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 check and recheck 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.”
Not every student is a pre-pharm student though, and not every advising appointment goes the same way. Jon, an undeclared freshman, admits that he’s, “looking for advice as much as specific information as far as classes go.” This is common. However, in general the students that were going into the advising center were not looking for someone to tell them what to do. Over and over again students repeated, in some iteration, that what they wanted most of all was help “staying on track.” This makes sense in the context of most of their appointments. There are only two required student appointments for “arts and sciences” advising per semester. Most of the time students spend deciding what classes to take and which majors to consider happens outside of these small periods of time actually physically with their advisor. This makes the appointments more about the advisors reassuring students that they are, in fact being productive, that the classes they are taking will end up helping them to some goal in the end, at least from the student point of view.
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.”
Now that students and university systems alike are becoming more and more technologically connected, this orientation has become much more complicated. In every single advising appointment in “arts and sciences,” online interfaces work together with the personal advisors to help students find classes, check grades, and figure out what they need to do in order to graduate. Along with this, students have more and more opportunities to use these online advising supplements by themselves, without ever meeting face to face with a person. As with robotic assembly lines and digital phone operators, will it be that technology will gradually take the place, at least partially, of human advisors?
Across the board, students within “arts and sciences’ said that they would not, in fact want to replace their advisors with only do it yourself style applications. Says sophomore Mike Stafford, “I would like to keep the split fifty-fifty with advisors and technology.” It is easy to see, when talking to Kathleen or Janna, or by watching them interact with a student, why this is. There is a unique relationship that exists between an advisor and their student. Often the word mentor is used as a descriptor for this 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, if you were to talk to Kathleen or Janna or any other “arts and sciences” advisor you would never see this as a negative. As Kathleen Murphy said about her fellow advisors, “The only people that are here are the ones that love what they do. The ones that don’t figure it out pretty quick and get out.”
In such a challenging time for many students and young adults, advisors act as a small window of honesty and helpfulness and genuine compassion. 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 mentor and 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.
