With a little help from your friends...

When two undergraduates in the Anthropology Department decided last fall that their concentration's advising system was lacking, they sent out an e-mail message to all concentrators proposing the creation of a peer advising club for anthro students.

The next day, their new club had 90 members.

Increasingly, students fed up with inadequate advising in their departments or just looking for a different perspective on academic advice are organizing clubs and programs to get the information they need.

In addition to the Anthropology Club, the Women in Math Club and Undergraduate Math Clubs are developing new one-on-one mentoring programs. The Psychology Department has organized a peer counselors program this year. Plus, established student mentoring programs have attracted increasing numbers of students this year.

Although Faculty members and administrators warn undergraduates not to rely on their peers' advice, dissatisfaction with the current academic advising system leaves many students feeling like they have nowhere else to turn.

According to a report released by the Committee on Advising and Counseling, the 1997 senior survey revealed a satisfaction rating of just 2.5 on a five-point scale for biology concentrators, while psychology and math concentrators reported a 2.64 and 3.31 satisfaction rating, respectively.

"I felt like I was on my own for choosing most of my classes, and I had to ferret out other students and sometimes past TFs to swap experiences with," said Elisa K.Cheng '99, a peer counselor for psychology concentrators.

Peer advising may never replace the need for official counseling, but students are overwhelmingly positive about the benefits of students advising students.

Bonding Over Problem Sets

The peer- advising clubs and programs have two related purposes--they offer not only academic advice but also the personal advice and support that harried senior tutors and departments chairs don't have the time to give.

"We try to be an impartial listener in the lives of the freshmen. They have many problems that we remember because we went through them ourselves very recently," said Dionne Fraser, president of the Black Students Association (BSA). "My formal college advisers have never been as helpful as they thought they were on issues that were important to me personally."

The BSA targets first-years with a mentoring program that pairs first-years with upperclass students. Fraser said the program helped her during her first year here and sees the program as very helpful to its participants.

Like the BSA, WISHR creates a support system through its Big Sib/Little Sib mentoring program, social study breaks and peer study groups at which undergraduates volunteer to tutor fellow students in introductory science classes.

"Through Big Sib/Little Sibs, we hope that all female students will have a resource to turn to at all times for guidance," said Linda Bi '01, the program coordinator.

The program also helps students to find student advice in a more centralized location.

"Students are often the best source of advice, but first-years are sometimes not sure where to turn," Bi said. "Participating in a Sib relationship makes the process of finding a mentor more convenient and friendly."

The Women in Math Club and Undergraduate Math Club are both in the process of developing new one-on-one mentoring programs aimed at helping first-years choose courses and becoming familiar with the concentration.

"It was nice to be able to have someone older as a mentor. And when you get older its nice to relay the hard-earned wisdom and for people to learn from your successes and failures," said Anne-Marie Oreskovich '99, president of the Women in Math and co-president of the undergraduate Math Club.

"Most math majors get a sense about which classes to take from talking with their peers. I have chosen my classes based on discussion with friends who have taken the courses and the professors teaching the courses," said Samit Dasgupta, co-president of the Math Club.

The Women in Math and Math Club programs aim to create a more formalized process for disseminating the advice that math concentrators already seek from each other, Dasgupta said.

The Psychology Department started a peer counselors program this year to help prospective and current concentrators get a student's-eye-view of the concentration.

"We aren't supposed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all of the department's requirements," said Frank J. Farach '00, peer counselor in psychology.

The peer counselors give a more personal opinion of the classes than just the nuts-and-bolts advice offered by Faculty advisers, Farach said.

" It's important to get a peer's perspective, because a professor's or official adviser's perceptions of a particular class are often very different from those of a student who has taken the class," he added.

Advise at Your Own Risk

Faculty and Administrators say they see no problem with students getting advice from fellow undergraduates, but they stress that students should not rely on the advice of peers.

"I would not want this kind of peer advising formalized," wrote Harry R. Lewis '68, dean of the college, in an e-mail message. "For one thing, the institution really has to take responsibility for the advice it gives."

For example, he warned, trusting student advice on concentration requirements could have disastrous results.

"If someone advises a student that he or she really doesn't need to take a particular course because the department will waive that requirement, and that turns out not to be the case, then the student's very graduation has been put at risk," he says.

Other departments stress that they do not encourage peer advising.

"Advising is done here exclusively by qualified people with math department appointments," said Cliff H. Taubes, head tutor in the math department. "It would hardly be ethical to do otherwise. The Math Club has no advising duties as far as the department is concerned."

Although peer counselors should not be the main source of advice for students, according to William M. Todd III, dean of Undergraduate education, he says he understands how they could be useful.

"I can imagine that a peer could offer insights that a Faculty member might not," Todd said.

Plugging the Holes

With an advising system that can be difficult to navigate, students are often the most accessible and informative source of advice.

"Peer counseling is certainly very necessary in the sciences due to both the rigorous nature of its requirements and also due to the demands which women in science place upon themselves," Bi said.

Bi said the large introductory classes in mathematics and laboratory science concentrations sometimes make it difficult for students to orient themselves without help from peers.

Others echo the belief that the advice of peers can fill in the gaps left by an often less-than-adequate advising system.

"The psychology department is huge--which can be great if you want to explore a lot of options, but terrible when you're trying to find someone who reallly knows about the specific options you're looking into," said Cheng.

Moreover, Cheng said, the graduate students and House tutors responsible for advising psychology concentrators may not study the same area of psychology as the advisee.

"I'd probably talk most to my adviser about my thesis and post graduate plans and look to other students for advice on classes," she said.

Oreskovich said the Women in Math program aims to add a new source of advice not replace an inadequate one.

"I think it's always nice to have extra advice. Both types of counseling, from Faculty members and peers, provide different things," she said. "Peers can afford perspective since they've taken the course. Faculty members provide the structure and the deeper knowledge of the system that the peers don't provide. Both are integral."