Success Stories

Does Appreciative Advising work? The answer is YES!

A number of higher education institutions have used Appreciative Advising to dramatically improve the success and academic achievement of their students. Here are just a few examples:

How Eight Institutions Have Incorporated Appreciative Advising

Since the 2002 introduction of Appreciative Inquiry as an academic advising tool (Bloom & Martin, 2002), there has been a great deal of interest in intentionally infusing what is now known as Appreciative Advising (AA) into individual advising sessions, the curriculum, and programmatic interventions. The term “Appreciative Advising” was first introduced at the Student Academic Services Office at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (Kamphoff, Hutson, Amundsen, & Atwood, 2007) and popularized by various presentations and workshops at National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) annual (Amundsen & Hutson, 2005) and regional conferences since 2005.

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of how some of the early pioneers of Appreciative Advising are successfully employing this cutting-edge philosophy to improve student retention and satisfaction.

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University of North Carolina Greensboro

In a fall 2006 pilot, readmitted dismissed students were asked to voluntarily sign a contract with Student Academic Services in which they committed to several Appreciative Advising sessions in which developed a personal academic recovery plan. At the end of the fall 2006 semester, 90% of the participants in the program were eligible to continue in the spring 2007 semester, and 58% earned term GPAs of over 3.00. The mean GPA among participants was 2.86. Conversely, among students who did not participate, 33% percent were eligible to continue, and the mean GPA was 1.29. Since then the average growth of participants’ GPA has been consistently higher than those who did not participate in the program.

Given the success of the pilot, the university ultimately adopted a new policy requiring students who have been readmitted after academic dismissal to participate in the Appreciative Advising sessions that Student Academic Services provides In fall 2007, the first semester in which all formerly dismissed students were required to engage in contracts, 92% were able to continue at the end of their first semester back.