The Advising of Majors
The DUS establishes and oversees the department's advisory system. This is one of your most important and demanding jobs, and the more majors a department has, the more assistance you will need from colleagues. An advisory system should have the following three goals: (1) that students in the major and students contemplating the major receive full information about the department's offerings; (2) that they receive advice that takes into account their special interests and individual abilities; and (3) that they meet with their advisers frequently enough to accomplish the first two objectives. A good advising system may be easier to establish in a smaller department than in a larger one, but one arrangement that many large departments have found extremely successful is that of appointing departmental representatives in the residential colleges. By this scheme, you designate as your representative in each of the twelve residential colleges a member of the fellowship who is also a departmental colleague. This departmental representative advises undergraduate majors in the college and approves their course schedules at the beginning of each term. If a college does not have in its fellowship a member of the departmental faculty who is available for advising, you should not hesitate to recommend to the master of the college the name of a colleague who would be a good adviser. A new member of the full-time faculty is eligible to be elected to a college fellowship after one term of teaching at Yale.
If you delegate to departmental advisers the responsibility of approving course schedules, you should keep in mind that you have made them partners in the job of enforcing the requirements of the major. Make certain that they are thoroughly conversant with these requirements, and keep them informed of changes in the undergraduate curriculum.
If only certain faculty signatures are valid on students' course schedules, the Registrar's Office and the residential college deans should be so informed so that they can refuse to accept schedules that are not approved by the right advisers.
