Advancing the field of Academic Advising: New professional activity from Dante Cantú
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Dante Cantú, executive director of academic advising and student success at SUNY New Paltz, contributed his expertise on supporting students in higher education in two different forums this year.
In April 2021, Cantú presented at the SUNY Student Success Summit 2021: Embracing Equity and Building Inclusive Excellence conference.
Representing New Paltz at this SUNY-wide event, Cantú shared approaches and lessons learned from the College’s experience as one of 12 institutions nationwide selected to participate in the Excellence in Academic Advising (EAA) charter cohort. This experience is helping inform advising redesign initiatives at campuses across the SUNY system, helping build capacity to better meet the educational needs of an increasingly diverse student body.
Over the summer, Cantú also served as a reviewer for the Advising Success Network organized by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.
The Advising Success Network’s mission is to help institutions build a culture of student success, with a focus on students from low-income backgrounds and students of color, by identifying, building, and scaling equitable and holistic advising solutions that support all facets of the student experience.
This collaborative work creates teams of higher education administrators and practitioners, like Cantú, who have expertise in equity-minded advising reform. They met virtually over a three-month period to evaluate and provide feedback on educational modules and services that had been designed by Advising Success Network partners to support institutional transformation and improved student outcomes.
Those partner institutions include the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, NASPA, Achieving the Dream, Educause, the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience, and NACADA, among others.
Cantú was recommended due in part to his leadership and coordination of the College’s participation in the Excellence in Academic Advising charter cohort.