In this guest editorial, Gary Kramer relates some excerpts on the five points of a successful advising program from a paper in press entitled “Developmental Advising to Enhance Freshman Success,” written by Gary Kramer, E. D. Peterson, and R. W. Spencer, to be published as a chapter in John Gardner and Lee Upcraft's book, Enhancing Success in the First Year of College, a Jossey-Bass publication.

A nationwide survey was conducted to test the validity of a theoretical model of advising program development. Respondents generally supported the Four Stage Model, which outlines the direction, nature, and scope of changes leading toward an effective advising service. However, the survey revealed disagreement on the stimulus/response relationship outlined in the model, the components of each stage, and the amount of overlap among stages. The model was then adjusted to depict more accurately the sequence of changes common to most advising programs. The revised model provides advisors and administrators with a framework for understanding the process of development and a basis for planning program improvements.

The use of a comprehensive academic advising program in conjunction with a sustained academic orientation program through the freshman year has resulted in a 13.27 percent iwease in the retention rate of high-risk students at a regional campus of a large public research university. In this article, the authors describe the components of CORE, the comprehensive advising/orientation program, and the success they've had with high-risk students in the program.

The following study compared academic achievement traits of men and women to determine why women are underrepresented in certain curricula, especially engineering. Math-related attitude and anxiety factors were examined via a questionnaire, and a number of ACT test scores were studied. The results may surprise some readers and should be of interest to all advisors working with science and/or engineering students, especially women students.

Academic advising constitutes one of the key problems facing higher education throughout the world today. The need for and benefits of advising are not limited to one geographical area, but represent a pervasive problem, penetrating international and cultural boundaries. This study examines the advising program at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Students' responses to a twenty-item questionnaire have been drawn upon to construct a picture of how students perceive academic advising at their university. The study also sought to determine if a significant difference in student responses to the survey existed between the colleges within the university and between the academic levels of the students. Recommendations and practical suggestions to help improve academic advising at the university are offered.

The results of various reports indicate that there is very little evaluation of academic advising. More consistent evaluation, however, could help delineate advising factors critical in producing some of the positive results attributed to good advising. To facilitate the use and development of instruments and to promote evaluation, this article reviews student, advisor, and administrator surveys in terms of their length, content, format, and use. The importance of choosing evaluation instruments appropriate for specific assessment purposes is discussed.

Colleges and universities across the country are currently examining the goals and commitments they have made to undergraduate education in general and to the freshman and sophomore years in particular. One of the most important aspects of undergraduate education is a university's general education program. In the spirit of review, UCLA's Academic Counseling Service recently studied that university's general education program. This article reflects the results of that study and demonstrates the ways in which any general education curriculum can be modified so that students can acquire requisite academic skills, not just academic content, that will help them beyond their college years. The authors acknowledge, however, that many of the ideas presented here derive from the work of others, but their synthesis should provide a useful new protocol for curricular review.

The rationale for implementing a student evaluation of advising services was based on the premise that for advising services to be effective there must be evaluation. How can advising services and advisor performance be improved if students are not asked to rate their experiences in academic advising? After all, they are the consumers of the service! This article will explain the methodology used in a computerized student evaluation model that has been used for four years, identify the steps involved in designing a questionnaire and in implementing a student evaluation, and describe how advising services and advisor performance can be improved, based on student feedback.

Wes Habley, the immediate past president of NACADA, gave the following address on October 12, 1987, at the business luncheon of the 11th National Conference on Academic Advising. In addition to his presidency, Wes served as NACADA treasurer from 1981 to 1985. He was director of the Advisement Center at Illinois State University from 1975 to 1981, director of academic and career advising at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire from 1981 to 1985, and is currently associate director of the ACT National Center for the Advancement of Educational Practices.

The text of this speech, has been edited for publication purposes.

The JOURNAL continues its series on the development of academic advising in higher education with the second installment of an interview with Dr. Harvey Wall, who began his career in clinical psychology in the early 1950s. In March 1986, Dr. Wall retired from his position as director of the Division of Undergraduate Studies (DUS), an advising unit at Penn State University that enrolls freshmen and sophomores exploring a variety of majors and advanced students seeking advising assistance with changes in their academic plans. Dr. Wall was the first director of DUS, which started in 1973 with 800 students. It now enrolls 4,000. In many ways Dr. Wall's professional experiences parallel the development of academic advising nationwide. For those new to advising, Dr. Wall's remembrances of things past, although personal and local, should provide powerful insights into the present status and procedures of advising, regardless of location or type of institution.

The author's note on this article is as follows: “I have been looking for ways to bring the humanities more into discussions of advising. Mentorship seemed a likely way, it having grown out of my long-term interest in the use of dialectic in advising conversation (and a long-term interest in Plato). Even I am not so eccentric as to try a paper on dialectic and advising, but mentorship afforded a convenient jumping-off point, even if I may have been jumping in a direction different from everyone else!”

This article began as a formal presentation which, according to the author, was “warmly received,” and elicited the following comment: “Thank you for reminding us that what we sometimes think we have been doing for only about 10 years has been going on for 2500.”

NACADA launched its inaugural Research Support Program this year by announcing award-winning proposals at the Chicago National Conference in October. Earlier in the year five thousand copies of the research announcement had been printed and distributed individually to NACADA members, to regional representatives and to attendees at NACADA regional conferences. Notices of the Research Support Program had been printed in the Newsletter and the Journal. As a result of promotional activities, seventy requests were received for the Application for Research Support. Requests came from sixty-one institutions located in thirty states. The yield of completed proposals from the application mailout amounted to sixteen: fourteen in the practicing professional category and two in the dissertation research category. From this pool of sixteen, six proposals were selected for funding in 1988. Overviews of the six winning proposals appear in this report.