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For Jolina Halloran, EdD, academic advising has never been simply about choosing courses, checking requirements, or staying on track toward graduation.

It is about helping students navigate college as people.

As director of academic advising for Ģ��tv’s Lubin School of Business, Halloran leads undergraduate advising across the New York City and Pleasantville campuses, supervising a team of eight academic advisors and one staff member while maintaining an active caseload of more than 300 undergraduate and graduate students.

Her approach is grounded in a simple but consequential question. When a student begins struggling, rather than immediately asking Why aren’t they doing what they are supposed to do?, Halloran considers something different: What might be happening in this student’s life that is affecting their ability to engage?

That question is also at the center of Halloran’s paper, , published in the peer-reviewed NACADA Journal, a leading scholarly publication focused on advancing academic advising research and practice.

Her research brings together emotional intelligence, relational-cultural theory, and principles of trauma-informed care to offer advisors a more holistic framework for understanding student behavior. Emotional intelligence considers an advisor’s ability to recognize and manage emotions. Relational-cultural theory examines trust, connection, power, identity, and empathy within the advising relationship. Trauma-informed care considers the wider institutional environment surrounding both the advisor and student.

“When students trust their advisor, they begin to ask questions, advocate for themselves,” she says.

Together, Halloran says, those perspectives can help higher education professionals look differently at behaviors that might otherwise be interpreted simply as disengagement or irresponsibility.

A student who stops responding to emails, misses appointments, withdraws from a course, or begins struggling academically may be experiencing circumstances an advisor cannot immediately see.

That does not mean eliminating expectations.

“Accountability and empathy aren’t opposites,” Halloran says. An advisor can clearly explain policies and academic standards while still acknowledging that a student may be experiencing something difficult.

At Lubin, that philosophy becomes part of a larger approach to preparing students to navigate college, careers, and increasingly complex professional environments.

Halloran has spent more than a decade at Pace, beginning in the Biology Department before moving into academic advising through the Honors College and, eventually, Lubin. She has worked directly with students throughout different stages of the undergraduate experience and has taught courses including University Life, professional planning and internship preparation, and advanced professional development for career readiness.

That breadth of experience has helped shape her understanding of advising as developmental rather than merely transactional.

Students may initially walk into an advisor’s office because they need help registering for a course, understanding a degree requirement, or resolving an academic problem. But when trust develops, Halloran says, the conversation changes.

“When students trust their advisor, they begin to ask questions, advocate for themselves,” she says.

Advisors, then, have an opportunity not only to help solve an immediate problem but also to teach students how to navigate complicated systems, recover from setbacks, make decisions, and confidently ask for help.

Halloran’s research has made her even more intentional about bringing curiosity into those interactions. It has also reinforced her belief that strong advising should ultimately increase a student’s independence.

Part of the goal, she says, is “helping them develop the confidence and the skills to navigate the next problem themselves.”

Her commitment to resilience and student support also extends well beyond Pace.

Halloran is co-founder of the , established in memory of her son, Brian Thomas Halloran. Through the organization, Halloran and her family support mental health education for young people, including bringing DBT STEPS-A curriculum into school districts and helping train educators to continue that work.

Her experiences with the foundation, together with her scholarly interests in emotional intelligence, self-stigma, help-seeking, and student self-advocacy, have increasingly converged with her work in higher education.

But Halloran is careful about the boundaries of that work.

Academic advisors are not therapists, she emphasizes. Trauma-informed advising instead asks advisors and institutions to think carefully about how they listen, how they communicate, and how they connect students with appropriate resources.

Halloran advocates for “warm referrals,” which can mean helping a student identify the right office, explaining what to expect, initiating a connection when appropriate, and following up rather than simply directing someone elsewhere. She also argues that sustainable trauma-informed advising requires institutional support, including clear referral pathways, training, manageable workloads, collaboration, and strong partnerships across campus.

“I hope they feel seen, heard, respected, and capable,” she says.

It is a philosophy that places relationships at the center of student success while recognizing that successful advising is never the responsibility of one person alone.

For Halloran, its impact can ultimately be measured in something deceptively simple: how a student feels when they leave the room.

“I hope they feel seen, heard, respected, and capable,” she says.

Students may not always receive the answer they hoped for. Policies cannot always change. But even when the answer is no, Halloran wants students to know that someone listened, treated them with dignity, and helped them understand what comes next.

At Lubin, Halloran is bringing that combination of research, experience, and advocacy directly into the work of supporting students, helping them not only move toward a degree but become more confident navigating the challenges they will encounter along the way.