Underclassmen advising program struggles to recruit advisers from certain departments
Ruby ShaoA number of freshmen and sophomores selecting spring courses this week encountered difficulty receiving department-specific advice from their academic advisers.No advisers represent the architecture, mathematics, philosophy and religion departments for the 2013-14 academic year, according to residential college websites.The molecular biology department is most represented at nine advisers, closely followed by the history and computer science departments and the Wilson School.The advising program has struggled to recruit advisers from certain departments, and cannot necessarily pair students with advisers who share their academic interests.While some students and faculty called for matching students and advisers by discipline, administrators and other faculty said a mismatch in adviser-advisee interest does not greatly affect students’ advising experience.“It would have been helpful for someone to give me advice about specific courses and professors and about things that specifically relate to my interests, rather than general course advice," Molly Fisch-Friedman ’16, an intended politics concentrator whose adviser is from the astrophysics department, said.