LDAs (Lower Division Advisors)

In this Issue:

• P’28 Move-In Guide and ’28 weekly messages
• Reception for families moving in students early for Pre-Orientation – RSVP requested
• Meal plan start date and Pre-Orientation
• Lower Division Advisor Assignments

Today has been jam packed with meetings and prep for my ’27’s move-in tomorrow, so we will get right to it.

P’28 Move-In Guide and ’28 weekly message

Today we sent our P’28s their second to last weekly message: the Move-In Guide. This is a lengthy message (apologies up front) but should have all the info you need for move-in. Please be sure to read the general info that applies to all move-in days, AND the info for your student’s specific move-in date (8/16, 17, or 21).

New ’28 students got a message about Academic Success, Move-In Prep, WakeWare & Reminders yesterday, and a message today as well: New Deac 101 Deadline Reminder.

Reception for families moving in students early for Pre-Orientation – RSVP requested

For those incoming families who are moving in their students for Pre-Orientation on the 16th or 17th, we will be holding a welcome reception so that new families can meet each other and meet some of our administrators.

Please RSVP if you will attend the Family Welcome Reception on Saturday, August 17 at 4 p.m. in the Sutton Center Upper Gym (#21 on this map). Dress is casual, and there will be brief remarks at 4:30 p.m. This is an optional event but certainly encouraged if you are still in town.

Note that this reception is just for parents and family members, not your Pre-Orientation students; they will be in Pre-Orientation activities at that same time.

Meal plan start date and Pre-Orientation

Students’ meal plans become active on Wednesday, August 21. If your ’28 or transfer student is doing a Pre-Orientation program, their program will be providing meals. However, if your student wants to get additional snacks/drinks during their free time away from the program, they will need to bring cash or a debit card to purchase those.

For families on campus August 21-22, you can use the Menu and Hours link on the Dining website to see what is open on a given day/time.

Lower Division Advisor Assignments

New students have now been assigned their Academic Advisors in Workday. Sometimes we refer to them as LDAs (Lower Division Advisors), because they advise your students during their Divisional requirements, before they declare their majors.  

But before we dive into the meat of today’s message, I want to reassure you that time has been set aside for students and LDAs to have a 1-on-1 meeting next week. That 1-on-1 meeting will be the time for students to begin asking them questions and talking about their schedules. As you might imagine, many of our LDAs are wrapping up summer travel and family time this week, so we would kindly ask students not to begin emailing their LDA now with questions or requesting meetings; those meetings are already scheduled as part of Orientation.

Today I want to share some insight on the advisor assignment process.

Students are randomly paired with a lower division academic advisor (usually a faculty member, but sometimes a staff member) and a student advisor (a sophomore, junior, or senior). New students are also assigned to an advising group of around 10 new students total.  In most cases, students in advising groups are intentionally housed in the same residence hall. Some students may even find themselves taking the same course (e.g., FYS 100), the professor for which may also be their Lower-Division Advisor. This purposeful layering surrounds students with unconditional support that doesn’t hinge on competing with their peers for visibility and belonging in The Forest.

My own academic advisor was a science professor and I knew I wanted to be an English major. I remember thinking [read: worrying] that my advisor and I would have little in common and why the heck couldn’t I have been given an English professor as an advisor?

There is, of course, a method to the madness. A lot of times, students come in thinking they will major in X but turn out to major in Y. By having an advisor randomly assigned, it can help students keep an open mind to the MANY major options. It also avoids putting students in an awkward situation of having to tell their advisor they do not wish to major in that person’s department after all. No matter who their lower division advisor is, all academic advisors are well versed in our curriculum requirements and are poised to help first-year students navigate the course selection process.

Having an advisor in a different department also stretches our students interpersonally. I had to figure out how to talk to my advisor and form a positive, constructive relationship even though our interests were vastly different. I would not have learned nearly as much if my advisor had been an English professor with whom it would have been easier to form a rapport. As your students progress through college and move toward their future careers, it will be vital for them to know how to form productive working relationships with people, especially ones with whom they don’t see a ton of commonality.

That said, many students wish to connect early on with representatives from potential majors or minors, and we absolutely encourage this. It takes a village, so your students can and should seek out other voices and mentors as thinking partners.

A student’s assigned academic advisor is the starting point – and they will retain that advisor until declaring a major in spring of their sophomore year. But students can reach out to other advisors as needed: that might be faculty in a potential major area, or the full-time professional academic counselors in the Office of Academic Advising, who will always be ready to provide good counsel and recommendations.

Finally, the advising relationship depends a lot on what the student puts into it. I always told my advisees that I will be as present – or absent – in their Wake Forest experience as they wished for me to be. We treat students as young adults and expect them to communicate with us when they need something, and most of the time ‘no news is good news.’ In my experience, when I reached out to my new student advisees en masse to ask how they were doing, very few of them responded – and that’s OK! That typically means that everything is going fine and they weren’t in need of help.

Be assured that new students have to have a face-to-face meeting with their advisor at Orientation/New Deac Week, and then again mid- to late-fall before registering for spring semester classes, so there is always a personal check-in required. That might be all the interaction a given student has with their advisor, or they are free to ask for more mentoring, more time, etc. if they want/need it.

Like most relationships, the more you put into it, the better results you will have. Your students will find the balance that works best for them.