June is the time for spring orientation at colleges and universities. That’s when incoming students visit their new campuses, take placement tests, participate in academic advising and perhaps register for classes. And at most colleges, parents don’t attend academic advising or registration sessions with their students. While this might cause you some anxiety, never fear.
What is Academic Advising?
During academic advising sessions, faculty and professional advisors help students map out their college careers. They teach the students about general graduation requirements and the specific requirements for their major or majors. Students need to understand what they’re being taught during these sessions, since many universities provide ever decreasing amounts of advising to students as they learn the system. And this is fine, since students tend to need less guidance as they nature. Focusing during the first academic advising session is critical. And that often doesn’t happen when parents attend along with their students.
How Involved Should Parents Be?
Unfortunately, the trend is for parents to become more involved in these sessions, or at least try to. NACADA—the National Academic Advising Association—noted this on their website. This is for several reasons, since some parents aren’t confident that their students can handle these sessions on their own. Parents are also understandably concerned about their student’s ability to graduate on time, or to get the classes they need. Further, based on their experience with their students in K-12 education, they’re used to this level of involvement. And with the shrinking size of American families as compared to thirty years ago, parents have more time to devote to their students and the conduct of their lives. But that doesn’t mean their over-involvement is a good idea.
A Better Way
The University of Maryland’s Clark School of Engineering offers a separate website for the parents of future engineers. This gives them the chance to show parents a better way they can partner with their students and the university. And while the site doesn’t tell parents to stay away, the site can reduce parental anxiety. The site also features a PowerPoint presentation that explains the school’s academic advising process so parents know exactly what happens when their student meets with their advisor. This approach both acknowledges the important role parents can play and helps them be a better partner—a winning combination.
SUNY University at Buffalo has a similar website for parents on academics, so they can have many of their general questions answered before they attend any on-campus programs. This should also serve to make the parent and family sessions during orientation more fruitful. The University also explains academic advising in clear, simple terms on their site.
Don’t Swoop In
One of the worst things you can do is to step in and do everything for your student once they’re in college. Examples of this include calling the residence hall because it’s too warm, or demanding to speak with an instructor because of a grade their student received. We refer to these parents as helicopter parents (or worse yet-Blackhawk parents) because they swoop in and fire away on behalf of their student. This prevents the student from handling tasks they should be handling as a young adult, and creates bad will at the university.
It’s better to shift your relationship so you are a consultant to your student as they handle their emerging adult responsibilities—as tough as they may be. Giving them suggestions or advice and coaching them through the challenges of adult tasks is often harder than doing it yourself. This is much like teaching someone how to drive versus driving yourself—but they have to learn sometime. What better place to do that than in a supportive college environment?
Letting your student go to their academic advising appointment by themselves is often the first step in letting go. Step back and watch them fly.