Linda C. Chalmers, University of Texas-San Antonio, San Antonio, TX

Past Involvement in NACADA:

Years in NACADA: 7 years

National Offices Held and Accomplishments Achieved While in Office:

Regional Activities/Offices Held, including accomplishments achieved while in office:

• Current Vice President of Programs, Texas Academic Advising Network (TEXAAN)
• Past Secretary of TEXAAN; member of TEXAAN for about 4 - 5 years.

Committee Activities and Accomplishments:

Commission/Interest Group Activities and Accomplishments:

• Advising Administration Commission member since inception as a commission; also current member of Advisor Training and Development Commission

Other:

• Served as a book reviewer for the Journal.
• Recipient of "exemplary practices in advisor training" recognition through monograph publication
• Presenter at NACADA National Conferences in 2001 and 2003-invited & presented a pre-conference workshop at 2003National Conference.
• Attended 2003 Administrators' Institute and 2000 Advising Administrators Forum.
• Attended 2000 Summer Institute on Academic Advising.
• At UTSA:
  • Eight years in advising with five years as a college advising director and three years (current) as university advising director
  • Recipient of Staff Excellence Award, Amber Award (chosen by students), Student Leadership/Life Award, Excellence in Service to Undergraduate Students Award
  • Member of University Advising Council, Associate Deans Council, and Chair of Advising Fee Advisory Committee

Platform Statement:

My number one qualification for this position is my commitment to serve my colleagues in a professional and caring manner. Second to this commitment is my passion for advising and for seeing that students receive quality service and advisors are recognized for their dedicated work. And third is my grass roots experience with reorganizing advising at a large university to reduce advisor loads and increase quality advising, which took much collaboration with many different constituencies.

The top goal I have for this commission is to continue the open forum for sharing ideas and solutions to the day-to-day challenges of staff morale, shrinking budgets, increased politics, intense accountability, and other hurdles we face as administrators of advising programs throughout the nation. I do not have other goals at this point in time and, if elected, I would survey the commission members as to their specific needs and interests to focus on during my tenure as chair.