. So to summarize, because I know Cheri, you thought, what does this mean? My Matt, you thought, what does this mean for us? Implications for all students, holistic supports for all students are always going to be essential in terms of the way we think about traditional or adult students, when we think about adult learners, thinking about child care, caring for adults, transportation for all students, mental health needs, it's going to be something that we need to be thinking about, wrap around service. This for all students, and then in terms of technology and data support to enable a personalized advising and outreach support for all students. So that's kind of like my big picture in terms of what does this mean when we think about the demographic?

Kyle Ross  
I want to jump in on the adult learner piece a long lot of times advisors think I shouldn't be the one to talk about a student's financial well being or their personal well being, and that's not going to be an option in the future, because, especially as we have limited resources to staff tons of positions to wrap around a student holistically, around all these different dimensions. As an advisor, you have to check in on certain things, like, how's it going academically? How is the balance of life with academics going finances, unexpected challenges coming up in that person's situation? So it's going to force advisors to be more holistic than they may have originally felt comfortable doing. So like looking back on my career in advising, I was always really hesitant to talk about finances with the student, but then eventually I learned enough to say, here's what I know, here's what I don't know. And I'm not kind of a history lead you astray in those conversations, but I'm going to get you connected to a person that I trust, I value, I respect, that will give you that information you need, and that referral process still needs you to know certain things, because if you just say that's not my area, go talk to financial aid, your student's not going to go talk to financial aid. They're going to feel like you just kicked them out the door and didn't want to have a conversation. So you have to structure it in a way of like, here is what I know, here's what I don't know, and this is why I cannot be the one to answer those questions, and here's why, I want to get you connected this person. So you're going to have to have those conversations, especially with adult learners, because the things driving their persistence to degree isn't around institutional satisfaction, not as much as a traditional age college student is. It's around their finances, their personal well being the balance of multiple and competing priorities, and then how they're overall performing academically and either thriving or struggling in their coursework.

Melinda Anderson  
Right, right? And then their ultimate career goals, absolutely.

Kyle Ross  
Yeah. Now the irony of it is, we're saying you must be more holistic, which means you have to have more time with your student. And then we're simultaneously seeing advisors now saying case loads are increasing on their point to I'm having conversations with people with 1000 or 1500 students. So instead of putting it back to the advisor to say, well, what are you going to do to figure that out and balance your caseload? I actually challenge institutional administrators to go through the question of what got you to this problem in the first place, and is your institution actually committed to academic advising, like it says it is, because if it is committed, they wouldn't have let this problem come up. Yes, there are funding constraints, but I think now more than ever, academic advising is going to be one of the most important valuable resources and structures and services on campus that every student's going to need. Because who better to help a student think through navigating the complexity of higher education and access to the workforce than an advisor who, day in and day out, is helping them build that navigational captial.

Matt Markin  
And you know, Kyle, I you know you're mentioning budget, you know, being more holistic. And I've heard it even in this office where, you know, we've said, Wow, I think students are coming to us more and more and wanting more answers for things that we may not have as much information on, but we're getting that information because while we have the student, we don't want to lose them, we want to be able to give them all the information that they need, build that connection, but still have handoffs to wherever they need to go. And I think this could be a good segue into this question for you, Kyle, is you know, you had also mentioned that there's a definition of advising that's coming up. Do you think that will maybe help institutions understand better the importance of advising and academic advisors that can maybe help with having advisors be more holistic and given more time with their students, impact caseloads, that sort of thing?

Kyle Ross  
I mean, I sure hope so. It just depends on if they're going to listen right because the draft that we have right now that's out with our membership for people to engage with and complete a survey on and give feedback on, not only spouses, what advisors do every day and what their scope of practice is, but what institutions are now responsible for to allow for advising to be successful. So things in there include making sure that there are places and spaces for private conversations to preserve confidentiality. If your institution is listening to that, that's going to change up where. Advisors are located and placed to have those conversations if and then, it also says in there that the individual interaction between an advisor and a student is the most critical piece of advising. Group Advising can be a compliment, but cannot be a replacement for those individual interactions. If your institution is listening, that's going to change up a lot of practices and hopefully put in more resources and invest and then it's not that, I'm not saying that institutions are not going to listen to it. I think that institutional administrators just want those answers and be to be told. Because time and time again, when I've met with institutional administrators that don't have a background in advising, they look at me and say, Okay, what is advising? What does it do? And how can I make it better in my institution? So they care. They just need answers. And for a while, NACADA was kind of shy to give those answers, because the first thing we would say is, well, there's so many contextual factors to your institution, to your students, but I've seen common threads across these institutions of what advisors should be doing and can be doing for their students, and it's time we start pulling on those threads, which is why I'm excited for this definition, because it will give answers to people that have been asking for these answers for a very long time. We get lots of phone calls and emails about, does Nakata have a formal definition of advising, or do we have to come up with it ourselves? Now I also know that the other question is, case loads. We're getting to it, but let's start with defining the profession first.

Melinda Anderson  
Yeah, well, that's exciting to hear Kyle, because when you say that you are profession, there's definitions that gives the institution opportunity to operationalize. And I love your point about if somebody is unfamiliar and says, give me the knowledge to be able to make the case, then you can say, here, right, is how we define ourselves and not let somebody else define you. So that's exciting. That's exciting.

Cheri Souza  
I'm so excited for this new era as we're approaching the 50th year. It's just wonderful to think that there's actually going to be a definition that folks can use across the board to talk about academic advising. Kind of changing gears a little bit, but in light of, you know, the massive caseloads you're talking about, wellness has always been a passion of mine, and especially for academic advisors, you know, I spent almost 20 years like Melinda. I started when I was 10, you know, but I spent so much time as an academic advisor, and I found folks in this profession give so much, and it's often at the expense of their own well being. And lately, we've been seeing, you know, it's been called the great state, right? Advisors are kind of staying in their roles, but they're not always engaged and thriving. So I'm curious, how do you think advising offices can move beyond retention of staff to really focus on re engagement, purpose and really meaning in the work? And I think you know that the definition is a great start. But I'm curious if there's other strategies you folks have seen or heard of.

Kyle Ross  
I mean, I hate to start out with this, but I have to be really honest about it. The first thing is, you got to pay your people like basic needs. First and foremost, if you want people to be thriving and well, is they have to earn enough to live. And that's not always the case that we're seeing. I have heard from advisors who are still making under 40,000 a year in some parts of this country, and that means that they have to find roommates for their living situation if they're single. And I'm like, Oh, that's a that shouldn't be the case, right? And then the the part that higher education saying there is value, there is return on investment, and yet, when I do a quick Google search on like, what's the average earnings of employee with a high school diploma, they're north of $60,000 is what AI is telling me. Whether that's 100% accurate or not, remains to be seen, but that's my quick search is average earnings is 60,000 and then we're saying, for this profession, where many people are posting positions that are masters required or masters preferred, we're going to pay you under 40,000 it's the own irony that higher education is saying there is return on investment, but not for our own people, right? And so you have to compensate your people appropriately for them to be able to live and thrive. Personally, I would be remiss if I didn't say that explicitly. So if there are institutions that are still under compensating people significantly, that's problem one, and that's why you're probably not going to get a whole lot of incentivization for people to engage. They're showing up to show up for exactly how much you would demonstrate a value in them in that case. Now, for the folks that are like, well, we're paying them, but we also have incredibly high case loads, and there's nothing we can do about that right now. The whole institution has to come together and define what are the goals for advising at that point in time, right? That you must see all of these students in your caseload. Well, that's going to turn advising into transactional conversations. It's going to make advising very limited and five to 10 minute conversations where you cannot provide holistic support. So then the institution has come back and say the goal, therefore, is to target X, Y and Z groups to have the most benefit from academic advising at that point, that right there will ultimately help advisors feel like, where is their utility, where is their value, where is their purpose, rather than being this churning machine of five minute conversations. And so for the institutions, I've defined that and said, yes, we want you to stay in touch with this pool students, but these are the ones that we really need advising to invest in and double down on. They're finding more well being because they're saying, cool, I can still have my balance schedule 3045, minute appointments and invest in the students that you're telling me to invest in. So I think that's the next thing that can help with overall preserving wellbeing. And then the third thing is acknowledging that if you are in those unrealistic capacities, then the institution also has to acknowledge that it's okay for an advisor not to be able to be responsive within several hours one day. There's just some realities that have to happen at that point, and if the institution's not acknowledging those realities, that's a problem. Yeah? So it's acknowledging that we don't expect you to be able to do all of the things in your job description every day. So here's where your priorities are. Helps then the advisor feel like they can put boundaries around their day to day. Yeah, those are my things that I'm talking about. Like, otherwise thinking through things like, honest spaces is great, but if they don't have the time to go use those spaces that we offered you this so you just don't have the time to go use it when anything you want to add?

Melinda Anderson  
No, I mean, I agree with a lot of what you said, you know, you know, for me, what I was hearing is, number one, is it a process issue? Is it a systems issue? Is it a practice issue, in terms of what is, is, is, is driving the burnout when we try to examine case load dynamics, what is it that is required of your advisors in terms of of what it is that they need to do to be able to support students? I think when, when I was advising and then became an advising administrator, it is hard because they this is not just a case though, these are people, these are students. And so you you get caught up in their lives. You want to see them be successful. And so it is really hard not to want to respond to that email or to follow up with that student or see what's going on. And so I think that that's also part of the tension, right? These are not just widgets. You know what? I mean? Like people are crying out, especially post pandemic, you know, you were really kind of connected to people's lives in terms of what they were doing, right, especially when people were really sick and they were losing people. There is a book that I'm going to read because the cobbler kids have no shoes. I struggle with rest. I struggle with burnout myself. So I'm just, you know, disclosure, just being honest, rest is sacred. By Octavia Rahim, I don't know if you guys are familiar with this text, but one of the questions in the book is, presence is greater than perfection. And I think sometimes with burnout, we want to do everything for everybody. And so Kyle, I love your point earlier where it's like, maybe I can't do everything for everybody all at once. And so I think sometimes when we are asking ourselves about burnout, is it because we were trying to triage everybody and give them everything that they need? And maybe sometimes you can't. And so when we start thinking about, how do we manage case the case loads with limited resources, I know that I struggled as an advisor with, like, the idea perfectionism, like I just wanted to give everybody every give everybody everything, because I deserve the thing. You know, they needed it. And if I was this student, I would want somebody to, you know what I mean. And sometimes we just can't do that. And so I think when your institution says I can, and I love the pushback you give Kyle, you know, well, why did you end up here? Is it a resource issue, or is it you not understanding what the design of what what people need to be doing in order to be able to support students? If you say you care about retention and persistence, then you got to put your money where your mouth is right. If you say that you do and you see that you're losing students, then what is the remedy? What is the solution? So, I mean, I could go on all day with this, because I had this hat, and was like, if you really care, then it's not just about giving me more advisors. It's about changing systems, and it's also about feeding into your people and letting them understand, how do I better support and serve? And it's about fueling us. And so when I think about how we. Continue to rejuvenate ourselves in this work, because it is heavy work. You're carrying people's lives in your hearts and in your mind, and you're taking it home with you at night. And I think I am thinking specifically, not just pre but also post pandemic. It got really heavy for a while. I brought a lot of that home. And so when I think about sustainable career paths, the people who are doing the work are also the best people to figure out the solutions. And if you're not inviting them to the table and say, Well, what do you guys think? And you're just trying to figure it out and then giving us a solution, my God, you know what I mean. You're talking sometimes to the wrong people. And so everybody should be at the table when you're thinking of a solution. So if you're talking with solutions and you're not inviting advisors to the table, just know that you probably don't have the right people at the table. That is my call out to advisors. Talk to an advisor. If you're creating solutions for advisors, if you're creating solutions for students, you should have students at the table. You're going to get there faster.

Cheri Souza  
I think you know exactly the reasons Melinda mentioned, and Kyle also, I think it's just so important that we're asking our advisors, what do you need? Same with your point about students, that community voice, that student voice, is so important. There's so many people in positions of power who are making decisions, you know, for communities they're not talking to. And I think just it's so simple to ask on a human level, how are you today? What do you need? And so, thank you so much, both of you for raising that, and Kyle, especially the compensation point. It's a big one. I have another question, just thinking about, you know, creating sustainable career paths. We have so many academic advisors who are doing amazing work, and we want them to stay in this profession. You know, what role can professional development, mentorship, community building, plan on ensuring that advisors don't just survive, but that they're thriving long term. And some of these were mentioned. But curious, is there anything else you'd like to add.

Melinda Anderson  
I can start because the last part about mentorship is really important. You know, because Kyle, I don't know which direction you're going to go in. I think sometimes people beg their institutions too much to give them things that they really can't produce. Right? Sometimes you'll say, I should be promoted, because look how long I've been loyal to you, and I'm like, You know what? You need to leave. You need to leave because sometimes structures don't allow for what it is that you really need to what you have been designed or what you could really do. And so sometimes there's frustration and resentment. But I know sometimes people are landlocked, right? And so there are other ways that you could continue to develop and grow, but maybe it's not in your title. And so mentorship is, I think, and for me, I have benefited in an amazing way, to either present, to write, to do keynotes, where that my growth continued to develop. Maybe in in this way you guys can't, well, if you're listening, I am going outward, right, even if I can't go vertical. You know what I mean in terms of my development, to continue to grow my capacity to do great work in this field, because sometimes my structure within my job wouldn't allow me right, to maybe grow into a position. So mentorship is very helpful for us to be able to see outside ourselves. I think sometimes I've heard a lot of people that I've been towards say they won't promote me, they don't see me, and I'm like, baby, that's because maybe you're supposed to not go through this door, but through a window, and then people leave their institution and they blow up, because you were never meant to grow there, right? The seed was planted, and then you were supposed to move in a different direction. But sometimes people spend years of frustrations saying, Well, how come they didn't pick me, pick me, pick me. So sometimes I just I hope that if you're listening and you're wondering, When am I ever going to blow up here, maybe you're not supposed to blow up there. But I do recognize that sometimes we are landlocked, meaning that we can't necessarily leave there. Maybe you're finishing your degree, or maybe the school's paying for your degree. Like I get that that was me. Listen, I wasn't leaving my institution until, listen, I crossed that stage. And so I recognized that I needed to bloom where I was planted, and so I was able to do that in different ways. And so that requires patience. So mentorship really helped me in that space. So that's what I would offer when we think about growth and development and career. Because soon as you're able to move you, you will continue to bloom.

Kyle Ross  
Your point on loyalty isn't always a thing that needs to be rewarded. Really resonated with me as well, like I very much value when an advisor stays in an institution for 2025, 30 years, but that doesn't always necessarily mean that they've spent time intentionally refining and developing their skills. They might have been occupying the position and abstain, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they've been growing and improving. So I think that that's something that a person. Should always be thinking through is, how can I refine my skills? What can I improve on? What can I enrich my competencies around as an advisor? Or what student population can I learn more about, more deeply? And that's where pro dev comes in, and is huge, because we've got free resources for our membership to access through our publications, if you pay for membership, and then you can also access all of our online events hosted by advising communities and regions. There's over 100 of them in a given year. So some great resources where you don't have to have 1000s of dollars to go seek out. You can actually get them for $95 for your general membership of Mikata or other publications and videos out in the universe. There's lots of different ways you can grow as a professional, to challenge yourself, to refine your skills around student population, or if you want to look more like the project management side, great opportunities for you to take on a project and develop that skill. And so to Melinda's point, yeah, that patience is huge, because sometimes that does mean you're taking on administrative work and not always necessarily being rewarded for it, but part of that comes down with future benefits, of like, Yes, I took on that project, and now I'm Project Management Wizard. I wish I had those skills, and that's going to take you, maybe in a different direction, but still serving students and their success. And I think we need to look at the career trajectory of these professionals as Are you still contributing to student success in your overall career lifespan, rather than narrowed down into academic advising? Specifically, there's lots of different growth trajectories for a person when you broaden those horizons a bit. Now, granted, we also want them to stay in the profession, right? But that's not always options available to them. Maybe there's no career ladder in place or a structure to recognize skill development and growth in that case, maybe there's other roles that still serve students and their success, a person can seek find that fulfillment while being able to advance in their career, right?

Melinda Anderson  
No, I agree. Kyle that one thing I will add too, because sometimes I get asked this question when I'm mentoring others about supervision. Like, how do I get supervision if I don't have a direct report? Or, like, when do I, you know, like I because, in order to sometimes move into management, you know, people are looking for like, Who have you supervised? And I always say, is there an opportunity to supervise an intern? Is there an opportunity for you to think about how those skills are transferable, and so for your project management piece is actually a really great idea. Like, have you pulled a team together? Have you been able to demonstrate your ability to move something forward, but then maybe you bring, like, a cross team effort together, and you're able to show how you kind of pseudo supervise others when you're kind of leading through a group. So that's a really great point that I just wanted to illustrate. When people ask me, like, I've never supervised, then how do I become a manager and showing that I can supervise, if they'd ever let me give a chance to supervise? So those are just some things that I kind of recommend to others who are looking to kind of get into supervision, because that's definitely one way to move up in your roles, right? When you think about advising levels one, two and three, how do I ever move up? Because the next step is supervision.

Matt Markin  
Gosh, I feel like we could have a whole hour just talking about this particular topic. Now we have about 10 minutes left. I know Cheri and I have a couple more topics we want to get through. So the one I'm going to go with, and I'm probably going to combine my question into one or one with multiple parts, A, B and C, is merchant technologies and students. You know, so much great advice you've you both have already given, and so let's talk about like, emerging technologies. You know, you can't seem to turn a corner or look through an email or read an article without seeing something related to technology, especially with AI. And I know with you know, higher ed professionals probably have come to the both of you going like, Kyle, Melinda, how do we navigate the rise of AI? How do we use this in academic advising the next generation of students that are coming up? This is probably all they're gonna know. How am I supposed to be prepared? How do you help unpack all of that for someone so I'm gonna throw it to Kyle first and then to Melinda.

Kyle Ross  
Yeah, it's a lot, but I always remind people that they've had to adapt to technology in the past 50 years. Constantly people freaked out in higher education with the rise of internet, internet is going to cause plagiarism. Internet is going to cause me to lose my job. Internet is going to disrupt the student learning experience, and the wheel turns and history repeats itself. Ai comes out. AI is going to drive plagiarism. AI is going to limit the student experience. AI is going to take away my job. But if you look at how. Three has worked. Yes, it changes the landscape, but it doesn't remove you from landscape if you're willing to grow and adapt. So people had to think through, how do we embrace internet? I still remember having my folders and files in 2012 and it was like, Hey, do we want to move to a digital filing system for advice, for advising files. And people were like, Are you out of your mind? And I was like, well no, because the internet's been around for a while, and there should be these solutions at this point. So I think that's the other thing people remind themselves of, is these things take time. Yes, there's a lot of interest in AI right now, but and people are really trying to embrace it quickly, but there are still so many flaws to AI that have to be worked through before people can even remotely consider the possibility of a full fledged AI advisor. AI is going to never not hallucinate. And so if you're hallucinating student files, student situations, degree requirements, that's bad, right? So there's always gonna need to be that fact checking process, and there will always need to be that human connection to the institution, like I said earlier, sometimes that's the advisor is the only source of connection for a student to an institution. So I do think that AI has the opportunity to take away things that we don't necessarily like about our day to day jobs. Like one thing I started using more earlier on, which was also when AI was starting to emerge. You just didn't hear it as much was when you had auto writing functions in your email, and suddenly it was capturing. It was catching things and common mistakes I was making in my email, but it was also predicting what I was saying based on who I am as a person, that's AI. So we've already been introduced to this for a while now, with co pilots in your inbox with different rules it's building based on how you write and how you stylize your responses. So I think people just need to kind of get to the curious phase of it, really explore what are the things that it can take care of to make your life a little bit better, a little bit easier, but then be really careful about where is the line where it no longer serves you best, or your institution best. So I know that there's a lot of enthusiasm for it, because administrators and folks are looking for efficiencies. Advising is not going to be that thing that goes away and that the robots take over, but it will change the landscape of advising and what you do day to day, and I just encourage people to start getting curious about it now, so that way, when those changes do come down, you're ready for it. Like, one thing I was grateful for in the pandemic was that NACADA already had zoom, and me, as a volunteer leader, had access to zoom for three or four years before the pandemic hit. And then all my colleagues like, what's the zoom thing? And I was like, my time has come. I know things, so that's where I'd say, Get curious, so that way you can be ready proactively.

Melinda Anderson  
No, I would agree. I had the wonderful opportunity to hear from Ethan Mullick from stage, and he wrote the book, co intelligence. And so what he had, you know, encouraged all of us to think about was how AI hadn't really been written yet. So, Kyle, to your point, we have all been immersed in these technologies before, and it hasn't, it hasn't been written, so we should be playing around with it. And so on stage, he went ahead and was just using, like, chatgpt, and he was going through all these prompts. And faculty were like, ah, you know what I mean, while he was doing stuff in real time. And then the people who were like, I've engaged, yes, do more on stage. And so we were all enthralled, because it hasn't been defined yet in terms of what it is that we're experiencing. And so, you know, Kyle absolutely shout out to Grammarly, that has saved my life. Now, listen, when people are in school now doing their dissertations, I'm like, That sound old. I'm like, let me tell you about I had to do my own transcriptions like I sound like that. Now you know what I mean. And so when I think about what it means for us. We have digital natives coming in. I'm telling my daughter, get off your phone and get on a computer like I feel old, right? All the stuff that people can do with these emerging technologies. The Titan partners just released a report, I think it was in August, that talked about the sense of belonging is what's driving retention and persistence for students and institutions. So Kyle, absolutely, people still want that human connection. I feel like the way that AI is showing up for us in terms of practitioners and the work we're doing is our ability to be more efficient with administration. You know what I mean. Let me finish this email quickly. Let me manage. My caseload notes, you know what I mean, so I can get home by 530 you know? I think that that is the way, you know, I gotta get this accreditation report done. I feel like that is how AI is emerging and helping us become more efficient. But when we think about who we're seeing and how this is going to be supporting from a curriculum perspective, in terms of how faculty are thinking about how it shows up in the classroom, you know, being afraid of plagiarism. How do we not help students understand that you should be checking your sources, citing your sources? You know what I mean, like, just from an academic perspective, we should be teaching students the best way to use these technologies in the classroom. So you know, if any faculty listening, you know, play around with the technologies students are using and engaging these anyways. So why wouldn't we teach them how to use them responsibly? And then how do we think about what the resources or sources that are being pulled into these technologies? We would want to understand the background right in terms of how we're using this, these technologies. And so I think that we should be aware right of what it is that we're engaging with on a daily basis, because you're right, Kyle, they're not going anywhere. And so I think that we should be adaptive. I think that we should be cautiously optimistic about how we could adapt these technologies to become more efficient with our administration and its use. When I hear from campuses about how they're using chat boxes, because, you know, earlier I said something bad about chat I know people are rolling their eyes, like, didn't you just say something about chat boxes when I think about chat boxes for the student who's up at night or for the adult learner, right? I'm working, I'm taking care of my family. I just have a question. I just want to know when you're open. I just want to know where does this policy lie in your on your website, they are actually using the data, or harnessing the data to say, what are people wanting to know? What questions are they asking the most? It helps them shape how they are designing their website, what information to make sure that they're giving in orientation. So they're using this data to really inform their practices. And so that is important, right? So they're using these technologies to help form those those practices in terms of how they're supporting students. And so it is important, right? How we think about how we're using these technologies. So chat box, not bad all the time.

Cheri Souza  
My takeaway is that AI is not going to take jobs. It's folks who know how to properly use AI, I think, will be the ones who are taking jobs. And there's definitely ways we can use it appropriately, kind of taking us into the home stretch. Kyle, you know, as we're turning to the future of advising in the cars role 2030, is not too far away right now, higher education is facing a lot of disruption, but also a lot of opportunity. In this moment, I'm curious how Nakata is evolving to help ensure advising is not just student support, but really seen as a driver of institutional transformation, and how we as members can help NACADA shape this future together.

Kyle Ross  
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm personally really optimistic for the future of advising, especially given the current metrics that higher education is being held accountable to. Like I said earlier, who better than an advisor to help students navigate both the complexity of higher education and the transition to the workforce, than an advisor who's day in and day out building navigational capital? What I do think needs to happen is that we need to get that message out to administrators, to folks who are a part of higher education but may have antiquated perceptions of what advising is based on their time in college, based on their kids time in college. So I think we need to give those answers to institutions that they are begging for it, frankly, like the definition, like case loads. But I think that those are our first step from there. I think we start thinking through, okay, now that we know what the scope of practice is for an advisor, what ethical guidelines should they be held accountable to? What things can we ensure that every advisor is trained with, from the cadas perspective, to make sure that they have the like the conceptual and the relational skills developed while an institution really trains them on the informational pieces of their competencies and things like maybe one day NACADA has a professional certification for academic advising. There's pros and cons to that approach. So not necessarily saying that that's the way to go. It's just something that I think we should entertain and think through and consider really meaningfully, or a way for NACADA to recognize institutions who excel at advising some type of accreditation status or something, to complement their regional accreditation, to say, hey, NACADA has issued this gold standard for us, and we've met that benchmark, and that should help them inform their regional accreditation or professional accreditations. So I'd love to pursue those ultimate goals that I think are possible by 2030 to really solidify advising matters advising as a profession, advising needs to be.

Cheri Souza  
Perspective, I'm curious if you could challenge each NACADA member to take one action this year to move advising towards that 2030 goal. What would it be?

Kyle Ross  
I would encourage every single person to talk to someone who doesn't know about advising in higher education and tell them what it is. And if we've got that definition, use that definition, but use whatever resource you have to really help start shaping the narrative around what is advising, because there's tons of perspectives around it that aren't always the best informed perspectives in higher education. So even if it's someone that you think knows what advising is, tell them anyway, so that way we're starting to get some common messages out and really raising the bar of what makes advising advising.

Matt Markin  
Awesome. That's the call, and I wish we had more time, but I know this is going to be an ongoing conversation with such an important discussion that that needs to happen. But Melinda Kyle, thank you so much for joining us today.

Melinda Anderson  
No thank you for having us.