Advising for the Class of 2010

There have been many misconceptions about the future of advising and advising programs. I want to set the record straight and make our goals and objectives very clear. We want to provide the Class of 2010 with the best advising possible!

First, a little background: As a result of the recommendations in the Report of the Committee on Advising and Counseling, the College established the Advising Programs Office (APO) to help coordinate, facilitate, and support undergraduate advising efforts. The first initiatives are, among other things, to establish a peer advising program, recruit more non-resident advisers for the Board of Freshman Advisers, improve the orientation for those advisers, and coordinate electronic and printed information on advising.

The very first initiative of the office was to create a Student Advisory Board (SAB) representing all four undergraduate classes. Since the College already had a Prefect Board comprised of dedicated, energetic, and enthusiastic students committed to working with first-year students, the APO asked the nine members of that Board to join the SAB. All other undergraduates were sent emails by the Freshman Dean’s Office and the Houses asking them to apply for the remaining positions. More than 160 applied. We appointed about 40 students as full members of the SAB. The Board also includes guest members representing faculty, administrators, proctors, the FDO, the Bureau of Study Counsel, and the APO.

The Board worked closely with the APO to shape the peer advising program, recruit and train peer advisers, create various materials for the Class of 2010, revise Board of Freshman Adviser training, and will continue to work with the office on all other initiatives and projects. The Committee on Advising and Counseling also advises the APO. (The membership and the report of the aforementioned committee can be found on the curriculum review website.)

There were several SAB sub-committees this year, including Peer Advising; Board of Freshman Adviser Recruitment; First-Year Communications; First-Year Adviser Training; Pre-Concentration Advising; and Concentration Advising. Each group was charged with brainstorming possible answers to several important questions and reporting results of their meetings to the full board several times before the end of the semester. Next year, we will continue working in sub-committees, but the topics may change in some cases.

The Peer Advising sub-committee designed the Peer Advising Fellows program. The roles of the Fellows are multi-faceted. They will contact their advisees prior to their arrival on campus to initiate the development of a one-on-one relationship so that they can, for example, help freshmen prepare for their first meeting with their academic adviser, encourage them to engage in academic exploration, and generally be a comforting guide in the weeks leading up to arriving in Cambridge. Fellows will have thorough knowledge of campus resources, so that they will know where to send advisees for information in each department. They will also be well-versed in the panoply of services offered by UHS, the Bureau of Study Counsel, the Office of Career Services, etc., so that they know where to refer freshmen, when appropriate. Finally, the Fellows will play a key role in helping to build community within the entryway and dormitory by working with the proctors and each other on entryway and dorm-wide events.

Fellows and advisees will be assigned to one another based on broad divisional interest (sciences/mathematics, social sciences, humanities) and geography. Larger dorms are divided into two units, and the smallest dorms will be combined so that each group has similar numbers of freshmen. Each Fellow will have a group of about ten freshmen advisees, drawn from across the dorm. Peer Advising Fellows will meet regularly with their advisees in both one-on-one meetings and as a group. Fellows will also be associated with one entryway, so that a team of three or four Fellows can help a proctor organize study breaks for the entryway. All of the Fellows assigned to a dorm will work together to organize and host one dorm-wide event each month. Holding dorm-wide events and working with advisees from across the dorm will, we hope, facilitate a sense of dorm community, something that naturally evolves in the entryway, but less so in the dorm as a whole.

Nearly 500 students applied for the 180 Peer Advising Fellows positions. We were, quite frankly, surprised, but gratified by this overwhelming response. Almost 30 members of the SAB had already stated their interest in being Fellows next year. Since those students had already gone through an application process and we had come to know them quite well, they were accepted without an application. We also accepted several other students based on their applications and/or on recommendations by members of the faculty, administrators, and the SAB, as well as the applicants’ references. We then interviewed several hundred students. The applications this year were superb; I wish we could appoint all 480 students who applied. Rising sophomores and juniors will have another opportunity next year to become part of the program.

We did not accept or reject anyone simply on the basis of a single recommendation of any one faculty member, administrator, or SAB member. Four to six sets of eyes reviewed each application. The names of the applicants were sent to all of the resident deans of freshmen and the houses, and we checked many references. We received a great deal of helpful guidance from all of these people. The completed applications, the format of which was designed by the Peer Advising Sub-Committee of the SAB, combined with several excellent references from respected members of our community enabled some applicants to be accepted as Fellows directly. That being said, we may refine the process somewhat next year after assessing this year’s process.

We have, in the meantime, begun to recruit more non-resident first-year advisers. This summer, we will revise Board of Freshman Adviser training, develop Peer Advising Fellows training, and create a web site for all students on advising matters.

We are extremely grateful to the 37 students on the SAB for their time and dedication. This is a phenomenal group of students. We are also grateful to the many faculty and administrators who are assisting us in our work. Now in its twelfth week of existence, the APO has made enormous progress because of the hard work of all of these wonderful individuals. I am certain that, with the establishment of the Peer Advising Fellows program and with a potential increase in the number of first-year advisers, advising for the Class of 2010 will have taken some major leaps forward.



Monique Rinere is the Associate Dean of Advising Programs at Harvard College.