Academic advisors play an essential role in providing a prosperous college experience for all students, yet some students struggle to form a continuous communicative relationship with their academic advisor. Why is that? What can academic advisors do to help minimize student communication disconnect with students? To help answer these questions, my colleague Tessa Smith and I reflected on the most common forms of communication disconnect that we experience in our professional roles. The most common forms of communication disconnect that we experience with students are:

• Not responding to email communication in a timely manner or altogether
• Failing to attend scheduled meetings or appointments with academic professionals, such as academic advisors
• Not returning voicemails in a timely manner or altogether
•  Lack of reaching out for assistance, such as help with courses
• Lack/reduced levels of engagement during appointments

So, what happens when students do not actively communicate with academic advisors regarding academic needs, course progress, their experience at the institution, questions/concerns, etc.? In our experience, students are more likely to:

• Enroll in incorrect courses for their degree
• Become unaware of academic opportunities, such as internships and study abroad
• Remain enrolled in an unfit major or program path
• Transfer in/out of incorrect courses
• Become unaware of essential academic policies and procedures

As higher education professionals, how exactly can we help reduce student communication disconnect and promote active communication and engagement with our students? We found the below techniques to be helpful and successful in forming a communicative advisor-advisee relationship:

• Practice nodding during communication, which shows interest in the conversation and encourages dialogue back from the student. Finding and sharing commonalities with students. For example, if during a conversation, your student says they really enjoy cooking or have pets, which are things you also enjoy or have-share it!
• Engage in reciprocity with students by asking open-ended questions such as “how did that make you feel” or “tell me more about this.” I am sure we have all experienced the hard “yup” or “nope” from students before, which never really gets us anywhere, so utilizing those open-ended questions can really keep students communicating.
• Outline future appointments and/or meetings. By reviewing next meetings and/or appointments with students, it gives them something to potentially look forward to and keeps them connected to you as a resource.
• Exercise self-disclosure. This ties into finding and sharing commonalities with students.
•  Share information, tell stories when appropriate. We connect and understand by telling parts of our stories to others!

Tessa Smith, M.S.
Coordinator of the Student Success Center
University of Maine System
tessa.r.smith@maine.edu

Kaycee Gnatowski, Ed.D
Transfer Credit & Retention Specialist
Mary Baldwin University
klgnatowski@marybaldwin.edu