REPORT OF THE ADVISING TASK FORCE SenD#4501
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Advising Task Force
Final Report: Goals and Action Items
November 1, 1995
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TASK FORCE MEMBERS:
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Ramón Saldívar, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Chair
Margaret Brandeau, Industrial Engineering & Engineering Management
Geoff Cox, Vice Provost for Institutional Planning
Ann Fletcher, Assistant Provost (staff)
John Griffin, Chemistry
Houman David Hemmati, Undergraduate student
Michelle Y. P. Koh, Undergraduate student
Eric Liao, Graduate Student
Norman Naimark, History
Roger Printup, Registrar
Tom Wasow, Linguistics & Philosophy
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OVERVIEW OF THE REPORT
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I. Introduction
II. Goals and Recommended Action Items
A. The ³culture² of advising
1. Clarify and institutionalize a university advising policy
2. Keep the current three-part system of advising
3. Provide advising leadership
4. Recognize and reward faculty advising
5. Clarify advisor roles
B. Training advisors
6. Establish minimum requirements for advisors
7. Rewrite ³Approaching Stanford I² and ³II²
8. Create better means of disseminating information
C. Advising and curricular issues
9. Create dorm-based pilot programs
10. Expand Sophomore College
11. Expand and institutionalize Sophomore Programs
12. Institute pilot program of Freshmen Seminars
13. Encourage dorm-based Freshmen and Sophomore Programs
D. Administrative aspects of advising
14. Augment UAC resources with two new FTEs
15. Review of UAC and the advising system
16. Compensate Head AAs and expand roles of AAs
17. Institutionalize greater RF involvement in advising
E. Advising in the Major
18. Strengthen advising in the major
19. Create introductory courses for each major
20. Institutionalize faculty advising hours
III. Rationale
IV. Concluding Observations
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I. INTRODUCTION
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In the Winter Quarter of 1995, Provost Condoleezza Rice named a task
force of twelve faculty, administrators, and students to review the
quality of undergraduate advising at Stanford University. Expected to
report its findings and recommendations to the Provost by the Autumn
Quarter of 1995, the task force was charged to consider the
recommendations of the Commission on Undergraduate Education (CUE) on
advising and to develop those recommendations into specific action items
for implementation. The goal of the review was the creation of ³a
comprehensive, coherent, and effective advising system to serve
Stanfordıs undergraduates² (Charge to the Committee).
The Advising Task Force began its work in early January and continued
its efforts throughout the academic year and into the Autumn of 1995.
Most of the work of the Advising Task Force took place in full
committee. Even though it focused its attention on the findings of the
CUE Final Report, the Advising Task Force took into consideration data
and summary reports from several earlier studies, dating to
approximately 1992, which touched upon advising (see Appendices). The
task force reviewed carefully all of these previous recommendations
concerning various aspects of academic advising and mentoring,
information services, new student orientation, and residential education
and housing. To form as clear and up-to-date a view of advising as it
could, the Advising Task Force also independently interviewed faculty,
staff, and students during the Spring, Summer, and early Autumn of 1995.
The Advising Task Force learned from its survey of earlier reports and
from its own focus group interviews that Stanford University extends to
its undergraduate students a broad if uneven array of advising services.
These services are apparently consistent in scope and quality with those
of other research universities, but fall short in some respects of the
level of distinction for which the university strives in other arenas.
The possible reasons for this shortfall of undergraduate advising from
our standard expectations are numerous and complex. One, however,
stands out for special consideration. Stanford University attracts
outstanding undergraduate students in part because of the reputation of
its distinguished faculty. Yet, only 33% of the non-major lower
division advisors currently come from the faculty ranks. To put it
differently, only 128 (9%) of the 1400 faculty at Stanford serve as
freshman advisors. The remaining freshman and sophomore advisors come
from the professional advising staff, volunteer academic and
administrative staff, the graduate student classes, and the pool of
alumni residing in the Palo Alto area. While non-faculty advisors in
the main do an admirable job of advising, the pedagogical talents and
collective wisdom of Stanfordıs richest resource, its faculty, are not
being optimally used in advising. Consequently, the recommendations of
the task force attempt to address both the present situation and
possible new ways of conducting advising at Stanford in the near future.
In its deliberations, the Advising Task Force was guided by the shared
views that the quality of advising should be guaranteed by this
institution and that Stanford undergraduates early in their academic
years should enjoy the benefit of the academic and disciplinary counsel
of the faculty upon whom the reputation of the university rests.
The following recommendations are comprehensive, covering all aspects of
advising. Responding to the specific charge to the committee, they
concern the expectations of advisors and advisees; additional resources
for the Undergraduate Advising Center; strengthening of the system of
peer advising; improvement in advising for sophomores; identification of
ways to encourage more faculty to serve as advisors; creation of
opportunities for first and second-year students to work closely with
faculty members through special seminars for pre-majors; and the
establishment of pilot programs to introduce faculty mentors in
undergraduate residences.
The recommendations range from the inexpensive and easy to implement to
the costly and not as easily implemented. In all cases, however, they
are designed to help Stanford University achieve and keep a good
advising and mentoring system, crucial components of a first-rate
undergraduate experience; to increase faculty participation in the
advising and mentoring of undergraduates; and to improve the quality of
other aspects of the advising services offered to Stanford
undergraduates. To provide our students with a decent, rational,
consistent, humane, and informative advising system, the Task Force
recommends the following action items. Each is explained further in the
text of the report that follows.
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II. GOALS AND ACTION ITEMS
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--GOALS
* To enhance opportunities for the development of mentoring
relationships between undergraduate students and faculty for
guidance on intellectual and academic concerns
* To ensure that all students are advised regularly and effectively
throughout their undergraduate careers
* To provide an undergraduate advising system at Stanford
University that facilitates and promotes successful academic
planning with respect to distribution and general education
requirements, selection of a major and minor, supplementary
courses, overseas studies, and research opportunities, the
Advising Task Force offers the following
--RECOMMENDED ACTION ITEMS
A. Related to the Stanford University ³Culture² of Advising
1. Clarify and institutionalize a university advising policy for
faculty
A statement of policy concerning faculty advising as an aspect
of normal teaching duties should be added to the Faculty
Handbook since faculty currently are not offered guidance in
this regard in the handbook.
2. Keep the current three-part system of advising
The current three-part system of advising at Stanford
University consisting of professional and voluntary staff
advisors, faculty advisors, and student peer advisors should
be retained but modified and strengthened as recommended below
to reflect the need (a) to ensure the quality of student
advising and (b) for more and better faculty participation in
advising.
3. Provide advising leadership
The President and the Provost should articulate the
responsibility of faculty to participate in undergraduate
advising and should work with school deans, department chairs,
and program directors to encourage, recognize, and reward
faculty who serve as undergraduate advisors.
4. Recognize and reward faculty advising
In addition to research and teaching, the advising of students
at all levels should be a faculty responsibility that is
recognized and rewarded in the hiring, reappointment, and
promotion process, and in annual salary setting reviews.
Incentives in the forms of salary increases, research funds,
or sabbatical time to encourage and facilitate increased
faculty participation in advising should be awarded,
particularly to Freshman and Sophomore faculty advisors.
5. Clarify advisor roles
The roles of the various participants in the advising system,
and especially the role of faculty members should be clarified
to students. Faculty are best utilized for academic and
intellectual mentoring; staff and peer advisors are best
utilized to ensure that students proceed in timely and
informed ways through their chosen course of study.
B. Related to the Training of Advisors and the Dissemination of
Advising Information
6. Establish minimum requirements and training for advisors
New training workshops organized by the Undergraduate Advising
Center (UAC) focusing on first- and second-year curricular
requirements, long-term academic planning, and expanded
mentoring possibilities should adequately prepare faculty,
staff, and student peer advisors for their advising roles.
The university should establish minimum requirements for the
position of advisor: advisors will usually be a faculty
member, hold an advanced degree, have demonstrable in-depth
familiarity with the undergraduate curriculum, or have special
knowledge about a particular aspect of the undergraduate
curriculum as it relates to the professional or graduate
schools. Faculty and staff workshop participants should
receive appropriate remuneration in recognition of their
commitment to the undergraduate program.
7. Rewrite ³Approaching Stanford I² and ³II²
Improve the quality of academic and curricular information
provided to incoming first-year students by completely
rewriting Approaching Stanford I and II to make these
publications more useful as Freshman, Sophomore, and upper
class advising handbooks. Clear, concise information from the
undergraduate advisors of each department, including up-to-
date examples of representative model degree plans across the
undergraduate curriculum (such as are currently shown in the
School of Engineering Undergraduate Handbook), should be made
available to all students in the new advising handbooks.
8. Create better means of disseminating advising information
The responsibilities of both students and advisors should be
clarified through mid-summer letters from assigned first-year
advisors to all new students. Focused, dorm-based workshops
to be held early and regularly in the Autumn Quarter should be
developed by the Undergraduate Advising Center (UAC) and by
Head Advising Associates, explaining to new students the
different roles and functions of the UAC professional advising
staff, and of faculty, volunteer staff, and student peer
advisors.
C. Related to Advising and Curricular Initiatives
9. Create dorm-based pilot programs
To improve the quality of dorm-based advising during the
Freshman year and beyond, the Advising Task Force recommends
the creation of two pilot programs of new Dorm-Based Advising
Team formats: (1) one located in a freshman dorm (in a house
such as Larkin) and (2) another located in a four class dorm
(in a house such as Roble).
10. Expand Sophomore College
Sophomore College is a new academic initiative designed to
provide sophomores with (a) an intensive academic experience
and (b) focused, practical, and effective advising in early
September before the start of their second year. The success
of the program as judged by early faculty and student response
indicates that Sophomore College should be expanded and
institutionalized as part of Stanfordıs normal undergraduate
programs.
11. Expand and institutionalize Sophomore Programs
The Sophomore Programs of Seminars and Dialogues, stressing
small-group, Sophomore/Academic Council faculty contact,
currently in its third year pilot form, should be expanded and
institutionalized.
12. Institute pilot program of Freshmen Seminars
A new pilot program of Freshman Seminars, modeled on the
experience of the Sophomore Programs of Seminars and Dialogues
but limited to first year students, should be initiated by
Autumn 1997.
13. Encourage dorm-based Freshmen and Sophomore Programs
Faculty should be encouraged to offer existing Sophomore
Seminars and Dialogues and the proposed pilot Freshman
Seminars in the residences as dorm-based courses.
D. Related to the Administrative Aspects of Advising
14. Augment UAC resources with two new FTEs
The resources of the UAC should be augmented by the addition
of two new FTE staff appointments. Supplemented by additional
state of the art information technology and software, these
resources will allow the UAC staff and faculty advisors better
to devote time for in-depth, personalized attention to
students and to participate in the dorm-based advising teams.
15. Review of UAC and the advising system
The administrative structure of the UAC should be reviewed to
allow for effective links and collaboration between it and the
Academic Standing Committee of the Registrarıs Office, the
Career Planning and Placement Center, the tutoring services of
the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Office of
Residential Education, and the Ethnic Community Centers. The
existing UAC Faculty Advisory Committee should take a more
proactive role in the oversight of the UAC.
16. Compensate Head AAs and expand roles of AAs
To strengthen the system of peer advising, additional
resources should be made available to the UAC and the office
of Residential Education. Head Advising Associates and
Advising Associates (AAs) in the residences should receive on-
going training during the year. Head AAs should be
compensated at a rate appropriate to their responsibilities.
The duties of the current student Advising Associates
Coordinator should be assumed by a full-time UAC professional
staff person, overseeing the work of both the AAs and of
Sophomore advising.
17. Institutionalize greater RF involvement in advising
Resident Fellows should take a more active role in the dorm
advising system by overseeing the recruitment and selection of
the Head AA, the AAs, and Faculty Advisors and participating
actively in advising dorm residents. All residences should
use the Head AA and AA system and the feasibility of using
live-in Advising Associates in all of the residences should be
considered.
E. Related to Advising in the Major
18. Strengthen advising in the major with more consistent
departmental oversight
Department chairs and program directors should designate
faculty directors of undergraduate advising to oversee major
advising. Departments and programs should commit to the
concept of faculty advisors for each individual declared
major. Departments should create a formal system of peer
advising and provide training for student services staff
involved in major advising. Deans should encourage and
facilitate school wide interaction among undergraduate major
advisors and should enforce the declaration of major at the
end of the sophomore year requirement.
19. Create introductory courses for each major
Introductory courses to assist students in selecting majors
should be devised in every major or school: these courses
might take the form of faculty seminars on research and
teaching interests, directed readings, introductory overviews
of the discipline or of the fundamental issues of the research
area, or might include disciplinary clustering such as
introductions to the social sciences, the humanities, or the
natural sciences.
20. Institutionalize faculty advising hours
In addition to the designated beginning-of-quarter advising
hours normally scheduled by some departments, faculty should
allot a portion of their office hours to advising both
students who have and who have not declared undergraduate
majors.
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III. RATIONALE
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A. Related to the ³Culture² of Advising
1. Clarify and institutionalize a university advising policy
for faculty
This recommendation redresses the omission in the Faculty
Handbook of advising as an aspect of a faculty memberıs
university responsibilities. The task force members are
concerned about this omission and what it implies about the
³culture,² the accepted attitudes and patterns of behavior, of
advising at Stanford among the faculty. An advising policy
might simply state that the advising of students is part of
the regular responsibility of faculty and faculty should
therefore be regularly available and receptive to students who
might seek their counsel. This policy statement should be
added to the section of the Faculty Handbook dealing with
³Teaching Responsibilities, Examinations, and Grading.² For
the information of departmental chairs and cognizant deans,
faculty should list their undergraduate advisees in their
annual salary setting reports.
2. Keep the current three-part system of advising
In contrast to other universities where advising is done
either entirely by professional staff (University of Chicago)
or by faculty advisors alone (Yale University), advising at
Stanford University consists of a hybrid, three-part system of
professional and volunteer staff, faculty, and student peer
advisor components. In Autumn 1994, only 33% of the Freshman
and Sophomore advisors were from the faculty ranks. To put it
differently, only 124 (9%) of the 1400 faculty at Stanford
served as lower division advisors. The remaining 67% of the
Freshman and Sophomore advisors come from the professional
advising staff, volunteer academic and administrative staff,
graduate student classes, and from alumni volunteers. While
there are strengths and weaknesses enough to go around, by all
accounts the professional and peer advisors are often the
stronger links of the advising chain, with volunteer staff and
faculty advising forming the weaker links. The quality of
both volunteer staff advising and faculty advising needs to be
strengthened and the number of faculty participating in
advising must be increased.
3. Provide advising leadership
While numerous faculty members are effective advisors and
generous with their time, the faculty role in advising is not
a consistent one. A tone of faculty responsibility for
undergraduate advising should be set by the highest academic
officers of the university. Advising should be a high
priority for all academic units in the university. To this
end, a Provostial Advising Oversight Council, chaired by the
Provost and made up of decanal representatives of each of the
schools offering undergraduate curricula and the Vice Provost
for Undergraduate Education, should meet regularly to assure
the quality of academic advising. Currently, the only
administrative venue for the review of advising practices is
the Subcommittee on Residential Education and Advising (SREA)
of the Committee on Undergraduate Studies (C-US). SREA,
through C-US is charged with formulating ³An appropriate
system of academic advising for undergraduate students²
(Charge to C-US). This subcommittee was not convened in
1994-95, pending the appointment of a new Director of
Residential Education and the specification of that personıs
duties.
4. Recognize and reward faculty advising
Rather than impose penalties on those faculty members who do
not bear their fair share of the undergraduate advising
workload, positive incentives to reward those faculty who do
should be developed. It is reasonable to provide incremental
remuneration to those faculty members who do participate in
freshman and sophomore advising. The task force deliberated
on the advantages and disadvantages of various accounting and
point systems but opted finally for the simpler and more
flexible incentive system already in place to reward excellent
research and teaching. Incentives should take the form of the
currency most familiar and valuable to faculty: salary
increases, research funds, and/or sabbatical leave time. A
special category of salary increases to reward advising
activities should be implemented during annual reviews;
research funds accounts should be made available to
departments based on percentages of participating departmental
faculty; and sabbatical time should accrue to faculty
advisors based on numbers of quarters that a faculty member
serves as an undergraduate advisor. Also, lists of names of
freshman and sophomore advisors should be published in
documents such as the annual roster of committees, the
Directory, or the Stanford Daily. Focus groups of faculty
inform us that most faculty participate in undergraduate
advising out of loyalty to the institution, out of a sense of
responsibility to undergraduate education generally, and out
of a fundamental interest in interacting on a personal basis
with undergraduate students. A faculty incentive system will
not create loyalty, responsibility, or interest; it can,
however, communicate the universityıs own commitment to the
importance of faculty and undergraduate student interaction.
Special attention should be paid to the different needs of
junior faculty. Because junior faculty are more likely to
need research funding than sabbatical or course release time,
junior faculty advisors might be more appropriately rewarded
with research funds.
5. Clarify advisor roles
Confusion as to the role of faculty advisors is commonplace.
In personal contacts with students and faculty and through
their various publications and brochures, the UAC staff should
explain that faculty are best utilized as major advisors,
intellectual mentors, and professional and career planning and
support resources. UAC professional staff, volunteer staff,
and student peer advisors, and faculty when they serve as
Freshman and Sophomore advisors, are knowledgeable about the
general education requirements, the specifics of particular
degree requirements, some pre-professional programs, and
first and second year curricula. Because major advising is
supervised through the academic schools while freshman
advising is administered through student affairs, coordination
of the different aspects of advising has not been as effective
as could be desired.
B. Related to the Training of Advisors and the Dissemination of
Advising Information
6. Establish minimum requirements and training for advisors
Training workshops organized by the professional staff of the
Undergraduate Advising Center (UAC) should adequately prepare
faculty, staff, and student peer advisors for their advising
roles. Currently, the training program is poorly attended by
faculty and does not in all cases adequately prepare the
volunteer staff advisors. Faculty are sometimes unaware of
the specifics of the distribution and general education
requirements or of course sequences in majors not directly
related to their own fields. In the cases of volunteer staff
advisors not directly associated with the undergraduate
curriculum, it is not always clear that they bring to their
advising role deep knowledge of the curriculum or of the state
of requirements in the various disciplines. In fact, it is
worth considering seriously what volunteer staff advisors do
bring to the advising relationship. The Advising Task Force
recommends, consequently, that Stanford University establish
minimum requirements for the position of advisor: usually,
faculty status, an advanced degree, in-depth familiarity with
a particular aspect of the undergraduate curriculum, or
special knowledge about professional schools and other
graduate programs. In all cases, the professional staff of
the UAC should formulate their training sessions to best
accentuate the strengths of the various participants in the
general advising team. Faculty and staff workshop
participants should receive appropriate remuneration in the
form of supplementary cash awards to encourage better
participation and in recognition of their commitment to the
undergraduate program.
7. Rewrite ³Approaching Stanford I² and ³II²
It has been nearly a decade since our two main student
orientation publications, Approaching Stanford I and II ,
were revised. They should be redone to reflect the recent and
continuing significant changes in the undergraduate curriculum
and to make them more useful as Freshman, Sophomore, and upper
class advising handbooks. Currently, these publications focus
almost exclusively on the first and second years. More and
better attention to junior and senior curricula should also be
offered. Clear, concise information from the undergraduate
advisors of each department, including up-to-date examples of
model degree plans, should be made available to all students.
8. Create better means of disseminating advising information
The dissemination of information concerning advising in
general is a matter of concern for our matriculated students.
But the problems begin even before students arrive on campus.
Therefore, in addition to clarifying the on-campus advising
environment, the entire range of pre-enrollment information
should be reconceived. The expectations of students and the
responsibilities of advisors should be clarified through mid-
summer letters to new students from their assigned first-year
advisor explaining the advising system. Focus groups and
surveys indicate that incoming students would be better
prepared for Freshman Orientation and advising if, in addition
to a better version of Approaching Stanford, they could also
receive the Bulletin and the Time Schedule, including
especially the times for the various tracks of the Cultures,
Ideas and Values (CIV) and Writing and Critical Thinking (WCT)
sections. The creation for incoming students of a summer
advising electronic mail hotline, a summer advising telephone
hotline, and for all students an automated degree auditing
system, on-line resources for first and second year course
selection, and World Wide Web based information on all
departments and majors, including where possible course
syllabi, would greatly improve studentsı understanding of
their own responsibilities in the advising relationship. We
recommend the creation of better means of disseminating such
information to advisors as well, (e.g., through postings on
the Web, so that faculty have all the information they need
for advising readily available). Once new students arrive on
campus, focused workshops should be developed by the
Undergraduate Advising Center and by Head Advising Associates
in the dorms explaining to new students the different roles of
the UAC advising staff, and of faculty, staff, and student
peer advisors and the various advising resources available to
them. Finally, since fair, consistent, and effective course
evaluations can provide students with important information in
the selection of courses, a comprehensive review of current
practices of course evaluation should be undertaken with one
aim being the production of course evaluations that are useful
to students as they prepare their degree plans.
C. Related to Advising and Curricular Initiatives
9. Create dorm-based pilot programs
To improve the quality of dorm-based advising during the
Freshman year and beyond, to introduce new students to the
various advising services available to them, and to empower
students with the information, skills, and sense of self-
responsibility they will need in order proactively to seek
academic advice and establish meaningful relationships with
faculty, the Advising Task Force recommends the creation of
two pilot programs, experimenting with new Dorm-Based Team
Advising formats: (1) one located in a Freshman dorm (in a
house such as Larkin) and (2) another located in a Four Class
dorm (in a house such as Roble).
The major goal of each pilot program will be to test the
feasibility and effectiveness of a coordinated, ³team
advising² concept in the residences. In both the Freshman
dorm and Four-class dorm pilot programs, advising will be the
responsibility of a coordinated and integrated ³Advising Team²
consisting of the Resident Fellow (RF), the Resident
Assistants (RAs), the student Head Advising Associate (Head
AA), a group of live-in student Advising Associates (AAs),
assigned Faculty Advisors (FAs), and one UAC staff member.
The chief virtue of the proposed pilots is that they both
offer coordinated advising teams, rather than the present
system of individually assigned, relatively uncoordinated
advisors. Currently, UAC advisors are not assigned to the
residences, RFs do not often have ongoing contact with the
Faculty Advisors, the Head AA and the AAs, and the
relationship between departmental and UAC advising on the one
hand and Residential Education on the other is often quite
erratic. Unlike students in the present system, participants
in both pilots should have the benefit of having easy access
to AAs by having in-house, live-in AAs in the Four Class and
Freshman house.
In contrast to the present general advising and residential
advising system, in this new arrangement the coordination of
advising functions will be the joint responsibility of the RF
and their Resident Assistant staffs, the Head AA, and the UAC
staff advisor. RFs and the RA staff, the Head AAs, and the
UAC and the staff advisor working together will form a
structured, integrated system both of personal and social
safety-nets and of intellectual and curricular academic
assistance. Faculty chosen by disciplines and assigned to the
house for multi-year terms as Resident Faculty Advisors would
be trained in how best to participate in the new network of
advisors. The purpose of this multi-year assignment of
faculty to a particular house is to develop a cadre of
advisors consistently identified with that residence hall. At
the end of the spring quarter, first-year students will be
required to compose a degree plan and be prepared to present
it to their assigned Faculty Advisor during the first week of
the following academic year as a necessary step in their
transition from dorm-based to departmental-based advising.
As an example of the kinds of specialized advising initiatives
that the dorm-based pilots might try, the task force suggests
a spring quarter in-house Advising Retreat. Together with
their entire advising team, students could gather for a year-
end, residence-based event focused on advising and academic
planning. In preparation for the Advising Retreat, students
would be charged by the Advising Team to reflect on their
first-year experience and to prepare a written degree plan as
described above -- a detailed curricular plan outlining their
future course of study. This written document would serve as
a plan and guide for exploring, choosing, and proceeding
through possible majors and minors, preferences for elective
courses, timing of overseas studies or other off-campus
programs such as the Stanford in Washington program.
Guidelines for the plan could be devised by the Undergraduate
Advising Center, in coordination with the UAC faculty
oversight committee on advising.
The structure of the Four Class dorm Advising Team pilot would
be similar in most respects to the structure of the Freshman
dorm pilot. All aspects and benefits of the integrated system
described above for the Freshman Dorm pilot would apply here
as well. Freshman students in the Four-Class Dorm pilot would
also be required to write an advising manifesto at the end of
their first year. But instead of moving to another residence
hall and to departmentally based advising after the first
year, freshmen in the four-class house would be given the
option of continuing to reside in the same house through their
entire four-year undergraduate career and thus of continuing
their advising relationship with the in-house Residence
Advising Team. The benefits to be derived from continuing
contact with a consistent advising team include contact with
faculty from the freshman year through the senior year,
consistency of faculty presence in the residence, and
integration of academic and residential education. Moreover,
just as they will have benefited from the accrued experience
and wisdom of upper-class students in the house as freshman,
students in this pilot will in turn provide a rich source of
continuous assistance to new resident freshman students as
they advance through a degree program.
In both pilots, the structure of the present, widely unpopular
³Advisor Dinner² would be abandoned in favor of more
spontaneous and more frequent Advisor lunches. Each assigned
Faculty Advisor will meet regularly with student advisees in
small, interactive groups.
10. Expand Sophomore College
The sophomore year is a critical time for planning,
consideration and forethought. Now is the time for students
to make decisions regarding majors, overseas study,
undergraduate research, honors, and many other options that
enhance an undergraduate education. Sophomore College and the
various Sophomore Programs are key elements in the general
strategy of having students work with faculty and staff
advisors to design a curriculum best suited their individual
purposes.
11. Expand and institutionalize Sophomore Programs
Now in their third year of existence, the Sophomore Programs
of Seminars and Dialogues have proven their value in
establishing effective student/faculty contact. In 1995-96,
approximately one third of the Sophomore class will
participate in these small classes. As a result of these
programs, increasing numbers of sophomores have found faculty
advisors and honors thesis supervisors. This program should
be institutionalized and expanded to fill the need for faculty
led, small class seminars for lower division students.
However, if this program is to be expanded, it probably can no
longer operate on the basis of incremental ³overload² courses
for faculty.
12. Institute pilot program of Freshmen Seminars
A pilot program of Freshman Seminars, modeled on the
experience of the Sophomore Programs but limited to first-year
students, should be initiated by Autumn 1997 to introduce new
students to faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and advanced
graduate students in small group courses. Unlike the
Sophomore Programs that are taught as ³overload,² incremental
classes by faculty who are offered special bonuses for their
participation in the program, the Freshman Seminars would not
be additional classes but would be classes that students would
take in place of the other general requirements in the
humanities, social sciences, and science cores. In
particular, the Cultures, Ideas and Values (CIV) sequence
might well serve as a site for experimentation with the small
group seminar format to take the place of the present large
lecture/discussion group format. Apart from the proven
academic and pedagogical benefits of small seminars, the
experience of participants in the various Sophomore Program
classes, Sophomore College, and Honors College has shown a
direct correlation between small classes and highly effective
advising and the establishment of successful mentoring
relationships between undergraduate students and faculty.
Together with the dorm-based advising teams, these first and
second-year seminars could serve as bases for intellectual
explorations of the possibilities of a coherent undergraduate
education and wider intellectual or career opportunities.
13. Encourage dorm-based Freshmen and Sophomore Programs
Sophomore Seminars and Dialogues and the proposed pilot
Freshman Seminars might be offered in the residences as dorm-
based courses to strengthen the link between the academic
curriculum and the work of Residential Education.
D. Related to the Administrative Aspects of Advising
14. Augment UAC resources with two new FTEs
The resources of the UAC should be augmented from its present
seven FTE (5 Advisors and 2 support staff) by the addition of
2 new FTE advisor appointments. Dividing the residential
halls that house freshmen and sophomores into East Campus and
West Campus, and then further subdividing the two sides of
campus into 4 clusters each (see chart in Appendix), yields an
approximately even distribution of the near 3000 freshman and
sophomore students requiring advising. Allocating just an
additional four three-hour blocks (or 12 hours/week) of
advising time per cluster (multiplied by the 8 clusters)
produces 96 hours/week of required additional UAC professional
advisor time. Two new FTE (80 hours/week) would cover most of
the additional duties. The remaining additional 16 hours (40%
FTE) will need to be covered by prioritizing and reallocating
existing staff duties. Supplemented by new state of the art
interactive information technology and software to allow for
the automation of frequently asked questions, the creation of
an advising electronic mail hotline, a summer advising
telephone hotline for incoming students, an automated degree
auditing system, on-line resources for first and second year
course selection, and World Wide Web based information on all
departments and majors, the UAC staff will be better able to
devote time for in-depth, personalized attention to students
with these additional staff positions. Faculty advising
sessions likewise will benefit from the allocation of
additional resources to the UAC by being freed from the more
technical matters of advising and being better able to
concentrate on substantive intellectual and mentoring advising
issues.
15. Review of UAC and the advising system
The administrative structure of the UAC should be reviewed
periodically to ascertain effective coordination with the
Academic Standing Committee of the Registrarıs Office, the
Career Planning and Placement Center, the tutoring services of
the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Office of
Residential Education, and the Ethnic Community Centers. The
ad hoc UAC Faculty Oversight Committee should be formalized as
a Provostial Administrative & Advisory Group, reporting to the
Provostial Advisory Council, and be charged with the oversight
of the UAC. The Undergraduate Advising Center and all
advising units and procedures, including departmental major
advising, should be reviewed on a regular cycle to ensure that
they remain best constituted to serve changing curricular
requirements and student needs.
16. Compensate Head AAs and expand roles of AAs
To strengthen the system of peer advising, additional student
compensation resources should be made available to the UAC.
Head Advising Associates in the residences should be
compensated at a rate appropriate to their responsibilities.
Because the role of the Head AA is a difficult, time-
consuming, and often lonely one, the task force recommends
that Head AAs participate in mandatory, ongoing UAC led
training and discussion sessions throughout the year. Head
AAs report that they often find themselves with little
interaction and less support from the residential staff, the
UAC, and other Head AAs during the course of the year. And
because the reality in the dorms is that the lines between
academic advising and personal counseling are often blurred,
the roles of the RAs and the Head AAs often merge.
Consequently, if Head AAs are to participate more effectively
as part of a comprehensive residence advising team, they must
be well trained and assimilated more fully into the daily work
of the residential staff, including their training, meetings,
retreats, etc. Because of their crucial role, the training of
the volunteer Advising Associates (AAs) should be carefully
reviewed and monitored. Finally, the duties of the current
student Advising Associates Coordinator, overseeing the work
of both the AAs and of Sophomore advisors, should be assumed
by one of the full-time UAC professional staff persons.
17. Institutionalize greater RF involvement in advising
The RFs plays an especially critical role. Along with the
Faculty Advisors, the RAs, the Head AAs and the AAs, they form
the interface between the academic and the residential sites
of education at Stanford. RFs should take a more active role
in the dorm advising system generally by participating in the
selection of the Head AA and Faculty Advisors. AAs especially
can serve crucial roles as advisors and peer role models;
therefore, their selection should be supervised carefully by
the UAC in consultation with the Resident Fellow in whose
house the AAs will serve. All residences should use live-in
AAs for dorm based advising.
E. Related to Advising in the Major
18. Strengthen advising in the major with more consistent
departmental oversight
In its report to the Commission on Undergraduate Education,
the Subcommittee on the Major points out the remarkably uneven
quality of advising in undergraduate major programs (See
Subcommittee Report in Appendices). As ways of setting a
standard for quality across all majors, it recommends that:
³Faculty are expected to take their responsibility for
mentoring undergraduate research students as seriously as they
take their responsibility for mentoring graduate research
students² and that ³All faculty are expected to share the
responsibility for undergraduate advising. Advisors should
make themselves available to students on a regular basis,
monitoring studentsı progress within the major and counseling
students about research and career opportunities.²
The Advising Task Force concurs with these recommendations.
Moreover, we propose that for major advising, all department
chairs and program directors should designate faculty
supervisors of undergraduate advising. Departments and
programs should commit to the concept of faculty advisors for
each individual student who has declared the major. At first
contact for pre-major and major advising, students should be
provided with a list of faculty research and teaching
interests, advisor preference or assignment forms, a written
declaration of major intent form, a comprehensive degree plan
and course requirements form, and a model schedule for yearly
progress through the undergraduate major.
Since peer advising has proven to be beneficial on the lower
division level and a great deal of informal, student to
student advising already occurs within the majors, the
Advising Task Force concurs with recommendation of the
Subcommittee on the Major concerning peer advising:
³Departments and programs should create a formal system of
peer advising, whereby advanced students are given training to
share curricular advice with fellow majors, as a supplement to
(not a surrogate for) the faculty advising system.²
The Advising Task Force also recognizes that student services
personnel in the department offices presently perform advising
duties with dedication and commitment. Neither peer advice
nor faculty advice will replace the advice of student services
staff in the departments; the different components should
complement each other. Often, departmental advising staff
know departmental policy and curricular requirements better
than do faculty but since departmental staff play such an
important role in advising, they too would benefit from the
advising training that we have described earlier in our
report.
Finally, deans should encourage and facilitate schoolwide
interaction among undergraduate major advisors and should
enforce declaration of major at the of the sophomore year.
With the introduction of minors into the undergraduate
curriculum, departments will need to devise a carefully
structured curricular plan explaining requirements for a minor
in that discipline or field.
19. Create introductory courses for each major
Introductory courses to assist students in selecting majors
and the new minors should be devised in every department or
school offering an undergraduate curriculum: these courses
might take the form of faculty seminars on research and
teaching interests, directed readings, introductory overviews
of the discipline or of the fundamental issues of the research
area, or might include disciplinary clustering such as
introductions to the social sciences, the humanities, or the
natural sciences.
20. Institutionalize faculty advising hours
In addition to the designated beginning-of-quarter majors
advising hours normally scheduled by some departments, all
faculty should allot a portion of their office hours to
advising students who have and have not declared undergraduate
majors.
----------------------------
IV. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
----------------------------
To summarize, the Advising Task Force notes that if our goals of raising
the overall quality of advising and providing students with a decent,
rational, consistent, humane, and informative advising system at
Stanford are to be met, significant adjustments must occur in the
faculty ³culture² of advising, in the training of all advisors, in the
inter-relationship of advising and the curriculum, in the administration
of advising, and in advising in the undergraduate major programs. A
good advising system might simply be one in which the advising of
students is part of the regular responsibility of faculty and faculty
and other advisors are regularly available and receptive to students who
might seek their counsel.
The Advising Task Force recognizes that advising is not just one thing.
Good advising does not just occur during set office hours, for freshmen
or sophomores. It also occurs in the classroom, before and after
classes, in the labs, in seminar rooms, by e-mail correspondence, and
formally and informally in the residences. Many faculty and other
advisors do a wonderful job of providing undergraduate students with
excellent advising and mentoring opportunities. Although we have
stressed the need for greater faculty participation in advising, we do
recognize that it may not be realistic or desirable to strive for full
faculty participation in advising. Nevertheless, in our judgment,
greater faculty participation in advising is a reasonable, beneficial,
and attainable end.
The twenty action items are not simply stand alone, independent
recommendations. They are related to each other and to the changing
needs of undergraduate students as they progress from the freshman to
the sophomore, junior, and senior years. Some recommendations focus on
the ³nuts and bolts² of advising needs that newly admitted students and
first year students will have. Some focus on advising needs of students
in the sophomore year, the crucial year of decision and reflection.
Others focus on the advising needs of students in the majors, as
students seek to consolidate their academic goals and then prepare to
move beyond the undergraduate experience. All of the recommendations
seek to create a coherent, yet flexible, system that will benefit
students by providing them with opportunities for acccess to good advise
from a broad range of resources, including but not limited to faculty
advisors.
Students at Stanford need different kinds of advice at different times
during their college career. Upon their arrival at Stanford, they need
to adjust to a new and different life as well as choose academic
courses. Towards the end of their first year and throughout their
second year, students need to consider their academic major, basing that
choice on courses they have taken as well as on discussions of their
future plans. During their junior year, students need to think deeply
about their academic programs, deciding on whether to pursue an honors
degreee, pursue two majors and other important academic questions. The
advising offered to students must reflect these changing needs.
Different kinds of advice is often best provided by different kinds of
advisors and the advising program is designed to offer a smooth
transition for the student as he/she progresses through the university.
Success in meeting the goals of raising the quality of advising and
providing students with a coherent and flexible advising system will
surely depend in great part on how the faculty view their responsibility
as teachers and educators in the undergraduate programs at Stanford
University and on how willing the institution is to take greater
responsibility for providing advocacy, rewards, and oversight for the
implementation of these goals. In the past two years, Stanford has taken
important steps to guarantee that undergraduate education is as central
to its mission as is the research-oriented agenda of its faculty. The
proposed action items offer possibilities for an extension of these
successes and for a more effective and reasonable connection between
students and faculty.
(Appendix A is Section 11 of the Report of the Commission on
Undergraduate Education. The complete CUE report is available in
Portfolio)