Especially for Advisors

Welcome to the Advising Manual Website (use sidebar navigation)

"Good advising may be the single most underestimated characteristic of a successful college experience." Light, R.J. (2001) Making the most of college. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

This site content is based on the principles that:

  • Advising is critical. Good advising is critical to student success and persistence.
  • Advising is teaching. We help students advance from dependence to independence in decision making.
  • Advising is a developmental process. More than class registration, it involves the entire college experience.

Student Advising Pages. The resources above this section provide students and advisors with many useful pages of information on strategies and tactics (including a student success manual). Feel welcome to direct students to these resources and use them as part of your advising practice.

A disclaimer: There are many ways to approach advising. This site is designed to provide information, strategies and tactics for developing skills as an advisor. The materials are drawn from national practice (the National ACademic ADvising Association or NACADA) and from local sources. It is intended to be an ongoing work-in-progress, a reference on what might be done, not the ultimate statement of what must be done. This site will provide you with a solid background upon which to base your practice. Pick and choose what you need.

Content is frequently updated or added. Please check back regularly!

Any questions, comments, or suggestions should be directed to Dr. Kay Grimnes at grimnes@alma.edu. She designed this site and is responsible for the contents (she left some typos for you to find).

Dr. Grimnes has been advising students since the first term of her undergraduate career, when she discovered how the system worked and used her new knowledge to help her friends get their classes. She wrote the Alma College Advising Manual (the forerunner to this site) and was named a semifinalist for "Outstanding First Year Student Advocate" for the liberal arts college category at the Conference on the First Year Experience in Atlanta (2003).

 

Since 2003, Alma College students have been awarded 43 prestigious nationally competitive scholarships and fellowships, including 22 Fulbright scholarships. Alma’s Nationally Competitive Scholarship Committee identifies and nurtures exceptional candidates for postgraduate awards.

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Graduate Profile

Julie Bolitho-Lee

Julie Bolitho-Lee
Graduation: 2006
Major: English

Since graduating from Alma College in 2006, Julie Bolitho-Lee has gotten married, finished a master’s degree, earned status as a dual citizen, published poetry, adopted two dogs and a cat, and traveled to more than 15 different countries.

Yet not once has Bolitho-Lee forgotten the incredible support she received from the English faculty when she was a student at Alma.

“I have always loved English—reading and writing,” she says. “I knew it would be my major before I even went to Alma, but the faculty in the English department fed and indulged my passions in unexpected and beautiful ways.”

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