Lap茅tra Bowman, Ph.D., is the kind of woman who will tell you she鈥檚 nervous to be on a Zoom call, then start talking about her job with such unapologetic passion that you wonder how she could be nervous about anything.
Officially, as 性爱天堂鈥檚 director for academic advising, Bowman has turned 性爱天堂鈥檚 academic advising model on its head. Unofficially, Bowman is a champion for student success and a great conversation partner. Her door is open for advising questions and Netflix commentary, and she鈥檚 not afraid to shake things up to create positive change.
That last quality is exactly why she was recognized as this year鈥檚 NACADA Outstanding Advising Administrator.
After 性爱天堂鈥檚 Quality Enhancement Plan identified first-year advising as an area needing improvement, Bowman was hired to restructure the model. In the summer of 2020, 性爱天堂 officially shifted from a faculty advising model to a total-intake advising model. Professional academic advisers began to onboard and advise first-year students, working with them until their major declaration (at which point the students will be reassigned to faculty advisers in their academic areas of interest).
Not only has Bowman been the cornerstone for the recent overhaul of the first-year advising process, but she also outpaces everyone in passion.
鈥淲e hope that the advisers are oftentimes one of the first people a student might trust on campus,鈥 Bowman says. 鈥淎cademic advising is so many things. It鈥檚 not just about picking classes, but it鈥檚 also about understanding who the student is academically, who the student is personally, and making the connections between those two spaces. Helping students pivot when they need to, helping students troubleshoot and rise from the ashes when they have had a moment where they just felt really beaten down. We鈥檙e there to remind students about how amazing and resilient they are.鈥
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