CUE Calls For Changes In Sophomore Advising

Members of the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) yesterday said faculty members should spend more time with sophomores to help them adjust to their concentrations.

At the committee's first meeting of the spring semester, members said the current advising system gives sophomores too little contact with faculty. The committee decided to concentrate its efforts for the next few weeks on examining the sophomore advising system and proposing changes.

Possible innovations include group concentration meetings and individual meetings with department faculty members. Dunster House Senior Tutor Jeffrey Wolcowitz, who made the proposals, said such meetings could help students become more comfortable with their concentrations at the beginning of sophomore year.

The group meetings could provide a general introduction for sophomores entering a concentration and address possible three-year programs of study, Wolcowitz said. He suggested scheduling a half-hour discussion with a faculty member other than a tutor or graduate student for each undergraduate.

Wolcowitz also said he would like to see students and faculty members matched up on the basis of house affiliation.

"I have a sense that an important part of advising is learning how to seek out advice," Wolcowitz, who is also a lecturer in economics, said at the meeting. "I'd like to see houses become a place for some of this advising," he said.

But student-faculty ratios in some departments may be too high to permit the amount of one-on-one discussion that Wolcowitz proposed, said Dean of Undergraduate Education David R. Pilbeam, the chairman of CUE.

The College could also improve advising for juniors by encouraging them to take small classes whenever possible, Pilbeam said. Students in classes of 10 undergraduates or less would have the chance to develop good working relationships with faculty members, Pilbeam said.

Members of the Undergraduate Council Academic's Committee, who are also members of CUE, suggested that the College hold a "concentration fair" for freshmen at the beginning of April. Each department would set up a booth in Memorial Hall to provide information to students as the University now does for seniors at Career Day.

They also suggested asking upper-classmen to talk to freshmen about their concentrations.

Pilbeam praised the idea for the fair but said it was too late to hold one this spring. He encouraged members of the council to carry out their other proposal.

The Academics Committee also asked that the College postpone meetings on concentrations until after spring break, so that "the now refreshed and rested freshmen [could] devote their complete attention to choosing their area of study." They said the current schedule forces students to think about their academic futures during the tumult of the housing lottery.

Pilbeam said after the meeting that the issue "merits further examination," and said the CUE should "look again at both procedures to see how they can be streamlined."

"I'm not convinced that they have to be separated by spring break," he said of the housing lottery and the concentration dinners.