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Freshman Advising

Welcome, everyone, to Sacred Heart University's Freshman Academic Advising Program. My name is Michael Bozzone, Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Along with being a Freshman Advisor myself, I am the director and coordinator of the Freshman Academic Advising Program.  I’d like to tell you briefly about our Program.

Our Program has been selected as an NACADA Outstanding Institutional Advising Program Certificate of Merit recipient. We have been recognized for our "innovative and/or exemplary practices that have resulted in the improvement of academic advising services." We are proud to be one of only seven programs nationwide to be so honored.

I am speaking for all of our Academic Advisors when I say that we are dedicated to helping our freshmen—the newest members of the Sacred Heart University Community—make a positive start on their college careers. The essential and unchanging core of our philosophy is the belief that our freshmen are important, in and of themselves, and that they can benefit from our experience, our support, and our guidance. We want to demonstrate to our advisees what we as educators value; to explain and explain again how college works; and to assist our students in understanding how best to approach—and embrace—the wonderful, yes, and challenging opportunity that lies before them.

More specifically, our Freshman Academic Advising Program offers each freshman "a meaningful and supportive connection with aSacredHeartUniversityfaculty member during his/her first year of college."  We assist our freshmen with their transition to the new and challenging world of college, and we serve as primary contacts and resources for all academic-related matters.  We're here to offer guidance and support as our freshmen begin their development into mature and independent learners.
 
While our duties certainly include course selection, advice about majors, progress monitoring, and other similar tasks, our ultimate goal is more ambitious and less definite at the same time:  that the Freshman Academic Advisor be "a significant person in the life of a freshman." We feel that a supportive and caring relationship with a member of the University community is important to a freshman's success, and we feel that the relationship has even greater value when that person is directly involved—day in and day out—in the core mission of the University: learning, teaching, and the growth that results from both.

A central feature of our Program is the fact that a student's Freshman Academic Advisor will be just that kind of person, a working teacher, a living and a breathing exemplar of college academic life. In our Program, each Freshman Advisor doubles as a professor in one of a freshman's first semester academic courses.  So we can offer our freshmen regular exposure and easy access to their Advisor—in and out of the classroom. We are proud of our Program, we are happy to say that it emphasizes the academic essence of the University, and we look forward each year to working with our freshmen.

Michael Bozzone
Assistant Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
Tel: 203-365-7648
bozzonem@sacredheart.edu