In the Fall of 2014 I took two courses.
First, I took Karen Day's HRD 653 Consulting: Fundamental and Practice. This course was interesting to me as it covered a subject about which I knew nothing. The practice of providing educational consulting was an unknown to me. And since I didn't anticipate ever running a consulting practice, it was a wonderful opportunity to explore educational advising which again was just exactly what I need to be learning about. Our veterinary technology students at York County Community College all needed advising with me and I really had no idea what I was doing. I've attached two products from this class, one is a short statement and poem on the Art of Consulting and the other is my synthesis paper which compares consulting to advising and shares the philosophies that became important to me.
The second class that took in the Fall of 2014 was an independent study seminar with Mike Brady, HRD 699. This gave me an opportunity to further develop advising documents to use with my students. My goal was to try to cross the divide between student affairs advising of students and academic advising. The role of each seems sometimes unclear and confusing to students. I wanted my role to partly be to clarify the role that each of us play in the academic journey of students and how they are both valuable roles. The paperwork attempts to assimilate concepts new students discuss with student affairs advisors prior to meeting with me, make sure they know where to go with any unanswered questions, and then follows the same format for returning students as I meet with them each semester.