This page includes resources and support for faculty to advise beyond major checklists and graduation requirements.
- Faculty advisors leverage their teaching skills to support students to fulfill their goals at SCU.
- Faculty provide mentoring in their field and help students find opportunities to explore through major and minor selection, research, internships, fellowships, career opportunities, and graduate school.
Helping students discern their major/minor
Faculty play an important role in helping students determine their academic focus at SCU. In conversations with students, faculty can share their own experiences trying out majors and how they found the path that worked for them. Choosing a major can involve trial and error, but many students feel that uncertainty about their major is a sign of failure. Faculty can talk with students about the ways majors can prepare them for different careers, lifestyles and opportunities after graduation.
Faculty can also help students evaluate when a major is not a good fit for them, and to explore other options. Many students continue in a major in which they are not successful for longer than they should because they cannot imagine alternatives. This is an opportunity for faculty, as teachers, to help students think critically about what works in their college plans, and where there is room for exploration and re-evaluation.
Consider questions students might ask you
Help students connect their major/minor with post-graduate opportunities
Faculty can support students in linking their major and coursework to post-graduate careers and studies. Students interested in graduate school should talk to faculty advisors to identify faculty who work in their prospective field or who pursued this type of graduate education. Faculty can help students understand the pros and cons of graduate work, and the level and type of graduate work needed for the career they wish to pursue. Not all career paths require graduate degrees, or prefer work experience before graduate study. Faculty advisors’ experience in their field can help students choose the right path. Departments, schools and institutes at SCU offer programs about career and post-graduate opportunities. Faculty advisors should point students to these offerings.
Research opportunities and internships are important areas that connect students to their major and career paths. Research with faculty tends to be organized by individual faculty, and students may ask advisors for help identifying faculty in their department who work with students. Internships are often organized at the department level, but experts are also available in the College of Arts and Sciences, Leavey School of Business and School of Engineering.
Specialized career and graduate school advising is available at SCU in Health Professions, Pre-Law and Pre-Teaching.
The SCU Career Center offers a variety of resources to help students figure out their career interests and skills, to link career interests with majors and minors, and to prepare to enter the job market.
Students interested in applying for post-graduate fellowships like Fulbrights, Truman Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and many other fellowships should contact the Office of Student Fellowships for support.
Read more about how faculty have expanded their advising beyond discussing requirements:
Advising As Activism, Wendy M Christensen Inside Higher Ed, 9/8/16
Advising as Teaching: The Power of Evidence-Based Teaching Practices in Academic Advising
Colleen Rose, Nacada, 2/24/20
