College builds welcome redundancy into advising framework

By Steve Bradt

FAS Communications

This month, for the first time in Harvard’s 371-year history, students declare their academic concentrations as sophomores — a shift that has prompted the creation of an entirely new advising framework for second-year undergraduates.

The change also marks the sophomore year of a broader, yet quiet, revolution in undergraduate advising at Harvard, which is now the purview of the College’s Advising Programs Office (APO), a staff of eight led by Associate Dean Monique Rinere.

“All of us at Harvard have a story to tell about a transformative moment at some point in our college or graduate school careers when, in an advising conversation with a professor, a dean, or an older student, our lives were changed,” Rinere says.

The new view that “Advising Matters” — to cite the APO’s mantra — emerged from the Harvard College Curricular Review, prompting the College to recruit Rinere in 2006. Since then, the APO has engaged in assertive and consistent outreach to faculty, many of whom had not previously served as freshman advisers simply because they’d never been asked. In the process, the number of professors serving as freshman advisers has soared, from 65 to 226.

The APO has also reached out to students, its efforts guided by a Student Advisory Board consisting of about three dozen College undergraduates.

“No program flies without student input, and many of our new programs have been designed by students with input from faculty and administrators,” Rinere says. “Student creativity, energy, enthusiasm, and innovation are key to the success of advising programs.”

At both the freshman and sophomore levels, the new advising frameworks assign students a network of advisers drawn from the social, residential, and academic realms. Advisers at all levels are now recruited, trained, and supported by the APO. They are also invited to events intended to build community among people interested in guiding undergraduates. In exchange, they are expected to adhere to clear protocols — for example, receiving detailed instructions on when and how to reach out to students.

“We’re trying to make the process a lot richer,” Rinere says. “Students should think of their college advising as a process of incrementally building a network of advisers to turn to and to consult at important junctures in their lives at Harvard.”

“College advising is not a ‘one-stop-shopping’ experience,” she adds. “Students must be prepared to seek advice from several sources each year.”

Steven B. Bloomfield ’77, executive director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, has served as a freshman adviser since 1994. Both in that capacity and as a former College advisee himself, he sees striking gains in the quality of the guidance the College now offers its students.

“In both cases, I think we are carrying out a far superior service to our first-year students,” says Bloomfield, who is currently advising four first-years. “We are oriented to our responsibilities more thoroughly, and there has arisen a certain culture of expectation regarding how we should provide advice to undergraduates that brings the best out of us.”

Most incoming freshmen are now assigned four distinct advisers: a freshman adviser (most often a professor or administrator, like Bloomfield), a proctor (generally an administrator or graduate student who lives in a student’s dormitory), an upperclassman known as a Peer Advising Fellow, and the resident dean of freshmen for his or her residential yard.

The overarching goal, Rinere says, is to “try to create a spark” — so that if a student doesn’t bond with her faculty adviser, she might find kinship with a Peer Advising Fellow or with a proctor, instead.

“Believing, as Derek Bok said, that an advising system is about increasing opportunities for ‘individual decisive moments,’ we’ve built redundancy into the programs in all areas,” Rinere says. “We are guided by the principle that giving students three or four advisers at the outset will ensure that more sparks are created than if you offer each student just one.”

At the sophomore level, formal advising has been incorporated into residential life, with House masters designating some 20 resident tutors in each House as sophomore advisers. Seeking to foster a “culture of exploration,” these tutors assist second-year students as they work toward choosing a concentration — as well as in thinking about electives, secondary fields, study abroad opportunities, fellowships, and internships. Tutors are trained as sophomore advisers and are assigned to their advisees according to their academic interests.

Midway through the sophomore year, after students have selected a concentration, primary responsibility for advising passes to the 44 undergraduate concentrations in the College. The APO has smoothed this handoff by working with each of the concentrations to raise awareness of undergraduate advising and to strengthen and standardize each concentration’s undergraduate advising.

So far, the changes seem to be resonating with students.

“Coming into Harvard as a freshman was very overwhelming, especially for me, as I had — and still have — no idea of what I would like to concentrate in,” says first-year student Tiffany Smalley. “However, I definitely feel my advisers have helped me tremendously to settle in here.”

Looking at the new advising programs from the perspective of peer advisers, College juniors Sarah H. Arshad and Sarah Roberts agree.

“I think a lot of freshmen now benefit from advice that it would have otherwise taken them a lot longer to attain,” says Arshad, who advises freshmen as a Peer Advising Fellow. “This is, after all, a huge turning point for just about every freshman — it’s quite often the first time many freshmen are living on their own, away from home and parents, and a time when they have to become a lot more independent.”

“I am so impressed with the staff at the APO — they have put so much hard work and dedication into improving advising here,” adds Roberts, also a Peer Advising Fellow. “I think the [Peer Advising] program is really making a difference, because it’s effectively bringing a student perspective into advising, which was missing before.”

“I was very close to some upperclassmen my freshman year, and I know their guiding influence really helped me smooth through some of my own obstacles,” Arshad says. “Sometimes you just need someone who’s been through what you’re going through to tell you, ‘It’s OK,’ and tell you how to deal with some of the hurdles you face.”

Numerous events throughout the year now welcome students into the realm of advising. This fall, the APO embraced the Class of 2011 at separate events hosted by the concentrations and by Peer Advising Fellows. A Concentration Fair during shopping week brought representatives from all 44 concentrations to Tercentenary Theatre so first- and second-year students could learn more about the broad range of programs of study available to them.

Last April’s Advising Fortnight, a two-week series of events marking the beginning of preconcentration advising for the Class of 2010, saw first-years flocking to scores of advising events held by every academic department and degree program, with total attendance approaching 3,000.

“The people I’ve talked to were really enthusiastic about some of the new events, like the Advising Fortnight and the big Peer Advising Fellows advising session in Annenberg,” Roberts says.

The APO has overhauled its Web site, creating a password-protected advising portal that shows individuals their entire advising universe at a glance, including photographs and contact information of all advisers and advisees. The APO Web site also puts at students’ fingertips fully standardized information on all 44 undergraduate concentrations.

In keeping with Rinere’s sequential focus since arriving at Harvard — first tackling freshman advising, then sophomore advising — the APO will next turn its attention to upper class advising, specifically thesis advising. Students are designing a Web site and writing a publication for those who are considering writing a thesis, both of which will be vetted by faculty and administrators alike.

“We’re trying to stay one step ahead of the Class of 2010,” Rinere says.