Advising is one thing that is very important during one’s freshman year, and this year Ashland made some changes to the system. Normally, students would be given a faculty advisor in the department that corresponds with the major they have chosen. However, now freshmen will be advised by one of four Professional Academic Advisors during the first semester of their freshman year.

These advisors are located on the seventh floor of the library and are part of the Center for Academic Support. Other services in this center include tutoring services, and disability services.

Executive Director for Center for Academic Support Kathy Stone said she hopes these changes will benefit students. She said it will be good because now everything is one place.

“I think what will be nice is that there’s one place that they can go to get help,” she said. “And they may not know what kind of help they need but by coming here…if they need advising; we can then get them to tutoring; if they need disability services we’re up here; we can refer them to career services. So I think it will benefit them because we’re going to coordinate our advising initiatives and then also our retention initiatives.”

Part of Stone’s role includes student success and retention. She said they put all of the services together so it will be easier for students to receive help. Another goal is to increase the freshman retention rate.

“At Ashland, the freshman retention rate is the one we really need to increase,” she said. “When we look at once they get to their sophomore status, they typically stay. So we go from like a 73% retention rate from freshmen to sophomore year, but once they hit sophomore it jumps to like 80%. So we wanted to look at kind of a ‘one-stop-shop,’ but we also wanted to look at how we can actually intervene with freshmen right away and make sure they know they’ve got somebody they can talk to.”

Heidi Jones, professional academic advisor, agreed with Stone and said that having freshmen advised by a professional advisor is nothing against the faculty, but that it will be easier in the long run.

“There’s just a lot that goes on that first semester, first year,” she said. “So we thought if we could have them all advised by a professional advisor we can help sort through those transitional issues and really make sure the department or field that they want to study is really the best fit for them.”

The freshmen will be split between four professional advisors due to the major or field that they have chosen. LeeAnn Larson will be working with those in Education; Kelly Kossick with Nursing and Health Sciences; Business majors will be working with Megan Sherar; and Arts and Sciences majors will be working with Jones.

Stone also explained that the freshmen will be given a College Student Inventory. This will assess motivational skills, coping skills, and receptivity to assistance.

“What we’re hoping is that every freshman will meet with an advisor during the first month of school, or by the end of September, to go over this assessment,” she said. “There’s not right or wrong answers, but we’re hoping from it is that we can identify areas where the student might need resources.”

Both Stone and Jones said the Center for Academic Support’s goal is to be more than just advising for students. They agreed that they environment is meant to be welcoming and students are always welcome.

“I would just encourage students to come here,” Jones said. “We want students to come up here and study. This is meant to be a student-centric place. Even when we’re not ‘open’ necessarily – the advising offices might not be open – the floor is still open.”

Stone agreed.

“If somebody’s homesick, I want them to know they can come in and see their advisor,” she said. “So our goal is to reach out and talk to each one of them and then we’ll help them schedule, help them with four-year-plans, that kind of thing. There will be an advisor available from 8-5 every day. There’s always somebody that can see them.”