Ben Gurley
3614 Bates Street
Pittsburgh PA, 15213
Advice
Some waiting rooms lend themselves to embodying what it is being waited for. The waiting room at the University of Pittsburgh undergraduate, arts and sciences advising center is one such place. Spread out across an unnerving expanse that appears to be designed more as a party area at a bowling alley, with more wall mounted flat screens playing CNN, it requires students to isolate themselves on oddly long, hard wooden benches or strangely placed plastic tables, and wait expectantly to head down one of a half dozen seemingly identical hallways. In this limbo, as the student watches news unfold or checks and rechecks their cell phones, their advisor walks out and calls the student, by first name, into their office.
These students that do the waiting, and in turn receive advising, in general, fit a particular profile. They have, by the nature of arts and science advising, not yet chosen a specific major. This means that most of them are freshman and sophomores. However, despite these similarities, the students that go into these advising appointments have drastically different goals, ideas about their futures, and, in turn, relationships with their advisors. This is in part because “arts and sciences” is, for all intents and purposes the pivot point of students’ decisions. Some of them come in knowing what major they are looking to join; some have been conditionally accepted to other schools (i.e. engineering, business, nursing, etc.), and even more have little idea about what they want to do. Given this hugely diverse group of students, with incredibly wide-ranging needs, the “arts and sciences” advisors themselves have their work cut out for them.
Janna Zuroski is one of these advisors. Janna’s office is brightly lit, with a large desk flat against one wall and three solid looking, no-nonsense office chairs. She sits at one, half turned towards her computer, half towards Kaitlyn, a freshman who is there to start picking classes for the fall semester. Janna maneuvers through a series of online forms and class matrixes as she asks Kaitlyn how her semester is going so far. She is bright and enthusiastic and seems genuinely interested in Kaitlyn’s answers. Kaitlyn in turn appears comfortable and invested in the conversation. Soon, after the discussion finishes with the current semester, Janna directs focus to the computer and the process of signing up for next semester’s classes. As far as “arts and sciences” advising appointments go, Kaitlyn’s is not typical. She has been conditionally accepted into the pharmacy school at Pitt following the completion of her sophomore year. This means that she must follow a rigid set of guidelines as far as scheduling and class selection is concerned. Janna goes through all of this with her step by step. It is methodical and both of them are obviously prepared. A subtle change comes over both Kaitlyn and Janna as they discuss this process. Where before, the conversation bounced around Janna talked as much or more than Kaitlyn, now Kaitlyn outlines specifically what she wants to do and Janna responds with only as much information as is needed. Janna describes the reasons for this switch, “The pharmacy people know exactly what they need. They’re very on top of it.”
Kathleen Murphy, a veteran advisor of twenty nine years, someone who has been with the advising center since she was a graduate student, outlines simply what the goal of the advisors really is, “We want to make them feel like they can succeed.” If Janna Zuroski’s office is bright and sparse and very office-like, Kathleen Murphy’s is the opposite. Kathleen’s desk dominates the room and is covered in papers and pamphlets and, for a complete lack of a better word, knick-knacks. It is lit by a small desk lamp and a string of white Christmas tree lights. It is dim but feels comfortable and well-worn, lived in. There is a book shelf dominated by languages other than English, Kathleen speaks five of them. Kathleen herself is thin and tall. Her jaw is pointed and strong and her eyes intense. She moves and talks with a constant and completely organic feeling confidence. She is blunt and honest and as far as it seems, unafraid to talk about anything in any way.
Kathleen is one of the few remaining advisors, along with the advising director, Mary Beth Favorite, who have been at Pitt before a professional advising center existed. Back when she started, advisors were grad students who worked, at most, sixteen hours a week. Since then, Kathleen has seen the department grow to over a dozen full time employees and a myriad of technological resources. However, whether it be when she is advising or talking about advising, Kathleen does not focus on how important it is to have professionally trained, well groomed advisors, but instead people who honestly care about the students, something Janna Zuroski also echoed. She constantly talks about students exploring all opportunities and how incredibly important it is for advisors to act as connections to other parts of the university. In Kathleen’s words, her job is to, “orient them without overwhelming them.”
The University of Pittsburgh’s website describes this process, at least in the first year.
Advisors are here to help you discover the University community. Learning about Dietrich School policies, procedures, services, programs, and resources is important to your success. During your first year, work with your academic advisor to answer the following questions: Why am I here? Where am I going with my academic career? How can I connect with faculty? In short, find a niche, connect with people and resources, and set yourself on a successful path. 1
This description fits perfectly into the goals outlined by advisors in person. The entire process is part of a planned and concerted effort to acclimate students to the academic side of college life as quickly and easily as possible.
Often the word mentor is used as a descriptor for the advisor/advisee relationship. However, mentor implies guidance in a specific direction, means to a certain end. What Kathleen Murphy, or Janna Zuroski, or Mary Beth Favorite describe, when they talk about advising is much more fluid. They describe watching timid freshman who have no idea what they are doing in college completely transform into essentially functional human beings. They describe watching them grow and take on challenges and responsibility.
This process, in and of itself may not be unique to the “arts and sciences” advisors inherently, but there is a very unique dynamic involved. Since the college requires students to graduate with a major, no student will have their freshman advisor when they reach their senior year. The “arts and sciences” advisors exist like taxis to the airport; they are essential in transport, but never carry their students to the end of their journey. However, sometimes when the destination is not entirely known, this trip does not go so smoothly.
In stark contrast to those students, like Kaitlyn the pre-pharm candidate, that know where they’re going or what they’re planning on doing with their education, the students that generally have the most problems with the advising center are those that have little to no idea as to what direction they want to take as an undergraduate. One such student is Madison Messina, an undeclared sophomore, “arts and sciences” advisee. Madison is solidly based in Liberal Arts classes, taking a range of courses involved with psychology, sociology, and political science. As she herself described however, “I still have no idea what major I would choose if I had to pick today.”
Madison seems especially nervous about this fact when talking about her upcoming advising appointment, “I hate going in there and not being able to say anything about what I want to do next semester…it’s embarrassing.” She also talks about how difficult it is to usefully discuss prospects with her advisor, “It always ends up that she just gives me a list of like a hundred classes and I have no idea which ones I actually want to take.” This particular problem speaks to a large gap in what the advising center considers important and what some students really end up wanting from them. The advising department constantly stresses the fact that they are not there to “tell students” what they should or should do or what classes they should or should not take. This is designed so that students learn to maneuver themselves through the process of picking classes and thinking about their options. However, the simple truth is that, for some students, that is exactly what they do not want.
Madison moves through the matrix of picking classes on her computer and talks about the specifics of her problems with it, “When I’m actually in the advising appointment we go through the classes I want to maybe take, but for some reason I can’t just sign up for them while I’m there. Then I have to wait a couple of days until my advisor takes the block off of my account and by that time most of the classes I wanted to take are already full and I have to pick more.” This illustrates the strange dynamic technology has developed with person-to-person advising and how it can present challenges and conflicts to the system and those involved. For students who take the general approach to picking classes, basically seeing what works with their schedule and what sounds interesting, a written course description can often serve as well as a person in terms of deciding which classes they find most interesting. A recent advising survey by Our Lady of the Lake University for undergraduate student outlined this problem statistically. The survey of “arts and sciences” students said that though more than eighty-five percent of students had help from their advisors in getting access to register for classes online, twenty-five percent of students still found that their advisors were not helping them in getting information about registering for the classes they needed to take.2
For Madison, this process seems to make much more sense, “I don’t mind choosing classes by myself. At least that way I know I’ll know which ones are actually available.” However, this way of picking classes definitely leaves more room for error. Where the personal advisor can identify which classes are inherently useful in terms of graduating, a student on their own can often overlook or overemphasize certain areas, forgetting about requirements. This means that, especially for students who take a large variety of classes, it is easy to put yourself behind in terms of graduating on time by selecting classes by interest alone.
At first glance, it would appear that Madison wants more freedom from her advisor, more chances to take the class selection process completely into her own hands. This is not the case. “I wish my advisor would just tell me what classes I should take, or give me a really small list to choose from. That would make it so much easier,” Madison said. This is a fundamental problem many advisors have with undeclared students and one that has not been at all remedied by the institution of more technology. Kathleen Murphy commented on this problem, “I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to having a set freshman curriculum for undeclared students. Most of the time they’re going to be taking general education required courses anyway. More structure would make my life easier.”
There is a line being approached with the idea of set, required curriculums. The point of “arts and sciences” advisors, as Kathleen Murphy constantly referenced, is to be a conduit for information, to act as a resource for the student, not to tell them what to do. What happens when those same sources for information become the absolute decision maker for incoming students? Would that benefit students like Madison more than inhibiting other students who really do enjoy the freedom of choosing their own courses? The system is inherently flawed in this regard, but it is not because of the system itself. There will always be students who want to be told what to do, who want more than anything to have some sort of set path. At the same time, there will always be advisors who see the benefit of allowing students to choose for themselves. The difference in these two factions is the difficulty in “arts and sciences”: does growth come through freedom or is setting a path the most important aspect?
In such a challenging time for many students, advisors try to act as a small window of honesty and helpfulness. The “arts and sciences” advisors specifically, deal with the most confused and direction seeking of these generally lost individuals. They teach them how to pick classes and how to use the god-forsaken technology Pittsburgh chooses to use. They act as resources and fountains of knowledge about anything from how to do taxes to where to get a paper revised to how long to cook a turkey. They give advice to, teach, and care about their students and will keep doing it as long as there are students sitting in the waiting room wondering which hallway to go down.
