Faculty Advisors

Available in their individual offices at designated hours each week

Your faculty advisor is your own personal consultant about your academic goals and individual course of study and about each semester's schedule of courses. During your first and second years, your faculty advisor will urge you to explore a broad range of courses and to consider and prepare for more than one major. (Advisors know that at least half of their advisees will change their mind about their major - often several times - before finally deciding on one or two.) Once you are in a major (you may apply for acceptance into a major as soon as you are sure of your choice and have satisfied prerequisites), you find an advisor in your field with whom you shape and focus your major. Often this is one of your teachers.

A successful relationship with your faculty advisor can be one of your most valuable relationships at Cornell; creating it is very much up to you. Professor Patricia Carden, Russian literature and winner of the Robert and Donna Paul Award for Distinguished Advising, has written a very short advice essay on how to do so. I urge you to read this essay, which is included in the Student Handbook you received before you matriculated at Cornell and which is also posted here. It includes much common sense that is unfortunately uncommon among undergraduates but that, if heeded, can contribute to a successful advising relationship. You need to understand how faculty advisors can and expect to help you, and you need to assume responsibility for your part of the relationship.

If asked, faculty advisers will usually tell you honestly what they think of your curricular decisions and what they think is more important in an undergraduate education. But they will seldom volunteer such opinions because they do not want to intrude on your independence or privacy. You need to solicit such advice actively.

Most important, faculty advisors stand ready to help if problems arise. However, they will assume you do not need their help unless you come forward. Students, on the other hand, frequently do not wand to "lose face" with their faculty advisors by revealing problems, which they fear - usually without grounds - will be perceived as weaknesses. This conspiracy of mutual silence invariably results in your not finding help when you most need it and in faculty advisors' feeling annoyed that you have not sought timely help.