The Coach Behind the Medal: What the Winter Olympics Can Teach Higher Ed About Academic Advising
Behind every Olympic medalist is someone (a coach, a mentor, a scout) who saw something in them before they saw it in themselves. Someone who understood the sport deeply enough to recognize raw potential and knew how to cultivate it into world-class performance. In higher education, we call those people academic advisors. And the quality of that advising can mean the difference between a student who thrives and one who never finds their footing.
Humanizing Academic Advising: The Ted Lasso Effect
Let’s be honest: academic advising can sometimes feel more like a rushed transaction than a meaningful conversation. Advisors are juggling impossibly high student-to-advisor ratios, training is all over the place, and too often, compliance takes precedence over actual student development. What should be a formative and inspiring experience for students sometimes ends up as nothing more than a logistical checkpoint.