Administrators may completely overhaul the first-year advising system effective Fall 2005 if the Board of Trustees approves their proposal today.
Administrators may completely overhaul the first-year advising system effective Fall 2005 if the Board of Trustees approves their proposal today. Championed by Robert Thompson, dean of Trinity College, and Michele Rasmussen, assistant dean of Trinity College, the program aims to focus primarily on dorm-wide community and student-adviser interaction.
The new advisory system would assign each dormitory a cluster of advisers, each specializing in a particular field. The advisers from each dorm will also work with students within their residence coordinator-based neighborhood, offering their expertise to students who are not necessarily in their assigned dorms.
In revamping the system, the University aims to address students’ frustration with the current system, which draws a group of students together based on their academic interests or intended major. Their assigned adviser is a faculty or staff member in that particular field, but problems arise when students change their minds and the advisers cannot offer much help outside their own areas.
Administrators hope to couple the new neighborhood-oriented advising with social events designed to loosen up the advising environment and increase advisers’ accessibility. The goal is for students to become familiar with all the advisers in their area.
“This is what the intention is: To take advantage of the fact that we have a first-year campus, we have a pre-major advising system, and we want to intentionally align the two,” Thompson said.
Wilson, Southgate and Alspaugh dormitories have already been testing the program out this semester. Rasmussen said the results from the three dorms this fall have reinforced her hope that the program will forge better connections among students, advisers and the Pre-Major Advising Center.
“One of the things we’ve learned in the experiment this semester is that the center needs to be more engaged and proactive, and it will be,” she said. “There may be instances that it could be fun to get together in the dorm, maybe over coffee, whereas right now it’s just too difficult logistically to do that kind of thing.”
Wilson faculty-in-residence and adviser Carol Flath, who is a professor of the practice in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, said the University’s attempt to blend academics with residential life is a great idea. As an adviser, she places great importance on interpersonal relationships and said the current advising system does not make this kind of interaction easy.
“If I was a typical student, I would generally think of advising as a hoop I have to jump through to get my PIN number, as opposed to a chance to spend quality time with my adviser,” said Flath, one of approximately 120 Duke faculty members that serve as pre-major advisers.
She said the advisers hope to do all they can to coordinate, reach out and stay alert to possibilities and students’ “social rhythms” to facilitate the advising experience. She emphasized the prospects of eating opportunities as a method of drawing students to organized advising events, and also as a means of enabling students to spend time with their advisers in a casual setting.
“We probably won’t perform skits, but I will have some tiramisu at the drop of a hat,” she said.
Some students voiced frustration with the lack of their advisers’ accessibility in the current system. “I just talk to my adviser about school stuff that I can discuss with anybody, but I wish I could contact him more. I think that’s more important than having him be in a specific field,” freshman Rick Park said.
Freshmen living in Wilson who have already experienced the tentative advising model said they think it is a good idea from a social standpoint. “ I have friends in my advising group, but I think it would be good—that way the students and advisers can collaborate,” freshman Keith Greenberg said.
This collaboration is the ultimate goal in making first-year advising easier and more enjoyable, both for students and advisers. “Duke is really interested in bringing intellectual life into the dorms,” Flath said. “It’s your home, after all.”
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