The Office of Residential Life will review the Graduate Students-in-Residence program this spring.
The program, which started as a two-year pilot in the fall of 1993, places graduate students in residential clusters.
Alison Keefe, assistant dean of residential life, said ORL is conducting a review of the program and will decide this spring to either continue the program or to end it.
Keefe said based on answers to questionnaires that ORL distributed to the graduate associates and undergraduates, the response to the program has been positive so far.
"I feel that it's going great because we have received so much student input from surveys and evaluations which have strengthened the GA position," Keefe said.
Edward Berger, dean of graduate studies, said, "Based on those involved it seems to be going just fine."
The students involved "seem to be enjoying the experience and it is not detracting them from their studies," he said.
Len Wisniewski, a graduate student in computer science who has been a graduate associate since the program's inception said he applied because he wanted to "get a new perspective on undergrads."
Former president of Dartmouth's graduate student council, Wisn-iewski lives in the Wheeler-Richardson cluster. Each week he holds "fireside chats" where students can come to relax and talk.
"I think he's really useful. He's like a second undergraduate advisor," Emily Hay '98 said.
"He plans activities and tries to involve everyone in the dorm. He is necessary for the dorm community," he said.
Vince Cassano, a mathematics graduate student, holds an event similar to Wisniewski's fireside chats -- weekly "coffee talks."
Every Tuesday night Cassano heats up the coffee on his stove and invites his cluster-mates to just relax and converse.
Cassano said one of the reasons he applied to the program was to get to know students better.
"The best way to find out what students are interested in is by living with them. This fosters communication," he said.
He also said that having a graduate student in the dorm expands the undergraduate experience.
Graduate associate Herve Garant '90, looking back on his undergraduate years, said he would have liked the program.
He said he "could have used a different perspective of what went on after graduation, what it is like in grad school, and how to prepare for it."
Garant, a student in the Thayer School of Engineering, lives with undergraduates in the Ripley- Woodward-Smith cluster.
Shawn-Marie Mayrand, a molecular and cell biology student at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, said she applied to the program because she enjoys working with students.
She said she finds her role as a GA rewarding.
"We serve as an example of what you can do after you get an undergraduate degree. We put things in perspective for [the students]. And we are a source for confidence and encouragement," she said.
But being a graduate student and living with undergraduates takes a bit of getting used to.
"You feel more unapproachable as a graduate student," Cassano said.
