COLUMN: Raising the quality of advising

From Dina Bass', "No Loss for Words," Fall '99 From Dina Bass', "No Loss for Words," Fall '99No one at Penn thinks very much of the College of Arts and Sciences' academic advising system. Students either complain about it or try to avoid it; several SAS and College deans have discussed the need to reform it, albeit with no progress yet; and faculty either think it doesn't work very well or wish they didn't have to participate in it at all. You see after freshman year the advising system completely breaks down. Freshman advising meetings -- three times a year with a somewhat randomly assigned faculty member -- are often useless, especially if the faculty member has made no effort to read through the College handbook which lists requirements and suggestions for freshmen. But at least the system keeps tabs on all freshmen and makes sure someone follows what courses they are signed up for. After that, it's an utter crapshoot; some departments and some faculty members do their jobs while others fail miserably. Some departments don't require students to meet with an advisor at all, so students get to decipher their requirements and select classes on their own. This policy deprives majors of one of their best chances to get to know a faculty member, especially unfortunate in a department like Economics, which has no real seminar classes. Other majors, for example the extremely popular Politics, Philosophy and Economics and Biological Basis of Behavior majors, have one advisor -- the program director -- although the majors are among the school's largest. In each, a couple hundred students get to undergo the Herculean task of scheduling a meeting with this one poor professor, who really ought to be working on long-term planning in his spare time anyhow. Students lucky enough to have major advisors find the quality of advice varies wildly. For one thing, all too many faculty members loathe having to meet with students. A word of advice to those faculty members: you were undergrads at one point and you wouldn't be a professor today if someone hadn't taken you under their wing. Advising is part of a faculty member's job. Please do it with a minimum of grumbling. Then you have faculty members who don't bother to familiarize themselves with the requirements of their own department's major. Now how can you be advised if a particular class fits in to the pre-1800 History of a Non-Industrialized Third World Country in Asia or Africa requirement if your advisor has no idea the department even has such a requirement? Other professors refuse to give you their opinions about particular classes. Witness the following scene that occurred between me and someone who is no longer my major advisor. Advisor: So you did what I asked and made a list of English classes you are considering taking next semester? Me: Yes. Advisor: Great. So I'll tell you my opinion about what you should take. (Looks at list of seven classes) These all sound fine. Me: Well I can only take two. Which do you think are the most interesting? Advisor: (Confused) Oh, they're all fine. I realize that faculty members are reluctant to explicitly tell you which classes or professors to avoid but couldn't they simply couch their suggestions as an attempt to tell you which classes will most suit your interests? Needless to say, I found another major advisor. It wasn't so much the advising itself as the fact that at my third meeting with said professor she asked me, for the third time, where my yellow sheet was so that she could sign it to allow me to register for the next semester. OK, so if she didn't remember my name, at least she could remember that I was a sophomore English major and not one of her freshman advisees. The University has a vested interest in seeing students graduate in four years with a minimum of confusion. Students who have no idea what classes to take -- both to graduate and more generally, to get a solid education -- or students who come running to department chairs a month before graduation begging to be allowed to count something, anything, towards a requirement they didn't realize they hadn't fulfilled, are not good for a school's reputation. There are faculty members and administrators who say the advising system needs to be completely revamped, and perhaps there is a more efficient way of advising students. But for the time being, a baseline level of advising for upperclassmen must be instituted. On the departmental level, all majors need to assign faculty advisors (note the plural, no one professor can advise a whole major). Faculty members, meanwhile, must keep themselves informed about their own departmental requirements and try to foster an honest, open and helpful dialogue between them and their advisees.