SAM Center Receives National Award

The Student Advising and Mentoring Center at Sam Houston State University has been selected as a 2005 Outstanding Institutional Advising Program by the National Academic Advising Association.

Sam Houston State is one of six universities nationwide to be honored. The only other Texas university to receive the award this year is the University of Texas-Austin.

The Outstanding Advising Program Awards annually recognize programs that document innovative and/or exemplary practices resulting in improvement of academic advising service. The awards this year will be presented during the academic association's national conference in Las Vegas in October.

"I am pleased with this award because it endorses the uniqueness and purposes of the SAM Center," said William P. Fleming, director of the program at SHSU.

"The creativity in programs that truly benefits our students, the dedication and camaraderie of faculty and staff in advising and working with students, the strong desire of all our personnel to help our students, and the Sam Houston community spirit that exists at the SAM Center have made it the distinctive entity it is," Fleming said.

All new students, students who have a grade point average below 2.5, and students who have not satisfied the requirements of the Texas State Initiative test are required to be advised. For the fall semesters at SHSU, this represents approximately 55 percent of all undergraduate students.

However, advising for any major is available for all undergraduate students. Since the establishment of the SAM Center, more students at Sam Houston State have taken advantage of advising services than in the past. Currently 80 percent of all undergraduates are being advised.

"Students are returning for further consultation with a 'favorite' adviser and many come just to report their progress," said Fleming. "This is creating excellent adviser-advisee relationships."

Mandatory re-advisement of students on academic probation has proven to boost retention. Before mandatory re-advisement the percentage of students returning to good standing after the spring semester was 36 percent. The Center's most recent figures show that after the spring semester 2004, the percentage of students returning to good standing rose to 47 percent.

"All of our information indicates that students find value in effective academic advising," said Fleming.

The SAM Center also offers a number of support programs including study skills seminars; a referral program for students who are failing or not attending class; a monitoring program for re-admitted suspended students; GRE/GMAT review for students preparing to take the exam and Graduate School Night to provide information about graduate school; and a forum emphasizing success for minority populations.

New mentoring programs are continually under consideration and in the planning stages, said Fleming.
For more information about the SAM Center, log on to www.shsu.edu/~sam_www/.

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Media Contact: Julia May
May 12, 2005
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