Since his death, the department implemented a number of reforms geared toward helping students feel that they had someone to go to when they were in distress.

They created a new system, based on Altom's suggestion, that gave three advisors, rather than just one, to each graduate student.

In the previous system, one of graduate students' main concerns was that their fate rested completely in the hands of their particular advisor, since no one else had any idea what they were doing in the lab.

"Almost all your interactions are still with your one particular advisor," says Karl Haushalter, a third year graduate student in the lab of Professor Greg Verdine. "But it used to be common for a graduate student to talk to no other faculty member until their thesis defense."

In the previous system, if a student didn't get along with their advisor, it was hard to get out of the relationship.

"Having multiple advisors creates a system of checks and balances such that if subjects are not comfortable broaching a topic with their primary advisor, they have somewhere else they can turn," Haushalter says.

Chemistry department chair James G. Anderson says that the multiple advisor system gives students more options to choose what is right for them. The new system makes it easier for students change labs and advisors.