NACADA Recognizes Stephanie Hands and Vanessa Harris

UNM staff mem­bers, Stephanie Hands and Vanessa Har­ris, recently received acco­lades from the National Aca­d­e­mic Advis­ing Asso­ci­a­tion. They receive for­mal recog­ni­tion at the National Con­fer­ence in October.

Hands, direc­tor of Aca­d­e­mic Advise­ment, received the Out­stand­ing Advi­sor award, which hon­ors indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that make sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the improve­ment of aca­d­e­mic advis­ing. Hands, who has been at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico since she was 19 years old, super­vised the Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Advise­ment Cen­ter and then moved to Arts and Sci­ences in 2004. She has a Bachelor’s in Psy­chol­ogy and an MBA from Ander­son School of Management

Har­ris, direc­tor of Uni­ver­sity Advise­ment, was accepted into NACADA’s Emerg­ing Lead­er­ship Pro­gram, which encour­ages aspir­ing lead­ers from diverse back­grounds to get involved with new oppor­tu­ni­ties. Har­ris received her under­grad­u­ate work in polit­i­cal sci­ence and crim­i­nol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of South Car­olina, her Master’s in Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tion and doc­tor­ate in edu­ca­tional psy­chol­ogy from UNM. She has also served as an instruc­tor with Uni­ver­sity Col­lege and the Col­lege of Pharmacy.

NACADA pro­motes and sup­ports qual­ity aca­d­e­mic advis­ing in insti­tu­tions of higher edu­ca­tion to enhance the edu­ca­tional devel­op­ment of stu­dents. It also pro­vides a forum for dis­cus­sion, debate and the exchange of ideas per­tain­ing to aca­d­e­mic advis­ing through numer­ous activ­i­ties and publications.

NACADA evolved from the first National Con­fer­ence on Aca­d­e­mic Advis­ing in 1977 and has over 10,000 mem­bers rep­re­sent­ing all 50 states, Puerto Rico, Canada and sev­eral other inter­na­tional countries.