Ryan D. Hughes ’06 says he took Government 1540, “The American Presidency,” as a first-year after being told by his proctor that he could petition to have it count as a Core.

“I have this poignant memory of calling the Core office and asking them if I could use ‘The American Presidency’ as my Core for social analysis. They were like, ‘I don’t know who gave you advice, or what you’re thinking about, but no, no chance in hell,’” he says.

Professor of the Practice of Indo-Muslim Languages and Culture Ali S. Asani, the acting director of undergraduate studies for Sanskrit languages and civilizations, says he thinks proctors are not in the position to be ideal advisers. “The proctors do get training, but they may have a whole entryway of people to advise and it’s just impossible for them to be able to give the same quality of advising as somebody who just has two advisees, in the sense of the workload,” he says.

The head of the FDO—which is in charge of hiring proctors and is responsible for first-year advising—says that this year’s mid-year survey found that some people do not even use their advisers.

“Advising by this time of year should be able to help students to put pieces together,” Dean of Freshmen Elizabeth Studley Nathans says.

But she notes that the first-year adviser’s job—providing general advising on questions that run the gamut of the curriculum—“is not quite as simple as people sometimes feel.”

Nevertheless, says Senior Lecturer on History and Literature Steven H. Biel, the director of studies for the history and literature program, “I’d be surprised if the FDO said everything is hunky-dory.”

And rather than working within the FDO and the current proctor structure to solve the problem, the curricular review report may recommend a fundamental shift away from proctor-based advising.

Nathans says that the FDO has not been a major part of discussions on changing first-year advising. She says she was only consulted once, briefly, by Lisa L. Martin, the co-chair of the Working Group on Overall Academic Experience that’s looking at advising. Martin, the Dillon professor of international affairs, declined comment for this story.

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, who co-chairs the curricular review steering committee, says that a new advising structure “would mean a lot for the FDO.”

“They are now in charge of all advising for freshmen. They are in charge of proctors, and that will probably not change. But whether they will do academic advising remains to be seen.”

Nathans declined comment on the possibility of removing academic advising from the FDO.

“The FDO has not been a party to any such discussions,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Gross notes that a likely proposal of delaying concentration choice hinges on improving the first-year system.

“I think we are looking for a system that can deliver academic advising by some other route,” he says. “If we have better freshman academic advising, people may be more sympathetic to delaying concentration choice.”