“The advisers at Juniata really pushed me to my fullest potential, especially when I wasn’t doing my best work.” —Daniel Eleuteri ’06, now a chiropractor at Celebration Family Chiropractic in Celebration, Fla.
Juniata
Bob Reilly, professor of social work, says successful advising requires a pretty healthy commitment of time on both the part of the student and the part of the adviser. Here, Reilly talks with, from left, Luke Thompson ’13, of Newtown, Pa., Kelsey Shutt ’12 of Harrisburg, Pa., and Ashley Digan ’13, of New Columbia, Pa.
60
One professor even holds advising sessions one day a week in the late evening. “Advising is going on all the time. Students stop me all the time after class, to ask questions, to get my reaction to something, and I’m sure it’s like that in all departments,” says biologist Jill Keeney. “Advising is a very communal thing at Juniata.” Dr. Nicholas Bower ’00, now a physician and the founder of a medical aid charity called Physicians for Humanity, recounts an informal advising visit that changed his life. “As a freshman I could not handle the difficulty of Organic Chemistry and I went directly to Sarah Clarkson’s office before entering the science center to take the test,” he says. “She calmly put me in a ‘prechem’ course and reminded me that many other students need more preparation before jumping into Organic Chemistry as a freshman.”
S
ometimes even the formal advising sessions can be communal. For example, roughly 150 freshmen come into the College with a declared biology POE, which means in any year a biologist can have 40 to 60 advisees. Keeney says the department solved the logistics by creating a Freshman Seminar where students meet once a week to discuss advising, write an initial POE, write a personal statement and other tasks. A 1-credit sophomore biology seminar builds on a student’s first year. In addition to discussing careers, study abroad, research and other options, the sophomores must have a declared POE completed by the end of fall semester. “It’s really so that when they come to us for advising we are not starting at square one,” Keeney says. The science departments also almost always insist that students get secondary advisers outside of science. It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it gives students a view outside the laboratory. “The students will have two people they can talk to about where they’re going in life and the chances are good that they will have one adviser they really click with,” Keeney says. “The advisers at Juniata really pushed me to my fullest potential, especially when I wasn’t doing my best work,” says Daniel Eleuteri ’06, now a chiropractor at Celebration Family Chiropractic in Celebration, Fla. “It was a sense of accountability that made me succeed.” “I had to be able to demonstrate my desire to take a course or apply to a fellowship, and this process helped me develop effective communication skills and lay out a reasonable case for my decision,” adds Tyler Kochel ’09, who is studying molecular medicine at the University of Maryland-Baltimore. The key to advising is more about managing the student’s expectations than offering sage wisdom about life, love and the