Introduction

Freshman Counselors

Special duties of ethnic counselors

Application information

Qualifications

Eligibility

Undergraduates in Yale College

Residential College Counselorships

Ethnic Counselorships

Graduate and professional school students

Procedures

Undergraduates

Graduate and professional school students

Compensation

INTRODUCTION

This booklet contains information for potential applicants for the position of residential college and ethnic freshman counselors in Yale College. Applicants are expected to be mature students who can draw on their own experiences in order to respond effectively to the unusually wide scope of questions and issues that first-year college students invariably encounter, and who exhibit in their own work strong examples of academic success. Applicants are urged to read the entire booklet in order to familiarize themselves with the Freshman Counseling Program and particularly with the terms of employment within it. Over 300 applications are received each year for approximately 90 openings.

FRESHMAN COUNSELORS

Freshman counselors were made a part of Yale College's advising system in 1938 and with the addition in 1972 of a special group of ethnic counselors are an intrinsic and essential characteristic of Yale's educational program for freshmen. Freshmen find the support and advice of their counselors to be an indispensable feature of their success in adjusting to the first year of college. As participants in residential college life themselves, counselors draw on their own experience to introduce their freshmen to the residential college system. Freshman counselors live together with their freshmen, either on the Old Campus, where the freshmen from ten residential colleges are housed, or with freshmen who live in Timothy Dwight College or Silliman College.

The residential college counselors and the ethnic counselors share many of the same responsibilities and duties, and are expected to consult regularly with each other about their students' progress. Ethnic counselors provide the special assistance necessary in easing a minority freshman's adjustment to various facets of Yale life.

The major responsibility of the freshman counselor is to help freshmen succeed in their lives at Yale. Counselors are thus expected to introduce their freshmen to the diverse experiences of life at Yale, including the responsibilities and possibilities of the academic world, the residential college system, extracurricular activities, and the other many and various resources and opportunities of the University. To be effective in the position, the counselor must therefore have an excellent knowledge of Yale College, its curriculum and its residential college system, and of the University as a whole.

Counselors are expected to respect the right of their freshmen to form their own independent positions and judgments: all students are at Yale to participate in the opportunities afforded by any university for free inquiry, the open exchange of ideas, and the formation of opinions grounded in individual learning, experience, and reflection.

The counselor's role as an academic adviser supports that of the freshman faculty adviser. The counselor identifies and aids the student who does not yet know how to study effectively, who needs help in using the library system, who requires a tutor, or who has trouble budgeting time properly. The counselor's educational influence is in fact more pervasive; as a successful student in his or her own work, the counselor becomes a significant example to his or her counselees.

In accepting the position, a counselor also accepts the obligation to assume an active and continuing interest in the various other problems that freshmen inevitably encounter during the first year of college. Naturally, many of the duties of the counselor are defined by the sometimes unpredictable needs of his or her counselees. The job therefore requires personal resourcefulness, character and integrity, energy, good judgment, dedication, and utter discretion. It is also demanding and unusually time-consuming. Thus students with unusually exacting academic commitments or extracurricular obligations should consider carefully whether they will be able to devote to the job the time necessary to discharge it effectively and well. Such students might include those who have heavy schedules in the fall term, when the work and presence of the freshman counselor are most important.

Counselors serve as an essential link in communication between the Yale College Dean's Office, the residential college deans, and the freshman class. They are expected to be thoroughly familiar with the publications of the Yale College Dean's Office. The most important of these are the Yale College Programs of Study (especially Chapters I and IV), the Freshman Handbook, and the Undergraduate Regulations. The immediate duties of both the residential college counselors and the ethnic counselors are supervised by the dean of the residential college with which the freshmen are affiliated. Toward the end of the year the counselor submits written reports describing each counselee's freshman year. These summaries help the dean and the master know their students better when they come to live in the college.

Freshman counselors are appointed by Yale College and are thus placed in a position of responsibility for freshmen that is institutional in its nature. A counselor must consequently conduct himself or herself with any member of the freshman class in a fashion that is appropriate to the status of an employee and agent of the Yale College Dean's Office and of the University. A freshman counselor is therefore obviously expected to avoid a sexual or even a romantic relationship with any freshman. Freshman counselors are expected to assume reasonable responsibility for seeing that their freshmen honor the Undergraduate Regulations. Of particular concern are the rules concerning social functions, alcoholic beverages, noise, fire extinguishers, and fire alarms. A counselor who fails to fulfill any of these requirements will be summarily dismissed from the program.

All counselors are required to attend an orientation program before the start of the fall term, which provides an opportunity for them to begin to familiarize themselves with the nature and extent of their duties, to discuss relevant issues of concern, and to meet various members of the University community who will be sources of information and support for them throughout the year. It also allows counselors to analyze typical student-related problems with the assistance of professionals from the University Health Services.

While the responsibilities of the freshman counselor are heavy, and the demands made on the counselor's time and energy are great, the experience a counselor enjoys in participating in the education and life of his or her freshmen is one of incalculable richness and satisfaction. The friendships formed between counselor and counselee often last long beyond the departure of both from Yale.

SPECIAL DUTIES OF ETHNIC COUNSELORS

Special counseling for minority freshmen was begun in 1972. It grew in response to the experience of various minority students, student groups, and administrators who had become sensitive to the particular problems encountered at Yale by many minority freshmen. Although the problems of all incoming freshmen are in most respects similar, those of minority students can nonetheless be different if various acculturation pressures accompany their adjustment at Yale. Such a system of counseling provides minority freshmen with a group of counselors who have coped successfully with similar difficulties. The twelve ethnic counselors are not substitutes for the residential college counselors, but function as an additional support group for their freshmen. Some minority freshmen may wish to work frequently with the ethnic counselor while others may contact him or her only occasionally.

To succeed in their duties, the ethnic counselors must be both visible and accessible. Because a freshman may choose to work with both counselors, the two are expected to consult regularly about the student's progress, especially when problems arise. In order to promote the necessary relationship between the Freshman Counseling Program and the residential college system, each ethnic counselor is associated with the dean of one or another of the residential colleges and thus becomes a primary liaison for that college, dealing with all the minority students in that college, not just those of a particular ethnicity. Ethnic counselors live in the same entryways with their liaison colleges.

The job of the ethnic counselor begins before the fall term officially opens. At this time the counselor attends a training session and serves as a counselor in the Cultural Connections Program. The counselors have the same responsibilities during Cultural Connections as they have during the academic year: they greet the students and establish supportive relations with them; informally introduce them to the University; advise them on academic matters; counsel them when they have personal problems; and serve as role models. During Cultural Connections, counselors receive free room and board.

APPLICATION INFORMATION

Qualifications

No formula describes the most successful counselor, but the selection committees seek candidates who demonstrate a capacity to understand and take pleasure in their freshmen, have the personal qualities that will earn their respect, and have the judgment necessary to guide them wisely. Related qualities are the willingness and the ability to assist freshmen in obeying the Undergraduate Regulations. Other essential attributes are character, emotional stability, interest in people, sensitivity, initiative, flexibility, fidelity to duty, a capacity for enjoyment, and a sense of humor.

Applicants should consider again that the job of a freshman counselor is very time-consuming. The counselorship is and must be the counselor's major activity and first priority.

Eligibility

Undergraduates in Yale College

Residential College Counselorships: Candidates for residential college counselorships must be seniors during both terms of the academic year 2003-2004.

Ethnic Counselorships: Candidates for ethnic counselorships must be seniors during both terms of the academic 2003-2004.

All applicants must be able to demonstrate that they can devote the necessary time required to be an effective counselor. Special students are not eligible to serve as freshman counselors. Because there are no accommodations in the undergraduate dormitories for married students, they are not eligible to serve as freshman counselors.

Graduate and Professional School Students

Postgraduate candidates for freshman counselorships must be enrolled in the Graduate School or one of the professional schools of the University during the academic year 2003-2004. Graduate and professional school student applicants who did not attend Yale College must have been enrolled at Yale for at least one year before 2003-2004. Applicants should be students whose own undergraduate education is sufficiently recent for them to deal effectively with problems encountered by freshmen. Applicants must be able to demonstrate that they can devote the necessary time required to be effective counselors.

PROCEDURES

Undergraduates

The application procedure for undergraduates consists of two parts, the submission of an application form, and an interview with the candidate's residential college dean and, in some colleges, the master. Application forms (pdf) may be obtained from Therese Barbuto in the Yale College Dean's Office, 105 SSS, and when completed they should be returned to Ms. Barbuto.

The application deadline for a position as a freshman counselor is 4:00 p.m., January 31, 2003.

Applicants will be informed by their residential college deans of the time and place of their interviews. Final selections will be made and applicants will be notified just before the spring recess so that they may make appropriate plans for the coming year. The dean of each of the residential colleges will inform the college's applicants of the results of the selection process. The Yale College Dean's Office, as employer of the freshman counselors, will then send contract forms to the successful applicants. The forms should be signed and returned to Ms. Barbuto, 105 SSS.

Applicants for positions as ethnic counselors may obtain application forms (pdf) from Ms. Barbuto in the Yale College Dean's Office, 105 SSS, and when completed they should be returned to her. The application deadline for a position as an ethnic counselor is 4:00 p.m., January 31, 2003. Ethnic counselors must make an appointment for an interview through the assistant dean responsible for their group. Applicants will be informed of the time and place of their interviews by the assistant dean of their group shortly after applications have been submitted; candidates will be interviewed by committees during February.

Final selections will be made by the dean of student affairs upon recommendation of the interview committees. Successful candidates will then sign their contracts to serve in the position with the Yale College Dean's Office. The contracts should be returned to Ms. Barbuto, 105 SSS.

Graduate and Professional School Students

Application forms (pdf) may be obtained from Ms. Barbuto in the Yale College Dean's Office, 105 SSS. All applications should be returned to Ms. Barbuto no later than 4:00 p.m. on January 31, 2003. Graduate and professional school applicants, unless they were undergraduates in Yale College, are required to submit at least two letters of recommendation from persons who are able to assess their potential for being effective counselors. *Interviews will be held at the discretion of the dean of student affairs and the residential college deans. Normally, interviews take place in February.

Final selections will be made and applicants notified as quickly as possible so that they may make plans for the coming year. The Yale College Dean's Office, as employer of the successful applicants, will send them contract forms which should be signed and returned to Ms. Barbuto, 105 SSS.

*Unless they are specifically requested to do so, applicants who were Yale College undergraduates and who are applying to their own residential college need not submit letters if either the master or the dean is the same person who held that position as when they were students there.

COMPENSATION

Students in Yale College and graduate students who are selected to be counselors are not charged for housing and receive partial compensation of a full meal contract. NOTE: Applicants in Timothy Dwight and Silliman Colleges should consult with their deans for precise information about the terms of their compensation. All compensation is reflected in the counselor's bill from Student Financial & Administrative Services. The financial circumstances of applicants are not a consideration in the selection process.

Successful applicants who are receiving financial aid, however, must report their appointment to the Office of Undergraduate Financial Aid or the financial aid officer of their school, who must consider the selection to a counselorship in making awards for the following year. It is possible that a student's financial aid award will be affected by the terms of the counselorship.