This monograph is designed to provide a blueprint to educators on how to improve academic advising for first-year college students. Seventeen chapters are: (1) "First-Year Students: The Year 2000" (Wesley Habley); (2) "Insights from Theory: Understanding First-Year Student Development" (M. Lee Upcraft); (3) "Creating…

This qualitative study explored personal and program experiences that affect dissertation completion and non-completion to provide insights that might help students and faculty in their decision-making and advising. Interviews were conducted with 13 graduates and 9 "all-but-dissertation" (ABD) students regarding the traits they felt led…

This study examined the factors influencing the commitment of part-time faculty to developmental advising. The study was based on a theoretical framework which suggests that developmental advising is a learning experience that involves interaction of students and faculty members. The data for the study were collected during a 1992 survey of 969…

As a solution to the problem of serving large numbers of students with a small staff, the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) has adopted three new technologies to advise and register students and respond to telephone inquiries. The first of the technological innovations is TELUS, a telephone voice response registration system offered as an…

In November 1989, nine research designs developed to assist local colleges in the evaluation of their matriculation activities were disseminated to the California community colleges. These designs, created as part of the Local Research Options Project, focused on measuring the effects of the colleges' matriculation activities on student…

This monograph focuses on the first year of college and the need for structured first-year programs that help at-risk students make a successful transition to college. It provides a detailed discussion of the elements of a structured first-year program, including: (1) participation in the admissions process for at-risk students; (2)…

The Joint Committee on Transfer Students (JCTS), comprised of faculty and administrators from two- and four-year institutions, was established by Virginia's State Council of Higher Education (SCHE) and State Board for Community Colleges (SBCC) in October 1990. In order to develop policy recommendations designed to facilitate student transfer, in…

The Texas Academic Skills Program (TASP), enacted into law in the fall of 1989, was designed to insure that public college students in Texas would have the basic skills necessary to perform in college-level courses. The TASP law requires that students be tested prior to completing 9 or 15 semester hours of college-level work. The law also requires…

This guidebook describes the Martin Luther King Program at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, a program expressly created to provide services and resources to assist the minority student in coping with any adjustment problems that may be entailed in entering a predominantly white university in a rural community. The university's supplemental…

The Liberal Studies Seminar (LSS) at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri is described. The University Without Walls (UWW) program was initiated in the early 1970s to provide baccalaureate degrees for adults for whom traditional college attendance was not an option. As part of the original consortium, Stephens expanded its mission as a women's…

In March 1984, immediately following the adminstration of the College-Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST), Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) conducted a student survey in an effort to evaluate the educational reforms implemented at the college. The survey, which was completed by 918 CLAST examinees, focused on students' appraisal of the general…

A guide to help learning disabled students achieve access to postsecondary campuses and to help campuses make accessibility a reality is presented. An explanation is offered of learning disabilities and the diagnostic processes used to determine the specific disabilities. Postsecondary options and selecting the appropriate institution are…

Proceedings of the 1984 National Conference on Academic Advising are presented, including three main addresses, brief overviews of workshops, detailed outlines of topical sessions, and abstracts of 58 conference papers. The conference highlighted advisors' involvement in critical teaching functions. General session titles and authors are as…

Reasons accounting for attrition of University of North Dakota (UND) students were investigated. UND students who were enrolled during fall 1976-1977 through fall 1979-1980 as new freshmen and who terminated their studies without earning a degree between spring 1978-1979 to fall 1979-1980 were surveyed. The 237 respondents represented a response…

The University of Arizona's Precollege Program for academically talented secondary school students, which enrolls qualified students in selected university summer courses, is described. The majority of the students are between their junior and senior year in high school and have a grade point average of at least 3.25 on a 4.0 scale. In addition to…