"There's a great deal that Harvard can be proud of about undergraduate education. Students have quite high satisfaction with instructional experience," he said. "The situation of advising stands out as anomalous."

Lewis noted that advising varied widely by departments and encouraged communication and reevaluation of current systems. He asked Faculty members to comment on what they thought led to successful advising.

"We come to you with no legislation. We know that legislation is not likely to fix anything by itself," Lewis said. "We hope that departments themselves are scrutinizing their progress."

Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics Howard Georgi '68 spoke in support of the report, saying that good advising will become even more of a necessity if individual departments and the College eliminate more concentration and Core requirements.

Georgi, who is also master of Leverett House, said increasing a student's class choices also increases the need for good advising so that the College can ensure students are taking appropriate courses.

"We have the best students in the world, and we should trust them to take an active role in the planning of their education," he said. "But we should make sure that they have all the information they need to make good decisions."

Georgi also discussed the "gender issue" of advising within the physics department.

"Most of our women concentrators want to have advisers that care about them as people, while many of our male concentrators don't seem to find this important as long as they get good advice," he said.