Rob Jacks has been named an Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate for his work with students joining the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design and his innovative approach to advising.

“Rob is very in tune with our students and is able to identify trends - both positive and negative - that are important for us to understand,” said Kendria Mason, coordinator of First-Year Experiences. “He also thinks about our students as whole people and assists with resources to help them be successful in all aspects of their lives.” 

First-Year Experiences is a universitywide program with courses taught in every college that support the academic transition for students arriving at Virginia Tech. The classes, taught in students' home colleges, introduce students to their majors, the university’s honor code, professional development opportunities, and campus resources for their academic success and well-being. This semester, more than 11,500 students are enrolled in the program.

The award is given out each year by the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina and is a partnership with Penguin Random House Publishing.  

Jacks was named the director of academic advising for the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design in 2017 and has since focused on supporting students through the specific challenges of their majors. 

“One of the biggest challenges we see with our first-year students is burnout,” said Jacks. “If you’re in architecture or a studio-based major, you’re in studio 12 hours per week. That’s a six-credit class, and I don’t know of any other classes like that at Virginia Tech.” 

Theatre, music, and visual arts students all have similar time commitments. And unlike high school, the courses are project and team based, lacking the regular feedback of quizzes or tests. 

“Our students’ schedules are complex compared to a lot of other majors and that affects retention in bigger ways,” said Jacks “That’s a lot of my efforts is to target first-years and how we better their experience and help them to succeed and stay in our programs.” 

The advisors at the college, said Jacks, use a “personalized” and “high touch” approach to working with their students. They meet with each first-year and transfer student during the summer, which can translate to 400 hours of individual-advising appointments before the first day of classes. 

“We proactively communicate with first-year students, reaching out to them so they feel part of a community and celebrate them before they arrive on campus,” said Jacks. “A lot of what we do is to make people feel valued so that when they do hit obstacles or feel overwhelmed, they know they have someone they can go to.” 

The department's advisors and faculty also have increased the number of First-Year Experiences courses to include majors in visual arts, industrial design, music, theatre, and undecided students enrolled in the college.

“The greatest value of these courses is student retention and well-being,” said Jacks. “It's perhaps the only time in any major's curriculum where advising and an advisor can be in the classroom and talk to students about things that matter to their long-term academic and personal success.” 

The result of these changes has been a dramatic improvement in student retention. In 2023, almost 95 percent of first-year students continued toward a degree, the highest ever recorded by the college, making the program a leader among peer institutions.

"I didn’t appreciate it enough at the time, but the attention and specialized programming that Mr. Jacks gave to his class of first-year undecided students — both in and out of class — was perhaps the biggest influence on my ability to start off successfully at Virginia Tech, and to carry that success through my university years,” said Grace Hahn '24. “His class helped me make my own decision about what I wanted to study and helped me to lay out a pathway to get to my ultimate goal, which I found was being an architect. I learned how to be a better student and a better human being in his class and made relationships that have lasted my entire time studying at Virginia Tech." 

Jacks will receive the award in February at the annual conference of the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, to be held in New Orleans.

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