Advising is an important resource for students in higher education, helping them to select a major, find connection to university resources, and meet degree requirements. Contact with an academic adviser has also been found to improve students' academic performance. Recent research suggests that students approach academic advising for different reasons, often connected to differences in socioeconomic status. However, previous studies do not focus on the structures and institutional expectations supporting academic advising despite the fact that there is variation in how academic advising is delivered across and within institutions of higher education. This variation is reflected in who takes responsibility for advising, the structure and location of academic advising offices, and professional expectations and other responsibilities. This research explores how students engage with academic advisers across two different academic advising models. Using a case study approach, I interviewed undergraduate students enrolled in two academic colleges that employed different models of academic advising. To illuminate the culture of academic advising in each college, I also interviewed academic advisers and an advising administrator in each college and analyzed publicly available documents about academic advising from each colleges' website. Both students and academic advisers interviewed saw academic advising as primarily about the scheduling of courses. This view of academic advising was narrower than the Faculty Senate's view of the role and purpose of academic advising. This divergence between policy and practice indicates a problem with the implementation of academic advising practice. Some student participants also reported that advisers discouraged their goals and plans. Each of the two advising structures I examined had benefits and challenges for students. Students and advisers in the decentralized advising model noted the specialized knowledge of faculty advisers. By contrast, the centralized advising model I examined allowed flexibility in who students could choose to meet with and how they met with advisers. However, the centralized advising model had challenges with a high rate of adviser turnover. In this thesis I also focused on differences in experiences of students across socioeconomic status. My interviews support previous findings concerning the relationship between socioeconomic status and academic advising, but with two additional observations. First, my interviews reveal that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who began at a different campus experienced challenges with academic advising. Second, some academic advisers were unaware of students' background characteristics. Therefore, those academic advisers could not vary their practices and approaches to meet different needs of students, especially when it pertained to socioeconomic status. As a result of these findings, two conclusions emerged from the data. The first is that systemic barriers prevented implementation of the institution's Faculty Senate policy on academic advising and caused challenges for students. A second finding is that advising systems limited relationship building between students and advisers. Barriers to building relationships include large advising rosters, other professional responsibilities, lack of knowledge about varying student demographics, and inconsistent expectations for academic advisers. Recommendations for practice and future research are provided. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]