I am writing to provide an update on several changes to undergraduate advising that will be introduced in the coming years. We shared this information with the advising community late last week and presented a brief summary at the Faculty Senate meeting on October 2. As we continue to evolve AU’s advising model, we are deeply committed to:

• improving our support of students as they pursue their academic, personal, and career goals; and
• creating opportunities for advisors’ professional growth and advancement, recognition of advising excellence, and a positive work environment.

Within the past two years, we have strengthened the connection between first-year advising and our schools and colleges to ensure that students received more personalized guidance related to their intended field of study. As we welcome the fall 2025 incoming class, we will move further in this direction by fully integrating advisors who have worked only with first-year students back into the school-based undergraduate advising teams. This shift will contribute to a more seamless student experience across all four years and will increase student access to advisors by lowering average caseloads.

In addition, we will be reconsidering the current AU Experience (AUx) program and how it fits into the AU Core. As part of this effort, we are disentangling the advisor and instructor roles. This change will allow our first-year advisors greater bandwidth to focus on supporting individual students. We will be back in touch about the curricular changes to our first-year courses in the coming weeks. We will be increasing full-time faculty engagement in the first-year experience program.  

Finally, we intend to establish more consistent processes for undergraduate advising throughout the university and build standardized structures for advisors’ career progression at AU.

Please know that these changes are not related to budget or employee performance, and while certain details are still under development, the university will comply with the terms of our bargaining agreement with SEIU. 

We are grateful to our academic advisors for the crucial role that they play in the student experience and look forward to working with them on next steps.