First-Year Advising Proposals Unveiled

Associate Dean of Advising Programs Monique Rinere unveiled four potential plans for the future of freshman advising at a meeting with students on Friday, according to attendees.

Rinere and fellow administrators assembled a 37-member Student Advisory Board (SAB) Friday in the first step towards overhauling advising at Harvard.

Rinere told the SAB that advising could be organized by entryways, by dorms, by clusters of residence halls, or by the specific academic interests expressed by first-years, according to board member Matthew L. Sundquist ’09.

Rinere and SAB members discussed the division of the board into subcommittees focused on different areas—including pre-concentration advising, peer advising, faculty advising, and website coordination.

The board also began a dialogue on the structure of the new peer advising program that may replace the current prefect system.

According to one student present at the meeting, Rinere told the board members that they should keep the contents of the meeting’s discussions confidential. The SAB will convene again this morning to resume their discussion.

The board, assembled within a month of Rinere’s arrival from Princeton Universtiy, is composed of nine freshmen, nine sophomores, 13 juniors, and six seniors who will serve as chairs of the different subcommittees.

In a press release from the College, Rinere said that the SAB has a strong minority representation and includes students from every class, and nearly every department.

Students were selected by a team of administrators and Undergraduate Council members led by Rinere. Over 160 undergraduates applied.

“Advising can’t work without the energy and commitment of students as well as faculty and administrators,” Rinere said in an interview last week.

In addition to developing undergraduate peer advising, the Advising Programs Office also plans to encourage more professors to become involved in advising freshmen, Rinere said in the interview.

Two weeks ago, College administrators told members of the Prefect Program that their freshman-focused organization may be disbanded after the implementation of a new peer advising system, leading the prefects to halt their comp process. Following negative student reaction, Rinere and several administrators met with Prefect Program board members to tell them that many aspects of the program may be retained and that the new peer advising system will have a social function as well.

Currently, all nine undergraduates on the Prefect Program’s board are also members of the SAB.

SAB member Dina S. Wang ’06 said that the new advisory board is “a great system” because it allows students to become more involved with the administration’s decisions regarding advising.

Several College administrators, including Deputy Dean of the College Patricia O’Brien and Dean of Freshmen Thomas A. Dingman, were present at Friday’s meeting.

—Staff writer Ying Wang can be reached at yingwang@fas.harvard.edu.