The Office of Academic Affairs is restructuring academic advising across campus as part of a broader effort to improve how students access support and how advising teams work together.
The new advising structure groups academic advising into three large regions, each led by a senior director. This replaces a longstanding model in which advising was managed at the college or department level, resulting in a wide range of models and approaches across campus.
“Students don’t experience the university as a series of offices or disconnected interactions—they experience it as a journey,” said T. Chase Hagood, vice provost for student success. “This regional model allows us to support that journey with coordinated, proactive advising that helps students stay on track.”
The new regional framework builds on the university’s 2024 National Institute for Student Success (NISS) assessment, as well as focus groups and interviews with students, faculty, staff and campus leaders. That research found strong student-centred work across the U but also highlighted how growth has led to a complex and often disconnected support system.
For students, the variation across colleges and departments meant inconsistencies in how advising was staffed, how student progress was tracked and how easily students could access help. These differences sometimes resulted in delays with course planning, missed deadlines or confusion about available resources. Internal assessments and national benchmarks show that such gaps can contribute to lower retention and graduation rates compared to peer institutions.
“The research showed just how much good work is already happening,” said Mitzi Montoya, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “It also gave us an honest look at where our systems were falling short in meeting our students’ needs. Our job is to design a more coordinated, effective system that ensures every student has access to the support they need.”
Phase one: Leadership alignment
The reorganization is being implemented in two phases. The first phase, which focuses on leadership alignment, began with a 2024 pilot in which the Colleges of Humanities, Science and Social and Behavioral Science, along with the School for Cultural and Social Transformation, moved to shared advising leadership.
That pilot has since informed a broader rollout with those units now forming Region A and the structure expanding to include Region B (College of Engineering and School of Business) and Region C (Colleges of Architecture + Planning, Education, Fine Arts, Health, Nursing and Social Work; Exploring and Pre-Professional Advising within Undergraduate Studies; Division of Medical Laboratory Sciences; Utah Asia Campus).
Each region is led by a newly appointed senior director responsible for aligning advising teams across multiple colleges and creating a more consistent, coordinated experience for students. The senior directors, who began their roles in December and January, include Cyri Dixon (Region A), Hilary Flanagan (Region B) and Liz Leckie (Region C).
These leaders are now working with deans and academic affairs leadership to implement the new structure. In total, at least 26 new positions are being added, with some already posted (regional directors, associate directors and administrative manager) and additional academic advising roles to follow in the coming weeks. At the same time, 22 existing roles will be phased out at the end of the fiscal year. While the overall number of roles is increasing, the composition of the advising teams is evolving, with fewer management-level positions and more frontline advising roles. The shift reflects the university’s goal of putting more advisors in direct contact with students to improve access and support.
Phase two: Caseload alignment
The second phase of the restructure will address caseload alignment and advising ratios. Prior to the Region A pilot, caseloads varied widely across campus, from as few as 125 students to more than 550 students per advisor. The new regional model is designed to bring caseloads into alignment with the national best practices (typically around 1:250, according to NACADA, the National Academic Advising Association) and give advisors the capacity to build deeper relationships with students, provide proactive outreach and intervene earlier when students need support. By managing caseloads at the regional level, the university can also adjust more easily when enrollment patterns shift, helping maintain equitable support across advising teams.
“Our advisors are the heart of this work,” Hagood said. “This structure is designed to give them the clarity, capacity and connections they need to ensure every student has an exceptional experience at the University of Utah.”
Early results from Region A illustrate how the model translates into improved student support.
“As we transitioned to a collaborative advising model, students gained faster, more consistent access to support,” said Dixon, who led Region A through the model’s pilot. “Communication across teams strengthened, allowing us to elevate the work of our most effective advisors and spread those best practices more widely. We also gained the ability to identify and address systemic barriers—issues that no single advisor or department could solve alone—more quickly and effectively. While the shift required time and adjustment, it ultimately enabled us to provide more thoughtful, coordinated care for every student.”
Following the Region A pilot, advising appointments rose from 13,527 in Fall 2024 to 14,600 in Fall 2025, an 8% increase. The number of distinct students served increased by 4%, and drop-in visits grew by 27% over the same period.
“When advising is coordinated and proactive, it levels the playing field,” Hagood said. “This model allows us to move from simply reacting to problems to anticipating them, so we can support students before small challenges become real barriers to completion.”
The new regional advising model is a key part of the Student Experience Project (SEP), a university-wide initiative aimed at improving the student experience and delivering on the U’s Impact 2030 goals, including increasing retention, graduation and job placement rates.
