Goals and Principles

Creating a Campus Culture for Advising

Six Goals and Principles

Vice Provost and Dean Carolyn de la Pena addresses the UCAAC

By Carolyn Thomas, Dean & Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
Adapted from her UCAAC Welcome Address
  • Goal #1:  Expand the number of advisors in the colleges & divisions  
    Principle:  Student success depends on consistent, regular advising, and that is impossible with current numbers
  • Goal #2: New positions must have a clear relationship to professional advising staff
    Principle:  there is strength, and knowledge, in numbers.
  • Goal #3: Make training an ongoing process and a priority investment.
    Principle:  We can’t transform the lives of our learners unless we make our own learning a top priority.
  • Goal #4:  Have a common unit that creates advising tools for the 21st Century.
    Principle:  Nobody “has” any particular students. No department, no dean owns students.  WE have students.  UC DAVIS has students.
  • Goal #5:  Join together across colleges to identify the problems that the tools should address.
    Principle:  Tools don’t solve problems, people who build tools collaboratively do.
  • Goal #6:  Ask whether analytics can help us.
    Principle:  Student success may rely upon knowing things we don’t.