Advising Award Ceremonies Combined This Year

The Undergraduate Council and the Advising Programs Office will present their respective advising awards in a single ceremony for the first time this spring. The move follows a consolidation of the nomination process for the two sets of awards.

The prizes recognize exemplary work of academic advisers, concentration advisers, peer advising fellows, and other faculty mentors. The nominations for both sets of awards were due on Thursday. The APO will now select a winner for the Star advising award and the UC’s Education Committee will choose winners for the Levenson, Marquand, and Dingman awards.

“We’re making the process more efficient, but really with the goal of bringing more saliently to the attention of the community the issue of outstanding advising and the virtue as we see it of celebrating it,” Director of Advising Programs Glenn R. Magid said of the move to consolidate the nominating process and awards ceremony for the four prizes.

UC leaders, who publicized the awards extensively over Harvard email lists, said the advising awards were an important way for students to single out outstanding mentors.

“The idea behind the awards is that we have a lot of really hard working teaching fellows, advisers, professors, that take their time out of their day to advise their students and who often don’t get recognized,” Evan M. Bonsall ’19, a member of the UC Education Committee, said.

UC Education Committee chair Scott Ely ’18 said his committee would look at a variety of factors in choosing winners for its three awards, but that chief among them would be “time, commitment, and aptitude.”

Since nominations come from students, Magid said, students are free to judge for themselves what qualities in advisers are worth recognizing. For his part, Magid said he thought good advising most required an active interest in the lives of students.

“Good advising begins with a real dedication to the mission,” Magid said. “It requires a certain set of skills: listening skills, speaking skills, a comfort with the unknown, a willingness to seek out information when you don’t have all of the answers, solid judgment, a real sensitivity to who the person is.”

Other students identified a range of qualities they saw as being necessary for a good adviser, but one common theme among them was approachability.

Elise N. Laird ’19, whose academic adviser is also her proctor, said the availability of her adviser was something she appreciated.

“He’s always available, which is helpful with day to day questions, especially at the start of the semester,” Laird said of her adviser. “I think it’s not really helpful to have an adviser if you have a question and it takes them multiple days to get back to you, especially if you need to make quick decisions.”

Other students mentioned strong support for students’ academic choices as a key quality in good advisers.

“I think he’s a good adviser because whenever I make a decision he supports it, even though he does warn me,” Lisa L. Vo ’19 said of her adviser. “He’ll give me the truth about it and he’ll support me either way.”