College advising sys. undergoes overhaul

Oceanside High School '98

Oceanside, N.Y.

Incoming students in the College of Arts and Sciences this fall can expect to get some good advice on their academic careers, College officials hope.

The College has spent the past year overhauling its now-fragmented advising system, looking for ways to offer students a cohesive system of academic advice and support.

Reforming the College's oft-criticized advising system has been a major goal of College Dean Richard Beeman.

New Student Orientation will also be expanded to provide students with more time to acclimate to Penn. And a new position -- the dean of freshmen -- has been created to oversee freshman advising, coordinate academic support services for freshmen and plan the newly expanded New Student Orientation in the College.

Every freshman next year will be assigned a "primary academic advisor" who will be the first person students can go to whenever they have a question or need advice.

There will be about 65 such advisors drawn from different areas of the University, each of whom will be assigned 10 to 12 students to advise. The advisors will be offered training to ensure that they have the necessary skills to offer help to students and that they understand their responsibilities.

Students will keep their primary advisors for at least two years, after which they will be expected to use their major advisor as a primary source of information.

Under the previous system, College freshmen were assigned to a peer advisor, a faculty advisor, a residential advisor and an assistant dean for advising. Relatively little information was provided to students on which advisor they should go to with different types of questions, and many students were unsure of where to go first when they needed help.

An external review of the College last year criticized its advising system for failing to connect its numerous advising components with students' needs in a cohesive system.

Following the review committee's report, the College created a task force to look at ways to improve the advising system to better serve students.

Beeman said the new system will provide an "unambiguous first point of contact," allowing students to address all questions and concerns to their primary advisor.

The new advising program will also make use of the newly expanded NSO in late August and early September.

The Committee of Undergraduate Deans voted in February to add three extra days to NSO, and the additional time will be used to provide increased academic programming for College students.

Also as part of the new advising program, the College will work to make clear to freshmen what is expected of them academically. Students will be asked to consider their academic goals and the ways in which their expectations can be reached.

"We are going to demand much more of our freshmen in terms of thoughtful, advanced planning," Beeman said. "We're really going to press the students about their academic goals."

The new program will be overseen by the first dean of freshmen, Lorraine Sterritt, currently the associate dean of freshmen for academic affairs at Harvard University. Sterritt will take her position at Penn on July 1.

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