Integrating Academic and Career Advising - Adventures in Advising

In this episode of Adventures in Advising, we explore a bold redesign of student support with guests Steven Schaffling, Cindy Zazzara, Molly Clock, and Ryan Howlett from Syracuse University! They share how they dismantled silos, rewrote the advising playbook, and built an integrated academic/career student success model! We talk:

✨ Holistic advising that connects the dots between academics and careers
 📊 Data, formative assessment, and why holds aren’t the magic answer
 🧠 Building “advisor tools” that free up brain space for real conversations
 🤖 How AI can offload the transactional so advisors can double down on the relational
 🎓 And what it takes to shift culture without losing heart

With over 14,000 one-on-one meetings a year and retention gains to show for it, this team proves that when students don’t have to retell their story five times, everyone wins. 

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Transcript

Ryan Scheckel  
Well, welcome back everybody to another episode of the Adventures in Advising podcast. My name is Ryan Scheckel, and we have a great episode today. We're going to meet some folks who went on a bit of a journey, I'd say, with institutional restructuring and and rethinking the way that work can be done in academic advising and student success. But wherever you're at, whatever you might be doing, especially today, as you're listening to this episode, we're just glad that you joined us. You know, it's it's not often that we think about the way we feed ourselves, the things that we do to sort of fill our cup, as it were, and just taking the time to hear other people's perspectives, to consider the work that we do and the way it can be done, and maybe learn a little bit, be inspired a little bit, if nothing else, just reflect on it. That's really valuable. It's one of the reasons why we do the thing that we do here on this podcast is to give folks a chance to really enrich the work that they do and the experience they have doing it, so we can be full whole people and and so we're going to bring on our panelists. We have Steven scheffling and his team from the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University, and and when we have a panel, it's always a chance to not read a bio and and actually just talk and get to know each other. So Stephen, I'm going to start with you, and then we'll move on to Cindy and then Molly and Ryan just tell us a little bit, you know, welcome back, Steven. Just a little bit about your role that you're in now, and kind of how you got there in your higher ed journey. 

Steven Schaffling  
Thanks for having us, Ryan. I really appreciate it. I I've been the assistant dean of student success at Syracuse University for the College of Arts and Sciences for almost eight years now, I came into this role prior I served as the Director of University Advising for Drexel University in Philadelphia. And, you know, I was sort of tasked with building something different, building something new where, which has eight years later, has resulted in this integrated human capital version of advising, where, where we deliver Academic Advising and Career advising through one advisor with an assigned caseload that is primarily derived by level and Academic Program, right? And so there's a whole ton that's beyond that, and we'll, I think we'll get into it in the conversation. But, you know, I'm happy to be here and happy to have the conversation about about what we're doing up here at Syracuse.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, to sign post up for our listeners. Steven was on episode 160 along with Ling LeBeau talking about their approach with international students and and we recognized the opportunity to learn more about Stephen's role and the experience in the College of Arts and Sciences, just from an academic advising perspective and Student Success point of View. So we wanted to invite more of Steven's colleagues to talk through their experiences. And so Cindy, could you introduce yourself and tell us about your role and how you got there?

Cindy Zazzara  
Happy to Good morning. My name is Cindy Zazzara. I am one of the assistant directors for our upper division team. I have been with Steve through this whole journey. I've been at Syracuse University for 15 years to all within the College of Arts and Sciences and Maxwell, and I've held a couple of positions within, starting out in our records department and then moving on to advisor, and then the role that I'm currently in, working also with the first year team and now the upper division team. So I've been through it all.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, it's great to have you, Cindy. And Molly, can you tell us about your role and how you got there? 

Molly Clock  
My name is Molly Clock. I'm one of the advisors in the office of student success for the College of Arts and Sciences and Maxwell School. My journey to higher ed is as a career changer. I loved working in higher ed. In my undergrad, I went to SUNY Oswego, and I studied meteorology, and I was very career driven. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And then a couple years into my career, I decided that I needed to find something new. So I've worked in STEM fields. I've worked in a. Education, and I came to advising after being an orientation leader and all of those higher ed things in my undergrad, but not really thinking that it could be a career track until I came into advising. So that's how I got here. 

Ryan Scheckel  
So it's always nice to meet another Ryan, as I was saying earlier, we're slowly taking over the world when Ryan at a time, but Ryan tell us a little bit about your role and how you ended up where you are now.

Ryan Howlett  
Well, thanks so much for having us. Ryan. Really appreciate it. I actually originally came from Canada, so I did my undergrad in Canada, but like Molly, I actually came from the classroom. I came from the K to 12 world to higher ed, and I think, like so many advisors, and Steve mentioned human capital, like so many of us, we come from diverse backgrounds and have lots of amazing career experiences that we bring to our advising, which makes it especially relevant for an integrated advising approach. But I've had the great pleasure of being at Syracuse, I've been on the first year team. We have a designated first year team that we advise first year students. And I was happy to start there, which was a great fit for me, coming from the classroom where I taught grade 12 students. It was kind of like the other side of where we had been trying to get our students to go for so long. So it was really a great experience. And then I've also been able to be a lead advisor, working, you know, in pre law, specifically doing pre law advising, which was also has been really great. And now I'm an assistant director, so I've been able to touch different pieces of what our office does so well. So I've been really fortunate to be able to get to touch on all of those different areas.

Ryan Scheckel  
Well, fantastic. And I know as we go through our conversation today, we're going to learn about the the nature of the work and how it's structured now. But Steve, I was wondering if we could start talking about the the history of things like this reorganization and this process of integrating three offices into an office of academic and career advising. Like, how did that come about? And did anything shift culturally or structurally that just hadn't been the case before? Sure.

Steven Schaffling  
I mean, I'd love to set it up and then let Cindy offer some perspective from from someone who went through that change and is still here, thankfully with me today, and an assistant director role, right? So essentially, the the office was structured previously in a more regularized way. And what I mean by that is that there was a unit of academic advisors, there was a small Career Services Unit of one to two people, and then there was a unit of Cindy will refer to them as the records unit, which were the hardest working, lowest paid people in the college, because what they did was essentially process all of the paperwork and The business processes and certified degrees for the 5000 students that we that we support, and and essentially what, part of what triggered the change was, honestly, there was an external consultant review and that, and the main thing that came back was that the structure for Career Services wasn't serving students and and the vision was, how do we take this and realign it in such a way that we create the career services so that it is better serving arts and sciences and humanities and social sciences students today? And what came out of that was was a caseload model where it is integrated where so Molly serves as the academic advisor for a lot of biology students, but also the career advisor. And so she's the person who's certifying their degree. She's the person that's, that's that's helping sure that they're on track with their plan, but she's also the person that's helping them think about all of the many co curricular opportunities and programmatic career, programmatic opportunities that the college and the university offers her students, and what that does is it lowers the hurdle. It lowers the bar for a student to connect the dots on the conversation right, as opposed to having a siloed conversation over here and then having to carry that over to this person and have a conversation here. What the model does is that the academic plan affects the career plan, and the career experiences and the co curricular experiences affect the academic plan, and it goes back and forth. And the ability to have that conversation, navigate that conversation with a single person, lowers, lowers, the hurdle for a student. And the final thing I'll say is that I think that that's integral in 2025 I think that students are asking, you know, having tough. Kitchen table conversations with their parents about where they're going and what they're going to do. And it is, I think it's absolutely incumbent upon offices of student success and advising to move into this type of role in order to have a much more holistic conversation with students, so that they can, they can navigate and articulate that once they leave our office and leave and leave working with us, I think the final thing that I'll say is that all that I just said encompasses a redefinition of what advising is. And when I first got here, there was a very structured definition of what people thought advising should be, or what it was, and it wasn't incorrect. It's just not necessarily what the strategic direction was, where we needed it to be right. And I'm Cindy, I don't know if you have anything that you want to add relative to that, but you lived through that with me.

Cindy Zazzara  
I did. I think the word that you used, that I would touch on, is holistic. I don't think the prior model we were really seeing students holistically. We would have a conversation. The advisors would have a conversation about the academic piece. I would have a conversation, maybe, but they weren't required to meet with me, so I would be doing everything behind the scenes, but at the end of the day when I couldn't certify a degree, I'd never met this student. So here I am saying I'm so sorry you can't be certified, but you've never met with me. We don't know where you're going career wise. And every time we would have a conversation, it was sending you to a different office on the university, which, it's a big university, and we would lose them along the way. So I think the biggest thing, and the thing that has worked the best is that we're holistically working with students, right?

Ryan Scheckel  
And I know our next question is still in this vein of the shift, the adjustment, I certainly can hear the argument that, for the benefit of the student, we've had conversations on my own campus about how many times someone has to share their story, you know, just how many different people and ways that they end up just sort of losing the plot because they're just saying the same thing over and over again, but I guess for your on campus colleagues and stakeholders, how did you all make the case that a single advisor delivering both academic and career outcomes, handling the sort of record side of it wouldn't dilute maybe say, the quality of any of those services? Were there any particular tools that maybe help reset expectations for students and advisors, right?

Steven Schaffling  
So, so I'd be happy to to start with that, and then, and then, and Ryan, Molly, you could talk to any one of them, if you'd like, that you've created along the way, but I'll say that I use the term advisor tools all the time, and that they there are no there are very few advisor tools that are off the shelf that we can go buy and plug in. And so being someone who started as a professional staff academic advisor at at the beginning of my career, I carry that perspective with me through everything. So it is constantly my perspective that I need to the advisor experience is very parallel to students, but not identical. Advisors are very can very well represent what students are dealing with, but building tools for advisors so that we increase their efficiency, so that they're more able to get into the relational pillar and have the conversation. That's what does that's what prevents dilution of the services, right? I need to be able to build really quick you utilitarian tools that a student, when a student says something, an advisor, can grab it immediately and say, All right, well, hey, you know what? Let's take a look at this and walk through it, and that is express especially challenging it when you consider liberal arts and sciences and social sciences and the diversity of career outcome. Because many times we're trying to have that conversation from a backwards engineered perspective, right? What is it that you like? What is it that you enjoy? And then, and then, we're working that backwards, because we're trying to help an anthropology major who might, one might want to be in public service, and might one might want to go to law school, and one might right like, so there's this reverse engineering, if you don't have the tools in place, then, then, yeah, I could perceive how that would dilute the service and and the other thing is a commitment in the change in the roles and to the caseload model, like many, many other institutions are gonna like. Our average caseload per advisor in this office is 250 students. Yeah, and I think that that actually is high, you know, if I could fight to get that down to under 200 I would, but, but the other, the other piece here is, as I sort of intimated, is truly a commitment to an advising is teaching model and and the relational pillar, right? You know, I explain that to every advisor, essentially on day one, when we hire them. I explain how a university invests in an office like us, and if we're not you, if we're not putting that piece front and center, then then what's our, what's our value add, right? Like we need to be, we need to be doing that first. But the tools piece, as you, as you mentioned, Ryan is critical and a constant, ongoing effort, right that, like there, there was something literally within the last week that I got frustrated with, an advisor tool that we had, and I went and built something within like three hours, like I went and built a new tool, because I was like this, I need my advisors to be able to actually have the conversations with students. Ryan Molly, I don't know if you want to speak in any specificity to some of the tools that you personally have built.

Ryan Howlett  
Yeah, I think that one of the first things I learned in interviewing for this job was, you know, and I got to interview with Cindy and our first year director Elena, and like, the first thing I learned was, this was a culture of care. This is, these are people who care about students. So that's the first primary responsibility, which really resonated with me as a as a former teacher. And then meeting with Steve in my first interview, Steve was like, we have this, this really in depth conversation about, like, pedagogy and teaching strategies, and you know what I was doing to help my students get good scores on the regents examinations. And I was like, wow. Like, this is really innovative, and I'm really excited about, you know, using, using my my teaching past, and the skills and, you know, curriculum that I'd used in the in the past that I wanted to think about different ways of applying, and that mindset, like the innovative mindset, the ability to ask questions, really started this kind of like concept, like, okay, so we can take an approach to our students in advising, where we can Ask questions about how we do things and introduce, you know, ideas and notions. When Molly came aboard, we both noticed like, how do advisors measure whether or not they're they're having success with their students? In particular, we were concerned about, like, career conversations and career outcomes. We talked to our students about their resumes. We talked to students about their careers, but we we have great supports on campus that we want to make sure students are utilizing and understand are there. And so we were like, we started talking about, like, Well, how do we measure this? Like, in the classroom, we'd give an exit ticket. After we talked about these things, did the students get that? Like, did they get what we were putting down? And so we just got started talking about like, hey, could we develop a formative assessment where we could have and capture our students data on on what they perceive of our appointment to make sure that we're hitting the right note and we're doing really what we're aiming to do? So that started us down the road of like, creating formative assessments. Steve was like, so on board gave us like, one on one time, and Molly and I got one on one time to talk about, you know, our reflection we were able to, like code, data, and just think about ways that we could extend and perhaps, like, you know, bring this to the whole office. And I'll let Molly talk on that as well. But having an open mindset and being curious was kind of like the cultural aspect that allowed some of those questions to happen, so that you can start building tools. So like we started getting data on whether or not our students were, in fact, understanding the career supports and resources that we had available to them, and that they knew that we were the advisor to go to to talk about those things. So it was like reinforcing what we're doing all the time. And it also led to, you know, continued appointments, because I think that's a big part of that relational piece, and it's a big part of the Career conversations, how they integrate with their academics. I mean, you need to keep coming back and having those conversations.

Molly Clock  
Yeah, Ryan, totally, I completely agree. I will also say that I started advising in April 2023, so this is the only model I've ever known, and truthfully, I can't imagine doing it any other way. It's just such a natural conversation with students of asking about academic questions. What's your end goal? What's your end goal? How do we get you to your path with your academics? I can't like I can't imagine doing them separately, and the robust tools that we have as an office make that really, really easy. Things that Ryan mentioned, Ryan and I kind of spearheaded a project using the zoom whiteboard, because, as Ryan said, the data suggests that we run a lot of virtual meetings out of our office. We don't have any purely online students, but a lot of our students are opting for virtual meetings. We were curious. Are. Are they getting those same outcomes, and how do we make it easier for advisors to run those meetings? So we started building a bank of zoom whiteboard tools so that advisors could have these conversations. They know the resources are there. They trust that they're there, so they don't have to use that precious brain space to think, Okay, let me pull from this website and this tool. It's all just in one space. There's a book called building a second brain that kind of speaks to this that I was telling Ryan about as we were using our whiteboard. It just lets us think more about the student and connecting with them. I'll give kind of a quick like real world example. Last week, I met with a student who their main goal is, I want to add a math major to my plan. I love math. I'm never going to tell anybody not to add a math major. I fully support it. We were having that typical academic advisor conversation, how many credits the classes, and the career advisor in me said, Well, why do you want to add this math major? What kind of math do you need? And they were kind of taken aback, like, What do you mean? They ultimately want to go into research. And I said, Well, what kind of math are we talking about? What kind of skills do you need to make yourself marketable in that position? And they weren't sure. Luckily, we have alumni connections, which is a bank of over 1000 Arts and Sciences resources that want to meet with students. We have a career navigator webpage that gives you all of these accesses to connections. We have ONET like a database of what people in that field are doing, and it just let me send the student with some autonomy to do some research, but also to give them the freedom to adjust their plan, to just make sure that they had the outcome that they wanted, which wasn't necessarily a math major, it was having the tools to be successful in the career that they wanted. And I couldn't have done that with without the resources that we have as an office.

Ryan Scheckel  
So we've talked about tools and resources as a type of support. Steve mentioned case load and institutional investment as types of support. But what about additional training in this process? Were there other initiatives to help bring folks along for both academic advisors and people who maybe were in career roles and to help them with this shift in the organization, Did Did anyone have to unlearn anything along the way as well?

Steven Schaffling  
I think, I think probably folks. I think, I think the biggest thing folks had to unlearn was, what was the definition of their box like meaning how it was, how the box was defined. This is, or this is advising, and that is not academic advising. That was the biggest thing as far as training and development, and along the way, oh, I mean, I'll let everybody else on this call speak to how, like at my core, I believe in professional development, and I put that forward, right? I think we bring external resources in from from Nakata extremely regularly. We tap internal resources. So internal experts. There's a psychology department member who's an expert and motivational interviewing as an example. There's so we are in the in the last eight years, we've probably completed 35 successful concurrent sessions at the annual we've we produce scholarship and an author stuff, but we bring in external sort of examples and excellence. And there's, there's a professional development committee in the office that that that committee identifies, we survey the advisors. We don't just assess students. We assess the advisors and ask them what they need in which areas. And then we prioritize, we prioritize that. I mean, this Friday, I'm, I guess that's tomorrow, actually, now I think about, I'm delivering a session, an hour session, on how to use a particular how to use anthropic in order to build tools like that, that that that Claude can help us build advisor tools and how to use it. And so, so so there's a constant commitment to professional development and training, and we've had to, I mean, I could not, I could not, Cindy, I could not put a number on the commitment and and the amount of training and development that we've done over the last eight years. I don't know if you want to offer some perspective on that, I'd appreciate it.

Cindy Zazzara  
I probably had the biggest learning curve of all, because I was unlearning our past and then really starting fresh with adding everything in. And I think the key here is the professional development. I mean, it is constant. We are always sharing what we're learning. We're all it's individualized, too. If I feel I need something that maybe everyone else has had more training on, then I go out and find that source, and then I bring it back to the group. So I think the training has been amazing. I also think that the onboarding process has helped tremendously with that. That we have a very detailed process that we go through, and I think that that helps tremendously. So it is. It was a big learning curve at the beginning, but we all kind of did it together, and now we just pass it forward. 

Steven Schaffling  
Cindy raises a great point about like, the onboarding process. You know, the old days of advising where they they'd hand you the advisor manual and then hand you your caseload 24 hours later and say, good luck and and that's not at all the positionality of this office. I mean, generally, we don't give a new advisor a caseload for six weeks after they're at the at the earliest their first day, and there's a significant onboarding process that that is not just informational, right? It's relational, and then it employs typical teaching techniques of shadowing and reverse shadowing and and assessing conversations, right? And then, and then, and then everybody the positionality that that relational component doesn't stop with the student, if that makes sense, that that folks, folks know that they can walk in my door and ask, they walk into Cindy's door and they ask a question, right? And like they and that and we, in some ways, we are each other's best resource.

Ryan Scheckel  
So sounds like the structures in place, the transitions happened. And we're trying to, you know, walk it and live it and have it be the current thing. Let's talk results. Is there anything specifically you'd like to share that you've seen that indicates that this is working? Is there anything that surprised you along the way? Is things being adopted or changing that weren't particularly expected?

Steven Schaffling  
Yeah, I'll tell you that. So we do regular summative assessment annually, and we're about to come into that that phase. And so that has been something that over eight years, that it's about the trend line over over those eight years, right? I'll give an example. When we first started in the model, prior to the current setup, the academic advisors in the office would have told you, we advise on the liberal arts core, and we don't advise on anything besides the liberal arts core. And so one of the learning outcome statements on the very first summative assessment was my advisor helped me learn the requirements of the liberal arts core, and then a five point Likert scale, and the agree rate with that statement was only 58% and so that told me, from the jump, the differentiation of the perspective of the advisors and that of the students and like taking an assessment approach, it isn't it isn't evaluative, right? It isn't punitive, it's all right, we want them to learn the requirements of the core from us. What must we do differently so that they say, Yeah, I learned that from from you and and so you fast forward that eight years later, and the agree rate, generally speaking, from 1000 responses, is about 85% you know, another one that I use as a canary in the coal mine is we have a statement along the lines, a little bit more of an affective statement, but a statement along the lines of, I understand my advisor as a valuable resource in my education for things far beyond course registration. And the agree rate with that statement is, again, about 85% from 1000 responses annually. And so what that's telling me, as I always say, a canary in a coal mine, a sense of like the students perspective on the value, the positionality, and what is it that they're getting from their advisors, so that the five courses I need next semester is the absolute minimum, it's the absolute baseline, and, and, and we're and we're going, we're going beyond that, right? And I could sit here and talk assessment assault results for another hour and a half if you want it, because everybody in this office knows that that's like, what makes me excited? It's success. But I don't, I don't want to bore everyone well.

Ryan Scheckel  
I mean, I appreciate the perspective that you're assessing. You know, like there's a ton of the ton of advisors who feel like the work alone is what they have capacity for. But if we're not reflective in our practice, and if we're not data informed in our practice, then we still have a practice, and we're also saying something about the value of the work that we're doing by leaving it unevaluated. But I'm curious if, from an advising perspective, this change structurally and the type of culture that you're developing, if you've noticed any differences in student behavior, not just, you know, do they agree with a statement or not, but like, what do they do in the advising experience? Are. Are Are they engaging earlier? Are they being more intentional? Are they just more confident advisees in the process? What are you all seeing from a student behavior point of view?

Ryan Howlett  
I don't mind starting. I would just say, you know, what are the one of the really great aspects. So we have a we have a first year advising team, and they do a fantastic job of working with students in a first year level, and really kind of like getting a sense of belonging and introducing them to career resources, both through advising, but also through things like our, you know, our first year seminar course that we have where advisors actually have a part in teaching that class. We call it home college experience, and they are able to kind of share advising resources and just get students comfortable with advising, because they think that's a huge aspect of both retention and student, you know, just feeling like they're belonging on campus. They get a sense of the, you know, navigational resources that they can utilize. One of the first things we do as upper division advisors is we meet with students. Often, the first meeting we have with our sophomores is for a resume review. And I think that that's so intentional. When you think about a student coming in for you know, we could say academic advising appointment, but you're actually coming down and you're going to talk about yourself, you're going to talk about your experiences in your past, where you've been. And I think that's so powerful, because the advisor is asking questions about you. We want to know. We're curious about where you've been, where you where you know you you've worked, but also where you want to go. Where do you want to work? What are, what are some of your career aspirations? It's not too early for those conversations. It only informs you know, where we're going to be able to make suggestions academically and explore majors. Let's say, you know the students undeclared. It just gives you all of those opportunities and ends to talk about the academics. But we're starting on the other side. We're starting with you as a person. And what have you? What have you? You know, what do you have on that resume? If you have one, and if you don't, you know we're going to work with you. So again, those questions are going to keep coming. We're going to use kind of Socratic questioning to kind of get students to reflect on, hey, these are really important questions I should be asking myself as part of this undergraduate experience.

Cindy Zazzara  
I think the other thing I would note here is that as advisors, we're always looking for that lull, and I think the fact that we don't have it. We don't have the big swings that the students are responding to this. They're coming in when they don't have to come in for a hold. They're coming in to just maybe do a resume review or talk about an immersion trip, not just necessarily, what classes Am I taking? Registration is tomorrow. So I think that that really is where it shows and where we feel it the most is that we're busy all the time, which is nice.

Steven Schaffling  
I'll give some data behind Cindy's statement. I mean, we won't, we won't place more than our population is 5200 students. We won't place more than about 2000 Registration Holds annually, but the office will complete 14,001 on one student meetings annually. And so actually, there's a thing in the industry right now where where meeting with your advisor more correlates to retention and persistence. So there's this perception right now that you should just put an advising hold on every student every single semester. And I've seen this at the most recent annual last year I saw, I saw multiple offices presenting on this, and I'm going, No, that's upside down. What you need to do is create the value add of the advising and then end the relational component and build a model from that perspective so that the student understands I trust this person. I'm coming to this person, and I know that they're going to help me across this, divert this range of issues. So so, I mean, if the proof is in the pudding, right, that students come see us on the order of 10s of 1000s of times in a year and and we're not forcing them to.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, I think that the correlation of advising with an impediment to registration, it merits more consideration, for sure. And I think also there's some benefit in the question of what's correlation, what's causation, right? Is, is somebody saw me, so they registered really the argument we want to be making, or is it the students thought the benefit of the educational relationship, and so they saw me? But we won't get too philosophical with those bigger picture questions I am really curious about holds, models we're evaluating it at our institution now and and I'm wondering about what results, you know, we see. And I just know how often people say, Well, you know, you look at this number and then you. See registration happen after that number and and I'm like, I don't know that that's, I don't know that that's the model of for success for us.

Steven Schaffling  
It's not, I mean, I'll just, you know, having lived it at multiple institutions, the the you want to how should I phrase this succinctly, you want to use a scalpel to apply holds because you have finite advising resources. You want to apply your advising resources to the students you know you absolutely need it, and then you want to create a value differentiator for the larger population, and so that they you're leaving room for the larger population to understand the value and come in and see you and have the type of conversation, when and where they need it, and and use a data informed perspective for who's the student. I really must, I really need to see right now and help that student through and and. And it's this, it's this combination, you know, and look, we had this, this approach, led to the highest first to second year retention rate in college history, period full stop, and it's due to the work in this office directly.

Ryan Scheckel  
So the student that we really need to see, the student who perhaps some sort of atypical intervention is needed, you know, for students who perhaps the environment isn't as equitable, or it's not necessarily built for particularly undecided students or international students, low income students. Are you seeing your approach having an effect to sort of even things out and be a little bit more equitable with those students?

Steven Schaffling  
Precisely so it's undecided. First Gen Pell Grant eligible and international at least, at least here and and I would say an emerging topic that we probably don't have time to get into here is that, I mean, we've always known that males retain at a lower rate from first to second year, but that's, there's, there's an issue there with the larger institutional enrollment of males, and it decreasing across the country. So there's, there's, there's, there's another thing there, but yes, the long story short is that, yeah, we're applying resources and proactive, high impact strategy, high impact practices to diversification of the groups that that that might normally retain at a slightly lower rate than than the average. And I mean, undecided is a great example. I'm an undecided liberal arts student in 2026 I mean, there's a ton of societal pressure. I always say when students go home for Thanksgiving break, and their parents, aunts and uncles and family, are asking them, okay, well, what are you going to do with that? And like, the rack rate at Syracuse University is $85,000 a year, and if we're not proactively, intentionally building the human capital for that student through our advising practice so that they can go home and articulate the answer to that question, and articulate how they're leveraging the university's resources to figure out the path then, then we're sort of falling down, and what we're seeing is a significant increase in the pretend, the persistence and retention in those groups, like I said, it's undecided, first gen Pell Grant eligible and international.

Ryan Scheckel  
So I know Molly said that this is the only model she knows of advising, and Cindy has said she had the biggest learning curve. So you know, from each of your perspectives, just looking back at things. Are there any lessons you've learned from the reintegration or the first time integration that you feel is worth sharing with listeners or viewers from other institutions who might be thinking about doing the same thing, like if, if they're considering this staffing approach or trying to scale it up, is what's the most realistic first step, the things that you've learned and might be the low hanging fruit,

Cindy Zazzara  
I would say the first thing is to embrace the change. And I will admit I am a change adverse person, and it has been. It's night and day. I mean, I can't, I don't even actually like to think about how things were prior to Steve coming in, because I feel like it's, this is the way we should do it, and it makes the most sense. And, like I said, holistically, I know my students and that, like, there's no price you can pay for that. Like, that's amazing. I'll add to that.

Molly Clock  
I think it ebbs and flows. I I've only know integration. I firmly believe it. But there are some cases and situations where one takes hierarchy over the other. I'm not going to ask a senior what their plans are post grad when we just found out that they may not graduate in May. Like, that isn't. With the appropriate time for that question. Same with meeting with a sophomore who might not have very limited of their degree completion. Maybe we don't talk about the check boxes that you need to make. Maybe we really dig into what you want to do and what brings you joy and what your strengths are. So I think it's okay to let it ebb and flow, as long for me, it's really just a mindset primarily of these are two big things that we have to consider, your academic success and your career success, and kind of using that formative assessment, that observation of what's the most appropriate. And like Cindy said, when you're the point of contact for your student, and you're using that holistic model, you build that relationship, you get that read, and that comes a little bit more naturally as you get to know your students,

Ryan Howlett  
I would say too. I think this may be anecdotal, but in combining my different career experiences, but I feel like advisors are perfectly situated within that VUCA environment, that volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous career future, because oftentimes advisors have traversed that themselves. I think they often will are coming to advising, not because if that was the thing that they took an undergrad and they thought they were going to be an advisor, they often have various, you know, career experiences that really lend themselves to doing this kind of integrated approach. Because so we've been there, we can help students kind of navigate that, you know, volatile courier environment that they're facing as well.

Ryan Scheckel  
Nice. Now, I know everyone's gonna be writing down VUCA. It's one of the notes. And I know also people are like, second brain. So I'm gonna say it again, because I wanted to remind myself building a second brain. You know, speaking of volatility, there's so much in higher ed right now, where it's it's hard to anticipate the future. It's hard to know where things are going to end up, or what really is maybe the next big thing. So how have you seen your approach this model evolving, especially with stuff like AI and that kind of stuff out there in the world, like, where do you see the changes happening in what you've established so far?

Steven Schaffling  
I need, I need to think about that, because we're constantly changing and evolving. I'll say two things. One, just from the prior conversation, it's really important to recruit and retain the right people as advisors and and I think that that's critical to everything that you that you've just asked and, but I I think that where we're at is approaching it from a perspective of like this, this model allows, allows for so much more in the conversation, as we've discussed, and then what we're doing is applying. We're trying to integrate student tools relative to AI, and I'll give, I'll give an example, something that we built and we're piloting right now this spring is that the it's above 80% of first round interviews occur on essentially on Zoom now, and we made an investment in a virtual like mock interviewing tool that essentially is set up similar to zoom, and it's aI integrated, okay, and where so the AI will give feedback, direct feedback, on the interview performance. And for us, what that does is sets up a scenario that is similar likely to what students will encounter in their very first interview, because so many places are doing it through zoom. And it lets us scale to, you know, if 5000 students want to take advantage of it, whether it's to go on an immersion trip that we're running, or an internship or a first entry level job interview, right? It lets us scale and create, create that scalability for our students, and be cognizant of what's the experience that they're likely to face when they go into that interview. Right? Does that make sense like so we're trying to change our practice to be, to be representative of what students will have to deal with next.

Molly Clock  
That was me realizing that I didn't unmute after my last question. Sorry. But also, back to our resume initiative, I think again, we have a wonderful AI tool that I think it's no secret that students are using AI on resumes like all the time, but more often than not, I think it generates a conversation, especially for a student that maybe doesn't nail it on the first try, and they get that score back, and they're like, oh, I don't I don't really know. I need some help here. That's when they come to us. So it's more facilitating and guiding our conversations than replacing it, at least from my perspective.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, I know listeners for this podcast know that we're continuing. You mean to ask questions about AI, there's there's a lot out there that's being said, and one of the certainties is that if we're not in the conversation, and if we're not participating in it, then then we'll be on the outside looking in. But you know, I I always love getting to meet new people and and learn more about the way that we do our work, that we can and that sort of stuff. But I also like to acknowledge that we're not just about our work, that we're parts of communities and and and we have perspectives that maybe are just just a normal human being sort of thing. But before we transition to that, I don't know if Ryan, you had other comments about AI that you wanted to share, or anything in particular on the AI front?

Ryan Howlett  
Well, I'm super interested in it. I'm currently doing my my EdD, and it's an area I'm very interested in advising, obviously. So I'm really trying to think hard about the intersections between AI and advising. And, you know, of course, I think, like everyone is concerned about, you know, the threat to positions, right? Like I read an article yesterday about how you know what is going to be safe from AI and and I think that the thing that we've really focused on in our office, and we haven't been afraid to either to experiment with AI. I have a hilarious experiment with AI that could not answer one of my questions, and I just, like, spent a couple of days trying to get it to acknowledge that it was making things up. It was, you know, there are going to be those experiences, and we're going to certainly need to test it given our own knowledge. But I think, you know, one of the things that we think a lot about in our office and in the virtual office space that Molly and I talked about with using whiteboards is, how do we cognitively offload some of the informational pieces that advisors have to hold in their heads, right? Like we have so much that we have to remember, think about it, the academic rules, like how it intersects with different departments and the rules for every major and, you know, all of those academic requirements and all the career things that we all the career supports and things we need to hold together, you know, how do we offload some of those things? And if we can do that, how do that will free up that relational competency? Right? We think we talk and think about how to be more relational with our students, and I think that that's, that's really where the focus is going to have to be, with AI. How does that free up space for advisors to be relational? That's going to empower better, stronger conversations, that are going to help our students, and it's going to, you know, that's, that's the dream. I think that that's really where we want to, to utilize. Ai really think about how that tools can, can be helpful in that regard, right?

Steven Schaffling  
And Ryan shekel like, if, if you're not on the bus early, to help and steer the bus where it's going, standing in front of the bus saying, no, no, no, don't go. There is not a successful alternative position, right? And so, like I think that that that position advising needs to position itself on this, on the relational pillar, and truly the the learning outcomes of all right, what are students getting from us? And they need to demonstrate it, and they need to do it now and then. They need to help steer the bus on how AI can help decrease the anxiety or the struggle or the hurdles for students who have to navigate the same seven systems that advisors need to navigate in order to add classes, right? And so what I can do is help that piece of it, if you're positioned in advising, to do the other stuff.

Ryan Scheckel  
And I think one of the through lines for our conversation today, as we wrap up, is is it doesn't matter necessarily, what the the technology is, what the quote, unquote structure or rules or organizational design is, if it's not about us getting back to that human component, right? Being student centered, being learner centered, recognizing the humanity in the relationships that we have, if that isn't the focus, then it's really easy to lose ourselves and and it's it's thrilling to hear that the the integration of the academic and career and sort of record sides of things in your college and for your folks is working. And I want to encourage our listeners and anyone who might be viewing this later, you know, to to connect with this and really pursue that. Question is, am I being supported? Am I finding the support that I need to be the best human I can be in this educational relationship? So Steve and team Molly, Ryan Cindy. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks for being on the podcast. We're so glad that you're here, and believe me, there are certainly more conversations to be had.