Advisor of the Month is an award in which staff on campus who have academic advising roles can give their advising peers recognition for their ability to go above and beyond in their roles and with students.
November’s Advisor of the Month is Katie Barnard, Academic Advisor in Mechanical Engineering. One of her nominations shows that Katie is an advisor who not only works hard to improve student’s access and path through the systems of the university but also lifts other advisors up to do the same:
“Recently Katie has worked to ensure that our professional development as advisors is a priority. For consistent development, she created a book club where we read through the “New Advisor Handbook” by NACADA. She leads the book club and invited all engineering advisors to attend weekly to engage in discussion on how we can improve as advisors and learn from one another. Katie has also begun an initiative to break down barriers that are inhibiting our engineering students to go abroad. She has done this by taking the initiative to articulate programs abroad and work with the office of learning abroad to identify preset places that our engineering students can go to get an abroad experience.”
Katie is an advisor on campus who is taking change into her own hands for the problems she sees, and her students take notice! She shared the following about her advising:
“I have loved working with college students since I was a peer advisor as an undergrad. My favorite part about being an academic advisor is being able to connect to students one-on-one and help them with the transition to college and to thrive while they’re here. Orientation and Graduation are my two favorite times of the year! Whether it’s helping new students register for their very first schedule or watching students walking across the stage after earning their degree, I feel very lucky to do the work that I do.”