New program gives guidance to frosh

For the first two years at Penn, many undergraduates wander aimlessly from class to class, undecided about their choice for a major.

But as part of an effort to improve the constantly evolving undergraduate advising system, those wavering underclassmen will hopefully have a helping hand.

The College of Arts and Sciences, in conjunction with the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, has created the Major Advising Program to pair up freshmen and sophomores with upperclassmen already majoring in various liberal arts fields.

The program was created to facilitate one-on-one advising between students. SCUE hopes that with the addition of this program, undergraduates will have more advising resources at their fingertips.

The new program will be run through the College Advising Program, and upperclassmen can fill out an online application to become advisers. School of Arts and Sciences computing is working with the College and SCUE to create a database of advisers that freshmen and sophomores will be able to search.

Ultimately, the goal of the program is to provide underclassmen with guidance from other undergraduates about possible fields of study.

"Basically, it is a way to formalize what students have already been doing informally with other undergraduates," said SCUE member Anne Nicolaysen, a College senior. "It allows students to make an educated choice about their major or search out smaller or lesser-known ones that they may not have encountered before."

Nicolaysen, who is largely responsible for the creation and implementation of the program, said the idea for it came up in a brainstorming session.

"It really struck me as a great idea we could put in place -- a very simple idea that could have a great impact," she said.

Students interested in using the program can go to the College advising office and the search database to find someone who is not only in a prospective major, but someone who is taking a class in which they are interested. They would contact the upperclassman and shadow that person for a day.

"It is allowing freshmen and sophomores the ability to try out a major for the day," Nicolaysen said. "There is no stringent commitment on the part of the advisor, but they have to be committed to joining the program."

SCUE members are confident that the program will benefit both the upperclassmen advisors and especially sophomores.

"They really are in the clutch trying to decide immediately what they have to do so they can feel confident about the choice they make for their major," Nicolaysen said.

SCUE Chairwoman Lindsey Mathews, a College senior, said the response on the part of juniors and seniors, thus far, has been good.

"It has been interesting how eager upperclassmen students are to share the processes they have been through with other students," Mathews said. "It shows a real sense of camaraderie."

The College has been working on repairing and strengthening the advising system for the past few years. Mathews said that the Major Advising Program is another means of strengthening undergraduate advising.

"One of the things the College advising program could not solve is student-to-student advising so we wanted to institutionalize it so that it could happen," she said.

College of Arts and Sciences Dean Richard Beeman said that changes are constantly being made to the advising program.

"I am very pleased with the improvements we have made in our advising system," Beeman said.

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