Practicing advisors may not agree, know, or understand that advising does not meet the scholarly definition of a profession. Through a phenomenological study, members of NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising were invited to describe the position of academic advisor. The data gathered were used to address two research questions: “How do advisors describe the occupation of advising?” and “How do advisors describe a profession?” Answers to these questions provided a foundation to understand advisors' views of advising as an occupation, definition of their own career, and understanding of a profession as it relates to advising.

Nearly 40 years after the creation of NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising and at least as many years after academic advising was recognized as a unique role in higher education, the term academic advising as applied to individuals who work in higher education has been only colloquially defined. Using the analytic induction research method, we arrived at a definition of academic advising created from the words of academic advisors. In this paper, we address the way each word or phrase has been used to create the definition and present implications for policy, research, and practice.

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