Poole undergraduate advising’s Lauren Brown sharing the college’s Peer Advising story at conferences

For the past 10 years, undergraduate students in NC State University’s Poole of Management have had the opportunity to help incoming students make a successful transition to college life. The students are selected through a competitive application process for the role of Peer Leaders.

“The Peer Leader organization is an integral part of our academic advising program,” said Dr. Lauren Brown, associate director of advising in Poole College's Office of Undergraduate Programs. “They work with us to make sure new freshmen and new transfer students get individual attention to assist in their transition to NC State,” she said.

This summer, Brown is presenting insight gained from her experience with the program at regional and national higher education conferences.

In May, she and fellow academic advisor Julie Lawson and former Poole advisor Shannon Edward presented a paper and poster at the National Academic Advising Association Region 3 Conference held May 14-16 in Greenville, S.C. The conference was attended by professional and faculty advisors from throughout the Southeast.

Their topic was on “How to recruit and retain strong students to sustain your Peer Advising program.” Two student Peer Leaders, Lauren Stigall and Tori McGowan, “attended with us to add value to the presentation from a student perspective,” Brown said.

“The presentation was extremely well received,” Brown said. “In fact, although it was (presented) from 5 to 6 p.m. and people probably would have wanted to be at dinner by that point, a number of attendees stayed after to speak with us and ask us questions,” she said. One of those was an advisor at a university where Brown had consulted on both advising and the Peer Leader program. “She attended our presentation and talked about how the information I shared has been helpful to her program,” Brown said.

A key take away from her presentations, Brown said, is that “you can have a successful peer advising program with unpaid student volunteers" if you make sure to:

• Identify and use your advocates 
• Work with members of the college community so they understand what the program is about and why it is valuable and 
• Develop non-monetary benefits of the program that students would be interested in.”
• Poole College has a competitive application process for its Peer Leader program. “We were highly successful this year,” Brown said. “We had 70 student applications for only 15 spots in the Peer Leader program. That is amazing considering it is not a paid position.”

She added, “Peer Leaders are so valuable to our office; we put a lot of time into training them on advising matters so they can help us.” In return, the Peer Leaders gain valuable leadership and mentoring skills.

Brown’s presentation has been selected as a featured presentation at the national NACADA conference in October 2013, where she also is presenting her abstract, “From Advisor to Advising Administrator: Steps to Success.”

Her abstract reflects steps that Brown herself has taken at Poole College. She had an internship at Poole College’s Office of Undergraduate Programs during her master’s program in higher education administration at NC State’s College of Education, and joined the full-time staff right after earning her master’s degree. Brown then held a position as an academic advisor in the First Year College while working on her doctorate in higher education administration, and rejoined the Poole College advising staff after completing her doctorate. She was named associate director of advising at Poole College in 2010. 

Brown’s doctoral dissertation was on the topic, “Using Personality Type to Predict Student Success in High Technology Classroom Environments,” a logical fit given NC State’s focus on engineering and technology, and Poole College’s focus on the management of technology and innovation.

Poole College has six professional advisors on its staff serving the college’s 2,500 undergraduate students. It began using the professional advising model in 2007.