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Advising Portfolios Overview
Starting in February 2025, College of Letters, Arts and Sciences (CLAS) academic advising portfolios will be changing to promote more significant caseload equity.
What is an advising caseload?
An advising caseload (or portfolio) is the number of students assigned to an academic advisor for academic advising.
Academic advisors help guide students through their academic journey providing a variety of services from picking classes and building out schedules to connecting students with faculty and other resources on campus.
It is recommended advisors have a caseload (or portfolio) of 300 students or fewer (EAB & NACADA, 2024). This allows advisors to advise from a proactive (or holistic) advising approach meeting students immediate needs while keeping their long-term goals in mind. Keeping caseloads smaller also ensures “advisors are not stretched too thin and students have the academic and personal support they need to succeed (EAB, 2024).”
What does this mean for you?
From 2023-2024, the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Data and Enrollment Management team conducted two in-depth studies that examined existing advising caseloads. In both studies, it was found that a rebalance was necessary to ensure advisors are in the optimal position to serve you, our students.
So what does this all mean for you? In most cases, advising caseloads will stay relatively the same as many of our advisors will continue working with the same departments as they have been. In some cases, however, your assigned advisor may change. Students may continue to see their current assigned advisor until February 9, 2025. After this date, if you are a student who is being assigned a new advisor, this change will be reflected in Navigate.
New Advising Portfolios
New Advising Portfolios are listed by Division and Department.
- Division of Fine and Performing Arts: Departments of Art; Music; Theatre and Dance
- Division of Humanities and Social Sciences – Group A: Departments of Africana Studies; Communication Studies; History; Journalism and Media Production; Philosophy; Sociology and Anthropology
- Division of Humanities and Social Sciences – Group B: Departments of Chicana/o Studies; English; Political Science; World Languages; and the Gender Institute for Teaching and Advocacy
- Division of Sciences – Group A: Departments of Biology; Chemistry and Biochemistry; Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
- Division of Sciences – Group B: Departments of Physics; Psychological Sciences
Click on the tab or scroll to the appropriate Division and Department. Under each area, you will find advisors listed alphabetically by last name and their contact information including phone and email as well as their personalized advising link (or PAL) – use this to schedule an appointment directly.
FAQ's
If you still have questions about the new advising portfolios, please contact your current advisor or email the CLAS Advising Team at [email protected].
The goal is to promote greater caseload equity across the College. When building these portfolios, we prioritized:
- Assigning multiple advisors per portfolio
- Preserving divisional/disciplinary affinities
- Maintaining established advisor-student relationships
- Advisor location for student convenience
- Enrollment trends for long-term portfolio stability
Multiple advisors ensure students are not underserved if an advisor is absent for an extended time. This helps both during the absence and when the advisor returns, reducing gaps in service.
While some disruption is inevitable, the new portfolios aim to balance maintaining relationships with adding new programs.
Proximity still matters in some cases in improving student service, so it was considered in grouping advisors within divisions.
Academic Advising Resources
Find more resources like scheduling, definition of terms, course recommendations, and progressions plans on the CLAS Academic Advising Resources site.
Visit the CLAS Academic Advising Resources HomepageCollege of Letters, Arts and Sciences Advising
Campus Location:
Central Classroom 314
Mailing Address:
Campus Box 37
P. O. Box 173362
Denver, CO 80217-3362
Phone:
303-615-0600
Email:
