Dartmouth's advising program is designed to help first-year students choose courses and to guide juniors in planning their major course of study. But many Dartmouth students complain that they receive little academic guidance during sophomore year -- and even the freshman advising system is unstructured enough to allow some students to slip through the cracks.
"There isn't any question that the College has recognized it as a major concern," Dean of First-Year Students Gail Zimmerman said in reference to the advising gap between first-year advisors and major advisors.
But other schools, such as Brown and Stanford Universities, put greater emphasis on the importance of an advising system that guides student from the time they arrive on campus until they graduate.
At Brown, students have the option of continuing with their first-year advisor until they declare a major.
"Many students continue with their freshman advisors during sophomore year, while others submit to us the name of a new faculty member who they would like as their advisor," Brown Dean of Advising Armando Bengochea said. "Then all students get a new advisor in their major department when they declare their major."
Bengochea also pointed out that Brown provides "drop-in advisors" for sophomores. These "Randall advisors," as Brown students call them, are faculty members who hold office hours in the advising office for any sophomores in need of advice.
Dartmouth students do have access to their class dean in their upper-class years, though it can be difficult for one dean to advise an entire class of students. Consequently the use of the class dean is uncommon.
At Stanford, students also remain paired with their freshman-year advisor through their sophomore year. Students are never required to meet with their advisor, but have the option until they declare a major and receive a departmental advisor.
"A lot of students tend to go their own way sophomore year, and we've taken the attitude that that's fine," Stanford interim Director of Undergraduate Advising Chip Goldstein said. "We take the attitude that they are adults and can choose what resources to use."
In addition to lacking sufficient advising during the sophomore year, Dartmouth students sometimes find their first-year advising inadequate as well.
All of the permanent Dartmouth faculty are required to advise, though some find reasons to opt out, Zimmerman said. Each year 250 to 270 faculty advisors are on the list.
To ensure that students meet with their advisors, freshman are required to obtain a Personal Identification Number from their advisor before choosing classes each term. While the majority of students do meet with their advisors and discuss course selections with them before obtaining their PIN, students' most common complaint is that their advisors show little interest in meeting with them and choose to email the PIN to the student instead. That is not to say that many students do not indeed develop a successful working relationship with their first-year advisor, however.
"The PIN does in a sense force some contact with the faculty advisor," Zimmerman said. "We are just trying to ensure that some level of conversation does occur."
However, after freshman year, students are no longer provided an advisor until they declare their major, when they choose a departmental advisor.
At Brown, the open curriculum compels students to seek more advising than at other schools with more strict core curriculum.
The advising program most commonly opted for at Brown is the Curricular Advising Program. In CAP students sign up for courses that interest them freshman year and the professor in this small seminar course becomes the student's advisor for the year.
"Contact is frequent and structured: a student's questions or concerns can be discussed before or after class, casually, and don't have to wait until a formal advising appointment," according to a Brown document entitled "The Advising Partnership."
In Brown's system, advisors are guaranteed to be professors who are actually interested in advising, unlike at Dartmouth, where it is mandatory for all professors. Students not in CAP are assigned advisors who operate in the same way as CAP advisors without the classroom experience. Every faculty advisor works with a student peer advisor to advise his or her group of five to 15 students.
Stanford has its own unique freshman advising system. Advisors are given "cohorts" of approximately six students from the same dormitory, if possible. However, unlike at Dartmouth and Brown, advisors can be alumni, graduate students, faculty members and college staff -- the largest number of advisors. Even the President and the Provost have their own cohorts.
Each cohort also has a peer advisor who is either a sophomore or junior student that works with the advisor throughout the freshman year. Whenever possible peer advisors also live in the same dorm as their cohort.
Stanford once had a PIN system for choosing courses like Dartmouth's, requiring students to meet with their advisor, but they scrapped the system last year, with "not nearly the detrimental effect we had expected," Goldstein said. "Overall it worked out well."
Though Stanford students have no advising requirement, they are encouraged to take advantage of these resources in some open, inviting ways. Advisors are provided the funding to take their cohorts out for meals twice a year and advising workshops and faculty nights bring the advising to the students' dorm.
Zimmerman noted that students at Dartmouth have a number of resources accessible to them freshman year and beyond, despite the apparent lack of availability. She encouraged students to use a "network of people for their advising needs." This network includes the first-year advisor, class deans, career services, professors, and other students, among others. However, Zimmerman acknowledged that these resources are "not articulated as well as we would like."
The last time the college analyzed the advising system was in 1997. The report provided suggestions for changes in the current advising program. Though none of the major suggestions have been implemented, Zimmerman said that the suggestions were developed "without considering budget consequences," so many are unfeasible, particularly in the College's current budgetary condition.
But Bengochea said one fundamental aspect of advising has nothing to do with making expensive structural changes to the system.
"Advising is a two-way street," he said. "If you can't articulate your interests then you can't get help from an advisor."
