Even considering that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is committed to expanding its rank to 700 professors, an increase of 10 percent over the next decade, administrators seem skeptical that any plan could attract a critical mass of faculty advisers.

“I don’t see a groundswell of professors signing up to advise students,” Gross says, adding that while Nathans has made “a valiant effort” to recruit these professors, only a small number agree to take on advising roles.

Nathans says there are around 100 teaching faculty—including about 40 on the tenure track—who serve as first-year advisers.

Tucci says faculty members might also prove unable to provide the general advising now doled out by proctors and advisers trained by FDO.

“They’re also trained in things like handling a student who comes in here interested in astronomy, physics and math, but who has a secondary interest in VES. That freshman adviser should be trained enough to say, ‘Let’s construct a program so that you can explore some of the science but still have that VES,’” says Tucci, who has served as a first-year adviser.

He says that students who know they are interested in particular fields upon entering Harvard should make sure to get more broad exposure.

“I would want to make sure that those freshmen are still in contact with a general adviser to make sure that they’re seeing the whole scope of what’s here at Harvard and not just considering themselves chemists from day one,” he says.

But some head tutors’ objection to the advising center—that there is no evidence that students would use new resources—seems also to apply to proposals that would simply assign more faculty advisers to first-years.

“Some students would like more advising, but some faculty feel underused,” Professor of History Joyce E. Chaplin, the head tutor in history, writes in an e-mail. “The latter indicates the existence of a not-inconsiderable population of students who would really rather not have the faculty bug them.”

Regardless of whether the curricular review succeeds in encouraging faculty to spend more time in advising students—or students in taking advantage of advising resources—proposals like an advising center or a move away from proctor-based advising are far from implementation.

“The time line is the next couple of years,” Gross says. “We are not in any position right now to change advising.”

—Staff writer Alan J. Tabak can be reached at tabak@fas.harvard.edu.