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Grand View’s Academic Success program serves as an aid to students by offering a range of academic support services. Students come to advisors such as Joy Brandt, associate director of student success, for advice and support, whether it be in life or in the classroom.

Some of the academic services provided at Grand View include tutoring, disability services and classes to teach students organization and time management skills. Brandt said academic success is all about reaching for the student’s full potential.

“To me [the Academic Success program] is about how I can best help students reach their personal, academic and career goals,” Brandt said.

Brandt said the process she uses with her students begins with listening. By spending the time to listen and get to know all of her students individually she is able to better understand where they are academically in order to help them achieve their goal of graduation.

Brandt began her career in education in elementary instruction and progressed to higher grades throughout her career. She entered higher education at Waldorf College then moved to Des Moines when she found an opportunity at Grand View.

Cathy Brent, the director of academic success, said she is pleased with the progress the program has recently achieved. They have been able to add more personnel, like Brandt, to the program.

“I was the only professional advisor, as director of academic advising,” Brent said.

Since then they have been able to hire two more full-time professional advisors in addition to Brandt.

Along with working in Academic Success Brandt also teaches a Strategies for Academic Success class for incoming freshmen, where they learn organization and time management skills to help them reach their academic goals.

Zerina Lilic, pre-nursing freshman and a student in Brandt’s strategies course, said she believes the skills she learns in class will continue to be useful for the rest of her life.

Brandt and the rest of the academic success staff are located in the Hanson Student Life and Success office on the first floor of the Student Center.