Freshman Advising Program May Mean Much -- Or Nothing

WELL, I went to see my adviser, who helped me select my studies for the yea. That is, he hypnotized me into thinking a lot of things I really don't see why I should know. However, as I don't seem to have what he called a 'startling predilection' for anything (my entrance exams divulged this), and as he is a pleasant young man who invited me to dinner next week, I allowed myself to be influenced by him."

Over fifty years after Charles M. Flaundrau wrote his Diary of a Freshman, criticism of the advising system in the freshman year is still just as strong, and just as misleading. Student Councils have recommended changes, Deans have taken second and third looks at the system, improvements have come, but the student continues to protest with those amused and amusing questions: "My adviser? Why, all I ever got from him as hi signature on my study card, and that was in the wrong place."

An Important Introduction

Even if many freshmen answer questions about their advisers with a guffaw, few students or faculty members can deny that the freshman adviser is an extremely important introduction to Harvard. As a newcomer's first official personal contact with the University, he is able-for good or for bad-to affect a freshman's attitude toward the faculty, toward Harvard, and toward education. And yet, although an adviser can become something more than a distant man in a busy office, it is equally hard to deny that a student may, and indeed often does, ignore his adviser and his adviser's advice.

Many of the basic problems of the freshman year are bound up in this take-it-or-leave it advising system, and in a sense, the problems of the Advising system are the problems of the freshman year. For basic to both is the unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable question: How much should Harvard attempt to ease the jolt of freshman year? Or, put another way, to what extent is a jolt the necessary prelude to a Harvard education?

The answers to these questions today would probably number as many as the 104 members of the Board of Freshman Advisers. Even though each of these men-from first year law students to full professors, from deans to masters in the Houses, from residents in the Yard to inhabitants of Belmont--would have his own notion of what an adviser should, or should not, do, the basic purpose of advising remains what President Eliot in 1889 first established a committee of 14 freshman advisers.

"It was expected," Eliot wrote, "that if a profitable and pleasant relation were established during the freshman year between the adviser and the advised, the relation would be maintained during the later College year; but the primary function of the adviser was no give counsel and encouragement to the newcomer, bewildered perhaps by the sudden freedom of College life, the multiplicity of fresh interests, and the complexity of his first problem--the wise selection of studies."

First Hand Acquaintance

Although the program has undergone many changes over the years, and has grown from 14 to 104 members, the aims are substantially the same: "to give the student an acquaintance, at first hand, and out of the classroom, with the virtues and defects of the teaching staff," as Dean Leighton puts it.

Beyond this, however, Dean Leighton will not go. with a long involvement with the advising system--he was dean of freshmen in 1931-32 when seniors moved out of the Yard and freshmen moved in-Leighton is "skeptical of all formulations of what an adviser should do, for no one is really qualified to advise freshmen."

"Ideally," he adds, "the adviser should have technical knowledge of the student's field; he should have foresight enough to predict the number of applicants to graduate schools in five years; he should be familiar with all the courses in the university; and he should know and understand his advisee's personality almost immediately. This person just doesn't exist."

If the ideal adviser does not exist--and it is a pretty safe bet that he doesn't--what do the present advisers actually do? How much time do they spend with their advisees, and what kind of advice" do they give?

The most limited form of advising is, of course, the adviser who sits in his office, sees his students for ten minutes, and does little but perfunctorily answer a question or two. Last year's Student Council Report on "The Freshman Year at Harvard College" indicates that about 10 percent of the students polled felt that this type of study-card relationship existed with their adviser.

Advisers, of course, are limited by time, but most find the time and interest to go well beyond this narrow study-card approach. Harold C. Martin, director of General Education Ahf, for instance, sees an an important function for advisers the help they can give to students to get through the "machinery and red-tape of Harvard." "All the advising system is, in the end," says Martin, "is a substitute for the kind of explanation one would give to a stranger or a guest if he came to one's house."

Martin feels that the relationship between adviser and advisee should be "based on an intellectual rapproachment, without any conscious striving toward a personal one." He is, in fact, highly critical of anything smacking of the paternal--although a role as a friendly uncle is at times appropriate. "A student has no right to expect his adviser to be a Father-Confessor," he says; "if he happens to find one, that is fine, as long as the adviser isn't too ready with advice. The adviser can be an amiable listener, but the student has no reason to expect him to be a sounding board."

Martin traces his own distrust for an adviser with too much advice to the growth of guidance counseling in secondary schools. "There is no reason that an 18-year old should not be able to make his own decisions, but his secondary school background may have had such a vast counseling machinery for easing his way that he has failed to assume his proper responsibilities." Because Martin feels that the contrived intimacy of the guidance counselor is largely an illusion, he feels the advising system, at least in theory, should be kept to the primary, limited purpose of helping the student through the confusion and complications of the Harvard machinery. "Last year," he notes, "an advisee asked me three times whether I thought he should go to Florida for spring vacation. This is precisely the kind of question an adviser should not attempt to answer."

As another adviser, Harlan P. Hanson '46, Director of Advanced Standing, would probably answer more questions, especially non-academic ones, than Martin. Hanson does admit that each student will require something different from his adviser, and that sometimes, it is wiser just to leave advisees to themselves. As one of his former students told him: "You're one of the best advisers I could have had--you left me alone."

In other cases, however, Hanson feels the adviser should seek out students, especially those whose experiences with guidance counselors at secondary school may keep them away. It would not be unusual for Hanson to take an advisee to see the sights of Boston, to tell him where to get his laundry done, or to suggest that he buy a new pair of trousers--if necessary.

'Get Him Lubricated'

Sometimes, Hanson tries to correct certain myths--such as when he shows his advisees that they "don't have to study 60 hours a week to stay in this place." He says, "If I find a freshman who is studying too hard, I take him out and get him so lubricated that he will have to go home to bed. It doesn't work just to tell him he is working too hard; you have to show him that a responsible member of the faculty will actually keep him from studying for a while."

Hanson's view of his role may be somewhat broader than Martin's, but both are considerably above the mere study-card level. They are both easily available to students; both know the University well enough to guide a troubled advisee to the proper person or department; and both are wary of definite formulations of what an adviser should do or be.

Both Martin and Hanson, however, like 84 other advisers, do not live in the Yard. They may see their advisees in their offices or in the Union, but they have little acquaintance with the freshman after 5 p.m.

One of the most significant developments in the advising system has been the installation of 20 proctor, advisers, who live in the Yard and who advise about 20 students each. There had been some proctors who were also advisers ever since the freshmen moved into the Yard, but F. Skiddy von Stade '38, dean of freshmen since 1953, raised the number to 20 last year in an experiment that seems to have worked extremely well.

The resident advisers, who have most of their 400 advisees either in their own entry-way or at least in the same building, have a unique chance to develop the informal relationships that neither Martin nor Hanson can easily achieve. The topics that come up in easy dormitory relations--where to buy an overcoat, how to select courses, where to entertain a date, how to solve academic difficulties or how to find a purpose in a college education--can run the gamut, depending entirely on which way the student steers the course. And, as one adviser said, "I've never given any so-called advice during office hours."

Not Meant to Probe

While proctor-advisers are not necessarily Harvard graduates, they are carefully selected for their friendliness and interest in freshmen: last year, 110 applied for 20 jobs. Also, as graduate students, they are close to the age of the freshmen, and as one of them, "There is no real trouble in making friends within two or three weeks with almost every one of my advisees. Most of them live either down the hall or up the stairs." The closeness, however, does not lead the adviser to oversee the student's affairs. As von Stade explains: "If there is trouble, we expect the advisers to let us know, but if there isn't we expect him not to probe!"

These three types of advisers--the resident proctor who has a chance to know his advisees well, the non-resident adviser who nevertheless tries to be something more than a mere giver of directions, and the non-resident who may become a good friend of his advisee but who sees his main job as cutting through Harvard red tape--cannot be arbitrarily separated. At any one time or with any one student, any of these advisers may cross over into the other's territory with no thought at all about a theory of advising. An advising system as amorphous as this is bound to have some weak links in the chain of command. Although the advisers are given detailed information about course requirements of various misunderstand regulations or who are simply uninterested. Although the advisers are given detailed information about course requirements of various fields of concentration, there are always some who misunderstand regulations or who are simply uninterested. Although the Deans' Office attempts to match interests of students and adviser before assignment and tries to give any student who wants a particular adviser a free choice, there are always some unfortunate conflicts either of interest or personality, that lead nowhere beyond the study card.

The students who think they want to concentrate in the sciences, for instance, pose a definite problem to the person who assigns advisers. For about 45 percent of entering Freshman plan to head toward the sciences, while only about 25 percent of the advisers are in the field of science. Leroy S. Rouner '53, assistant dean of Freshmen in charge of assigning advisers, says that he would not assign all the scientists to science even if he could, for "that" would set the adviser up as a mere dispenser of information. The adviser should know the correct details about the field, of course, but he certainly does not have to be a physicist."

Eating in the Union

Another problem, noticed especially by the students themselves, is the lack of the use of the Union dining hall by many advisers. Proctor-advisers, of course, receive 600 meals free at the Union, and they are usually much in evidence. But the teaching fellows, those in part-time Corporation appointments who live neither in the Yard nor in the Houses, receive for each advisee, $22 and only three free meals per term. and those on full-time appointments--members of the Administration, professors, or House tutors, receive no compensation beyond six meals on the Union per year per advisee. Many freshmen seem to feel that the Union is a good place to meet their adviser, but it is natural for the adviser to be hesitant. As Edward T. Wilcox, adviser and associate director of the Bureau of Study Counsel, says, "I never eat with my advisees unless they ask me to. The last thing we want is to have lots of eager advisers rushing around the Union to find freshmen. I go and sit by myself and see if any freshmen will come over." Actually, the person the freshmen are complaining about is not the one who comes to the Union--even if he makes no effort to pick out his advisees--but rather the one who constantly sits with other advisers or never comes to the Union at all.

If meeting students in the Union is somewhat awkward, and if calling them singly into an office is equally unsatisfactory, many advisers have begun group meetings of all their advisees. Von Stade has an entertainment fund which can be used for this purpose, and he says that more and more advisers are taking advantage of it. Men like David D. Henry '41, director of Admissions, who bring their advisees together in groups, often find the experience rewarding.

'Shakes Up Your Thinking'

In the dreary period between the Yale Game and Christmas, Henry had his advisees to his home for dinner and they talked excitedly about what Harvard was doing to them and for them. "Boy, I thought I was working in high school," one said, "but it was nothing like this." "Yes, it really shakes up your thinking," another answered.

Henry's purpose was not only to let them talk, but also to give them a change from the Union and from studying. "This place is not all so grim and serious," he says. "So many freshmen get worried about losing a scholarship or getting bumped out of this place that you often have to reassure them that they are a highly select group.

"After all," he adds, "two or three were turned down for every one accepted, and the flunk-out rate last year was less than two percent. If they just learn to plan on a long-range basis, they'll do all right. It's at the beginning of the year, when the professor says 'read these books, and write these papers, and take these exams, and good luck'--it's then that the student may feel swamped."

Group advising, if extended too far, can have drawbacks, however. As Von Stade points out: "It is one thing to do this on an informal basis. But if you're going to talk about this wonderful new phrase 'group dynamics," then no one short of a professional counselor should attempt it. It is a serious thing for amateurs to experiment at that level."

Dudley's System

Besides group advising, some critics of the present system have advocated an organized system of freshman advising by upperclassmen. The Student Council tried this with little success in the fall of 1953 on an experimental scale, but discontinued the program. At present, Dudley is experimenting with something similar: each freshman commuter is as-