'Advising Tips and Techniques' Is Next Topic for 'Provost's Conversations' Series

Three members of the Old Dominion University faculty will lead the next Provost's Conversations on Teaching and Learning, Tuesday, Feb. 8, addressing the topic "Keeping Students on Track: Advising Tips and Techniques."

Leading the conversation will be Jennifer Usis, director of undergraduate advising in the College of Business and Public Administration; Jennifer Younkin, senior lecturer and chief departmental adviser, Department of Psychology; and John Hackworth, University Professor and program director, Department of Electrical Engineering Technology.

The brown bag lunch series program is scheduled for 12:30-1:30 p.m. in the E.V. Williams Engineering and Computational Science Building auditorium (room 1202).

Participants will engage in a lively conversation about the best ways to advise students. The conversationalists believe that the aim of an adviser is to provide an outside-the-classroom experience that supports students' education. Advising, they say, is not just about picking classes, as the Catalog and Degree Works already cover coursework selection. Rather, it is about enriching their college experience and helping them become mature, independent, critically thinking adults.

The discussion will focus on knowing campus resources, understanding basic counseling techniques and encouraging student development.

Usis is Master Advisor certified. Since the late 1990s, she reports that she has worked in "all four compass points of the university." She both directly and indirectly advises the nearly 3,000 business majors, specializing in graduation and academic difficulty.

Younkin teaches, advises and serves as the faculty adviser for Psi Chi (the international honor society in psychology) and the Association for Psychology Students. She has received the College of Sciences' Distinguished Lecturer Award and Outstanding Undergraduate Advisor Award, the Division of Student Affairs' Advisor of the Year Award and Shining Star Award.

Hackworth serves as chief academic adviser for electrical engineering technology. He has been advising and mentoring students at ODU for more than 23 years. He is the "face-to-face adviser" for approximately 100 on-campus students and the "virtual adviser" for about 100 Teletechnet students.

For more information about the Provost's Conversations on Teaching and Learning series, including highlights from last year's Conversations and a calendar of the dates of upcoming sessions, visit http://clt.odu.edu/pctl.