Team Lead, Academic Advising

Overview:
The Team Lead, Academic Advising leads the Undergraduate Coordinator and Advisors (Advisors) and provides academic advising in the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) under the guidance of the Senior Manager, Operations. This role provides Advisors with leadership, workflow management, support on complex student cases, and training. This role reports on advising trends and provides recommendations to address challenges the team is facing. The Team Lead, Academic Advising is also responsible for student support and engagement in alignment with SAF’s student engagement strategy. This role supports the professional undergraduate program offerings of SAF by ensuring students have access to accurate student resources. Working closely with the Senior Manager, Operations and the advising team, they support over 2,000 SAF students every year.

**Responsibilities**:
Leads Undergraduate Coordinator and Advisors
- Trains and supervises the SAF undergrad advising team, including distribution of responsibilities and performance management
- Creates and maintains comprehensive advising training resources and manuals
- Addresses and supports Advisors on complex, out-of-the-ordinary student academic and co-op sequence cases. Works with Counselling, AccessAbility, Constable Services and other units to ensure all needs of student support are met
- Provides a high level of support to the Advisors through daily check ins, monitoring workflow, and ensuring advising coverage
- Leads Advisors on collaborative projects, sets clear and reasonable expectations, and provides ongoing feedback
- Fosters a positive and friendly team environment that aligns with SAF culture strategies that will empower Advisors to support students
- Leads the collection of data from surveys and events to provide data-driven recommendations for student support or advising practice initiatives
- Reports advising trends, successes, and challenges to the Senior Manager, Operations to support management-level decisions. Proposes recommended implementation approaches that support proactive access to resources and wellness support for students
- Backs up the portfolios and work of advising team as needed during periods of high volume or absences
- Oversees and supports successful advising tasks, such as, student communications, incomplete grades, academic progression, degree completion audits, transfer requests, petitions, accommodations, enrollment, sequence changes, degree checklists, sequence creation, etc
- Supports the coordination and organization of the calendar change process. This may include serving as the Calendar Representative, compiling course and program changes for submission to the Undergraduate Calendar, and updating and proofreading content

Advising
- Maintains in-depth and current knowledge of Arts' undergraduate curriculum and academic requirements for the Accounting and Financial Management (AFM) program, as well as University policies and Faculty regulations of relevance to student issues and supports
- Maintains working knowledge of Computing and Financial Management (CFM), Math CPA, Science Biotech CPA, Masters of Accounting (MAcc), Sustainability and Financial Management (SFM) and Arts and Business program requirements
- This role performs a broad spectrum of responsibilities including but not limited to student advising, student engagement, academic integrity, calendar management, and performing and overseeing core advising functions (e.g., meeting with students, supporting students with program sequences, enrollment, student resources, difficult situations, accommodations, academic progression, petition support, etc.)
- Advises and oversees course selection and enrollment to support students in meeting degree requirements as scheduled. Maintains in-depth knowledge and documentation on enrollment (permissions, course overrides, section switches, plan modifications, work-study sequence changes, letters of permission and exchange)
- Acts as the first point of contact and provides support to students in personal and academic crisis within UW ethics and crisis management guidelines. This may involve assessing the urgency and arranging for emergency appointments at Counseling Services when appropriate, and providing practical assistance when necessary
- Works closely with the Senior Manager, Operations on academic progression student cases and oversees Recommendations to Graduate reviews
- Supports the Co-op and Student Engagement Coordinator in SAF with sequence change workflow and correspondence

Student Support and Engagement
- In collaboration with the Co-op and Student Engagement Coordinator and the Advisors, initiates and plans various student-focused events to provide proactive resources and wellness support that connect to the SAF student engagement strategy. This could include events, info sessions, wellness initiatives, workshops, etc
- Implements new student advising initiatives, such as a monthly AFM Newslette