Faced with an increasingly lean budget and a growing student population, the pre-health advising program at Dartmouth's Career Services is expected to undergo review and revision in the coming months, according to Kimberly Sauerwein, pre-health advisor and assistant director of Career Services.
Following an external review of Career Services, completed last year, the pre-health advising program will formulate a plan to restructure its operations as part of an effort to improve Career Services as a whole, Sauerwein said. The planning process will address the program's structure, as well as issues that have arisen due to staff turnover in recent years.
"The system, as is, is not ideal," Sauerwein said. "We have lots of good stuff going on, but not an overarching program for health-professions advising."
The foremost concerns are the program's fragmentation and reliance on individuals rather than a cohesive system, she said. At present, only Sauerwein and Lee Witters, a Dartmouth Medical School professor who volunteers for the program, are available for pre-health advising at Career Services, according to Sauerwein. Advising is divided among Career Services, the First-Year Office and Dartmouth Medical School.
These issues sometimes make it difficult for students to find help and can increase wait times for students trying to meet with an adviser, Sauerwein said. The system's effectiveness is also vulnerable should Witters retire, though he has no current plans to do so, she said.
"It's not an official system," she said. "It's a system that works because of the goodness of [Lee Witters'] heart. We would like to see it under one roof and be sustainable."
Witters said he and Sauerwein hold weekly walk-in office hours for students seeking advice. They have also used the web site and Blackboard page of the Nathan Smith Society -- a student organization for students interested in health-care professions -- to advertise internship and extracurricular opportunities and ease communication between members and staff.
Though Witters said he believes the current system has been successful and has managed to handle the advising workload, he added that the case-by-case nature of advising and the requirements of his full-time teaching position necessarily limit the resources he can provide.
Compared to peer institutions, he said, Dartmouth's pre-health advising program is likely under-staffed and will have to deal with even greater demand as the number of students interested in health careers continues to increase. At the same time, the program has limited resources -- put toward offering opportunities for extracurricular experience in health professions -- which will likely be further strained given the current state of the economy.
"We sort of operate on a threadbare [Council on Student Organizations] budget, through the Nathan Smith Society," Witters said. "It's tough, though, to ask anyone for more money right now. But it can't be done on the cheap. It does involve a lot of dedication by people who are really interested, one-on-one, in students."
Despite the challenges the program must try to address in its strategic review, Witters said he believes the program successfully guides students through both the academic and vocational rigors of preparing for medical school or careers in health.
"[Sauerwein] and I are quite happy with our current success, but we could do even better," he said. "We want to keep up that high level of excellence, in the face of growing demand."
Pre-health students interviewed by The Dartmouth generally expressed positive opinions of the Career Services program. While they noticed an increase in students seeking advice in recent years, none said they found Sauerwein or Witters to be inaccessible.
"[Witters] is probably one of the most accessible professors at Dartmouth," said Christina Ackerman '10, a pre-health student and executive committee member of the Nathan Smith Society.
Ackerman said that students are generally very happy with the advising resources, but she had heard of some people who have had problems navigating the current advising system and sees potential problems for first-year students unfamiliar with the system.
Alex Borquez '09 said the program's advice has been useful, particularly in organizing his Dartmouth Plan and choosing classes. However, with 1,100 students currently enrolled in the Nathan Smith Society, he said the College should "man up" and increase the pre-health advising staff.
"I feel that they do a great job, but they're overworked," he said. "That's the amazing thing -- even though there are only two people for a lot of pre-meds, they're always great at having office hours and making themselves available for you to go talk to them."
