Advising Resources @ Columbia

Students have access to an innovative, new source for academic guidance and information: "Advising Resources @ Columbia." This comprehensive, state-of-the-art Web site lays out in detail the rationale for, and structure of, the undergraduate schools' multiple-source advising system. It provides all the tools necessary to understand and navigate the various advising resources available at Columbia. No other school offers such a wide-ranging yet intuitive and easy to use resource to their students.

"Advising Resources @ Columbia" is a supplement to, not a substitute for, personal advising by deans and professors. This set of online resources offers a holistic approach to advising, guiding students among the wealth of advising resources available at Columbia. By using "Advising Resources @ Columbia," students can find answers to common questions, educate themselves about available resources, and locate the right person to provide advice on virtually any topic. With this resource, students can find resources and advisers to supplement those in advising centers or academic departments.

Advising Resources @ Columbia brings together easy to use tools that:

• introduce students to the many advisers, resources, and opportunities available

• assist in academic planning

• demonstrate relationships and linkages among different resources

• enable students to understand holistically the wealth of available resources

• create a central resource for a distributed system, while providing multiple access points to advising resources

In addition, "Advising Resources @ Columbia" provides a uniform summary of all majors, their educational goals, their course requirements and their electives, thus enabling students readily to compare majors. Each department prepared answers to 14 questions recommended by the Student Council, ranging from "Why should I major in this subject?" to "Why do the requirements take this form?" to "How might a sample track or course of study look?" to "What career opportunities follow upon study in this field?" Users can select the questions most important to them (or all questions) and compare the responses from the departments in which they are most interested.

Tools inspired by the most general questions (Who? What? Where? When?) provide multiple pathways to advice and advisers, and guide students to particular advisors and resources. Each online advising tool is connected to all the others, seamlessly linking related resources while allowing students to navigate the system simply and intuitively.