What Julia Brown liked most about the academic advising symposium put on by George Mason University was that it focused on enriching the experience of students transferring to George Mason from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS).
“The student is so valuable,” said Brown, coordinator of transfer services at Northern Virginia Community College. “When they get the right information they will have a smoother transition. They won’t lose credits. They will have more confidence, be motivated.”
The process can be uneven when communication and information bottlenecks occur between Mason and community college advisors. That is what the second annual Mason/VCCS Academic Advising Symposium, attended by 147 university and community college advisors, endeavored to overcome.
“This has been an ongoing process,” said Wayne Adams, an advisor from Mason’s School of Art and a co-chair of Mason’s Academic Advisors Network (MAAN), which put on the event. “We need students to get the right information. If not, they come here and there’s a higher risk of not retaining the student or not getting them to graduation in a timely fashion.”
The one-day symposium, funded by Mason’s 4-VA Collaborative, featured discussions about best practices, building relationships with students and opportunities at Mason for adult learners.
But it also worked to create an information highway between Mason’s advisors and those in the community colleges. A dedicated email link was established for community college advisors to get quick and accurate information about advisor availability at Mason, program details and transfer policies.
“Email me and I’ll connect you,” Adams said he told community college advisors. “If you have both institutions working together and communicating, that will only increase the information flowing between them. The more information disseminated to our colleges, the more informed the student is before they even get here.”
“We are especially grateful to MAAN for spearheading this good work,” said Janette Muir, Mason’s 4-VA campus coordinator and associate provost for undergraduate education. “The more opportunities we have to engage with our VCCS colleagues, the greater chance to clearly communicate changes in programs and policies. The better we are at working together, the more our students will benefit.”