OU advising team members showcase innovative practices for working with undecided students

Zach Barclay and Jamie Franklin presented at the 2025 NACADA Annual Conference, an international gathering of academic advising professionals.

Zach Barclay and Jamie Franklin, members of Oakland University’s academic advising team, recently presented at the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) Annual Conference, sharing innovative practices for advising students who are undecided on their major.

The presentation highlighted OU’s Exploring initiative, a cross-departmental effort to transform the way the university works with undecided students, empowering them to take an active role in charting their educational path.   

“Historically, a lot of institutions have just told undecided students to take gen ed courses until they figure out a career path,” said Barclay. “Through our Exploring initiative, we curate advising experiences that encourage these students to be intentional about the courses they choose, which can increase their motivation and sense of purpose.”

The initiative inspired institutional improvements, including identifying undecided students as “exploring,” creating a specialized dashboard to better track students’ progress and leveraging resources and expertise across multiple areas of campus.  

Professionals from OU’s Orientation and New Student Programs, First Year Advising Center and Career and Life Design Center work together to help undecided students explore how their aptitudes, interests and values connect to potential majors and career fields.

“We use different tools such as Career Clusters, where students look at courses they could take to explore various careers,” Franklin explained. “We also use an activity called 9 Lives, which helps students imagine their life in a certain career, as well as the Cross Off exercise, where students narrow their focus by deciding what they don’t want to do for a career.”

Since the Exploring initiative began in fall 2023, OU has seen upward trends in key metrics, including a 10% rise in the retention rate among First Time in Any College (FTIAC) undecided/exploring students and a four-fold increase in the share of FTIAC undecided/exploring students who declared a major by their second year.  

Barclay and Franklin shared these insights with NACADA Conference attendees, including advising professionals from international institutions. 

“NACADA is a global community of academic advisers, so being selected to present was a real honor,” said Barclay. “We got great feedback from the audience and shared our presentation materials with numerous people. It’s very rewarding to think that these ideas are potentially being adapted and utilized by institutions around the world.”

“The crowd was awesome,” added Franklin. “People were ‘locked in’ on our presentation and our top advising leader (Neil Baumgartner, associate vice president for advising and student success) was sitting front row watching us. Being in that room and just seeing everyone so engaged made the experience really special.”

 For more information on academic advising at OU, visit oakland.edu/advising.