How to navigate Barnard’s hands-on academic advising

While students on both sides of Broadway are assigned advisers, Barnard College boasts a more hands-on advising system. Upon matriculation, students are assigned faculty academic advisers based on expressed interests of study. A student’s adviser must approve the semester’s course selection before the Barnard student can officially register, making direct adviser participation in program scheduling mandatory.

After declaring majors, students select an adviser to oversee their major work for their junior and senior years. Double major students choose two advisers. Barnard students also have class deans for further advising—the sophomore class is split between two deans due to recent personnel shifts. Barnard deans, unlike their counterparts at Columbia College, work in advising, rather than administrative capacities.

Heading up the office is Dean of Studies Karen Blank, who arranges advising for first- and second-year students. Blank chairs the Committee on Programs and Academic Standing as well as the Committee on Honors, and advises the Barnard Honor Board.

Barnard also provides deans who work specially with students who study abroad or take leave from the school, students pursuing careers in law or healthcare, and international, transfer, and commuter students.

At a town hall sponsored by Student Government Association, Barnard’s student g vernment, this past spring, some students noted that first-years and sophomores were sometimes put under the guidance of advisers outside their academic interests, which sometimes made navigating their early course-planning difficult. Others said they had trouble switching advisers when their own went on leave or sabbatical. SGA Vice President of Student Activities Amy Chen, BC ’10, mentioned an interest in developing a student buddy system that would match up upperclassmen advisers with first-years, though conceded that it may be difficult to sustain.