FREEDOM TO CHOOSE

While departments gradually recognize that the mark of a well-advised concentrator is more complex than his or her Harvard diploma, the road to improvement is not so certain.

“Harvard does a very good job making ordinary things fail-safe,” Rosenblum says. “If you think that genuine academic advising is important, putting together a program that makes intellectual sense, making sure students don’t miss courses that they’re interested in...it’s difficult to make that fail-safe.”

Aiming to give students more options for effective advising, the English and American literature and language concentration recently implemented a system in which concentrators could call on one of five members of their “advising team.”

Peterson says she thought concentrators would relish having multiple points of advising, but instead, they gave mixed reviews. Some concentrators did not know who their adviser was, and others did not understand why they were not assigned one adviser like other concentrations, she says.

Communication is key for good advising, and nowhere is this more apparent than for joint concentrators.

Ann E. Helfman ’08, a joint concentrator in economics and government, says the person she spoke to in the eonomics department could only tell her about economics requirements and was clueless about declaring government as a secondary concentration, while the person she spoke to in the government department was more helpful. However, Helfman says both departments seemed isolated in relation to others.

“I don’t think there’s enough advising for people who want to do something different, like a joint concentration,” Helfman says.

Dialogue is also important when concentration advising can come from sources both in the Houses and in the departments.

Recalling times when advisers were not even aware of the Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) department, DUS Paul Stopforth says, “I do think that those people, students or tutors, who are responsible for advising in the Houses, they would need to know something about all these departments at Harvard.”

Before familiarizing themselves with other departments though, it is unclear whether advisers in the Houses are well-informed even about their own department, a result of inadequate coordination and a related reservation on the departments’ part.

Peterson says she has asked House Tutors to advise informally rather than formally because she cannot ensure that their information is consistent with the department’s.

“They’re underutilized,” she admits. “We haven’t yet figured out a way to have them to do formal advising yet, so right now we’re having them hold off.”

However, History Head Tutor Joyce Chaplin still believes in offering multiple options but also says students need to take advantage of them. “There could be some students who prefer faculty, some who don’t prefer faculty and use their House, some who use the tutorial office as the first line,” she suggests. “That may be fine that we offer several options and they’re not locked in. The burden is up to students to find what they like.”

—Staff writer Lulu Zhou can be reached at luluzhou@fas.harvard.edu.