Advising & Mentoring
Advising and mentoring are crucial for what sets smaller schools like Butler apart from large schools. At Butler, advising and mentoring are about more than just making sure students get enrolled in the classes they need to complete their degree. The resources in this section will familiarize faculty with tools that they can use to help advise and mentor students as well as campus services for helping students figure out their future path.
Academic advising is not just about scheduling classes. It is an educational process in which the student and advisor are partners in meeting established learning outcomes, working toward academic success, and outlining steps for achieving the student’s personal, academic, and career goals. At Butler, academic advising provides students with the opportunity to build a collaborative relationship with the advisor in order to gain assistance in planning the student’s educational career and to learn the skills needed and resources available to support academic success.
At Butler, academic advising is a critical component of the teaching-learning relationship. Students with declared majors are advised by Butler faculty in their disciplinary area of concentration. Exploratory students meet with academic advisors in the Center for Academic Success and Exploration. Advisors take time to get to know the student by becoming aware of the student’s interests as well as personal, academic, and career goals, and helping the student develop a plan to achieve those goals.
Students can expect their advisor to:
- Assist the student in understanding the purposes and goals of higher education and its effects on the student’s life and personal goals
- Understand and effectively interpret the curriculum, graduation requirements, and university and college policies and procedures
- Assist the student in gaining decision-making skills and in assuming responsibility for educational plans and achievements
- Encourage and guide the student as he or she defines and develops realistic goals
- Encourage and support the student as he or she develops clear and attainable educational plans
- Provide the student with information about, and strategies for, utilizing the available resources and services on campus.
- Monitor progress toward meeting the student’s degree plan and goals
- Assist the student in working closely with other faculty
- Be accessible for meetings via office hours, one-on-one appointments, telephone, or email
- Maintain confidentiality
You can find instructions for removing an advising hold here.
The answer to this question (and more!) is located in the my.butler Advisor Training Manual.
You can look up information about students using the instructions located here.
Yes! Many helpful pieces of information are included in the Advisor Training Manual.
Have the student complete the Major Change form and submit it to their college’s Associate Dean.
Share the Transfer Credit Approval Form with the student and have them complete it, including securing signatures from relevant Department Chairs/Program Directors. They should then submit it to their college’s dean’s office.
There are many helpful forms located on Registration and Record’s website, in the section called Forms for Faculty and Staff.
Late Add FAQs is a very helpful resource that outlines the rules and procedures for enrollment in courses after the Add deadline has passed.
Watching this instructional video on how to prepare for NSR will give you the information you need to help incoming students enroll in courses.
Through Canvas, you can access information and resources related to advising by visiting the Butler University Advisor Training site. The purpose of this site is to provide a central repository of University (and college-specific) advisor training/reference materials and to ensure that advisors have the information they need to support their advisees. The first 9 modules contain University advising content and modules 10-15 contain college-specific content.
Descriptions of the components of the Core and student requirements are located on the Core Curriculum website.
Several offices and programs on campus provide student support services.
Navigate is a management platform that allows faculty, advisors, administrators, staff from academic support units to develop coordinated care in support of student success. It also provides students a powerful tool that they can use to more easily access academic support resources, schedule appointments, and even find classmates to study with. Advisors can access data in a single location. Navigate allows faculty to submit feedback in the form of early term grades and to raise alerts for students who may require additional attention. Administrators can use Navigate to use analytical tools to identify in need of, and the impact of, interventions with the goal of increasing persistence and degree completion. Faculty Advisors can access the system via https://butler.campus.eab.com/. For more information, contact navigate@butler.edu.