House administrators said that in recent decades a greater awareness of issues like student stress, mental health, and concussions has added to the administrative caseload of resident deans, who are charged with connecting students to the appropriate resources.

And as the nature of the resident dean’s work changes, the perception of the position has also changed, they said.

“[The academic responsibilities have] become less and less part of our public profile because we’ve been given a lot more case-management counseling and crisis management,” Howell said.

Still, Stokes-Rees and Howell were quick to emphasize that they get great joy from this type of work with students.

In fact, they said, the email searches upset them precisely because of how much they value the welfare of undergraduates. The searches identified a resident dean who had forwarded an internal advising email to students implicated in the Government 1310 cheating case that eventually made its way to the media. After administrators said that the searches were intended to protect student privacy, Howell wrote in her letter that they implicitly suggested that resident deans could not be trusted.

“This charge is something we take extremely seriously—it is a privilege to contribute so immediately and substantively to the lives of these extraordinary students,” Howell wrote in the letter.

CALLING FOR BALANCE

Resident deans have been concerned about the shrinking role of academic mentorship in their perceived job description, according to Howell.

After Suzy M. Nelson was appointed associate dean of residential life in 2005, senior tutors were made to report directly to her instead of directly to the Dean of the College as they had traditionally done. This left many tutors with lingering concerns about working through a non-academic office largely unrelated to their role as faculty members, said Howell.

This shift towards the primacy of the administrative role was emphasized in 2006, when the senior tutors were renamed “Allston Burr Resident Deans.” This name change reflected the shift from academic mentor to live-in administrator, according to Mitchell, implying “a bureaucratic relationship to the House,” he said.

In contrast, three policies implemented at the recommendation of a 2009 report swung the pendulum back toward the original conception of the resident dean as academic mentor. Those changes shifted oversight of resident deans back to the Dean of the College, extended term limits for resident deans to allow them to pursue tenure-track positions, and required resident deans to have Ph.D.s.

Howell reiterated that while she values her non-academic advising duties, she hopes this recent trend will continue. Going forward, she said, resident deans should be able to devote more time to talking with students about their intellectual life.

“We do need to find a better balance in order for the resident deans to achieve their potential in the Houses,” Howell said.

—Staff writer Elizabeth S. Auritt can be reached at eauritt@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @eauritt.

—Staff writer Jared T. Lucky can be reached at lucky@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @jared_lucky.