Are We Deluding Ourselves?

Since at least May 4, 1937, The Crimson has been reporting on the ills of Harvard’s advising system. On that date, an editorial entitled “Wake Up and Think” formulated this reaction to a suggestion that seniors rather than “faculty men” advise freshmen: “If the University is to make any real progress in cleaning the grimy spot of Freshman Advising from its escutcheon, something more better than seniors, who are interested in their own problems [and] out of touch with the Yard … will have to be found.”

In April, 1938, then Dean of the College Delamar Leighton ’19 announced a wholly revised advising system in which part-time instructors of freshman courses would be compensated for advising and the Board of Advisers would therefore be reduced in size (from 84 to 60) for budgetary reasons.

In 1950, a report issued by a committee investigating the issues in the advising system wrote: “The demand for improved advising stems from more than just a need for better advice narrowly defined. It reflects a need for personal relationships with members of the faculty, a need to be known and valued as individuals with unique qualities, not to be anonymous, one of an undifferentiated mass of students….”

The 1960s through this decade brought similar admissions and accusations of failure and subsequent attempts to review, renew, and reorganize. In fact, in June 1980, the now-famous Susan C. Faludi ’81 begins her Commencement issue editorial by saying that “it has become a Harvard tradition of sorts to report periodically on the failures of advising.” Indeed.

The College is now five terms into the most recent attempt to improve things. Are there reasons to be hopeful? Are things getting better? Have we finally at least begun to clean the grimy spot of not only freshman but of all advising from our collective escutcheon? Or are we just deluding ourselves?

It’s hard to define good advising. We often hear that it provides students with sounding boards. My favorite description reads: “Advising creates a metaphorical space that allows and enables people to be receptive to learning about themselves.” Advising programs focus first and foremost on opening up space in which students can explore possibilities. In that advising space, students must feel comfortable imagining themselves as something different and yet still in accord with their true self.

All of us—students, faculty, and administrators—have a story to tell about a transformative moment in our lives when, in a conversation with an adviser, be it a faculty member, administrator or older student, our lives were changed. And often, these tales are made even more compelling by the fact that the person we were talking to did not suspect that the conversation would be pivotal. I’ve heard former University President Derek C. Bok tell a story about a short conversation he had with a law school professor in whose class he was not faring well. The conversation convinced Bok not to give up on law school and to consider that his talents might not be sufficiently on display in this one class but would be in others, and the rest is history, as they say.

Since the Advising and Counseling Committee’s diligent work under the direction of outgoing Dean of the College David R. Pilbeam with the aid of Assistant Dean for Advising Programs Inge-Lise Ameer, the College has focused on “advising matters” in a broad and sweeping way. The Advising Programs Office, students, faculty, administrators, concentrations, centers, the museums, libraries, Expos, the Bureau of Study Counsel, the Office of Career Services, the Bok Center, among others, have focused anew on the questions of what good advising is, what the College should offer its students, and what the student’s responsibilities are in the undergraduate advising programs and experiences. The breadth and depth of the conversation is one hopeful sign that we may not be deluding ourselves completely.

The degree to which students are involved in our review, renewal and reorganization gives me the greatest hope. The Advising Programs Office has a Student Advisory Board that helps design programs and with which we discuss everything we do; students serve on the Faculty Standing Committee on Advising and Counseling; the Peer Advising Fellows program has formed a dedicated group of Fellows that helps design their training and other activities; and there is a small army of students who work in the office.

One of these students is Katherine A. Beck ’08, a force to be reckoned with. She has not only had a voice in the creation and implementation of everything we do but has also led more than a few initiatives. She has done the work of at least two employees, all the while being active in Mission Hill and The Seneca, completing her College education, and winning the Harvard College Women’s Leadership Award. She is tireless and selfless and amazing. We will miss her more than words can express.

She is just one among many, many others who give me hope that we are not in fact deluding ourselves this time. For this time we will stay vigilant and vibrant and true to ourselves and our students because we will create opportunities for sustained and consistent involvement of students, and they will keep the conversation fresh. They will ensure that we continue to discover new and better ways of creating space for imagining the future so that every graduate feels valued as an “individual with unique qualities” and that each graduate has a story to tell about a transformative moment that changed them and their lives forever and for the better.


Monique Rinere is an associate dean of advising programs at Harvard College.