ADVISING SYSTEM FOR PhD STUDENTS

In the fall 1997, the Graduate Group in English approved a new advising system, on a three-year trial basis, for Ph.D. students in the first three years of the program. The fall 1997 incoming class was the first to be part of this new system.

The Advising Committee
At the heart of the new system is the three-person Advising Committee. In early or mid October, new students submit to the graduate chair a list of five faculty members whom they would like to have on their committee. (The required proseminar should help to familiarize them with the department's faculty early on.) The graduate chair will then assign committees, accommodating where possible the students' preferences but being sure spread the advising assignments across the entire faculty. In the third year, the student's Field Committee takes over the responsibilities of the Advising Committee.

First-, Second- and Third-Year Advising Conferences and Advising Meetings

Individual Conferences in the Fall : Students should meet individually with each member of the committee in October of their first three years, when spring course descriptions are published. These individual conferences will expose students to a range of suggestions about what courses to take, when to do independent study and independent reading courses, how best to manage simultaneous taking and teaching of courses, and how to manage the end-of-semester crunch. They will also provide more opportunities for students to discuss with faculty any difficulties they are having in the program.

Spring Advising Meetings : Students will meet with the Advising Committee as a group in late March of the first year (during preregistration), April of the second year (toward the end of classes), and April of the third year (after field-exam grades have been submitted). Prior to the first-year meeting, each member of the committee will be given a copy of the student's transcript, as well as a memo from the graduate office providing guidelines for the meeting and a blueprint for the report that the adviser will prepare after the meeting. Prior to the second-and third-year meetings, each member will again receive copies of the transcript and of the grad-office memo, as well as copies of other relevant documents, including previous Advising Committee reports, the 50-book and (for 3rd-year students) field-exam reports, the 800 instructor's teaching evaluation report, and the faculty monitor reports and student evaluation (SCUE) summaries for subsequent semesters of teaching. Note that in the third year, the Field Committee, chosen by the student in consultation with the Graduate Chair, automatically takes over the duties of the advising committee. That committee's traditional post-field-exam meeting with the student will thus be treated as the spring advising meeting. The purpose of these meetings is to discuss with the student the entire spectrum of his or her work in the program-classwork, exams, and teaching-and to offer more specific and future-directed praise and criticism than students were receiving under the old advising system. The main purposes of the Advising Committee reports are to inform the graduate chair of what was learned and/or decided at these meetings, to provide a written evaluation and set of suggestions for the students' own use, and to put into the students' academic files a more complete picture of their successes and difficulties in the program than we are currently doing. Having such reports on file will insure better continuity of advising as advisers and committee members go on leave and are replaced, and as graduate chairs succeed one another.

The three group meetings will be called Spring Advising Meetings rather than First- ,Second-, and Thrid-Year Reviews so that they don't sound like new evaluative hurdles or exams which the student will either pass or fail. The evaluative moments in the early years of the program are already in place and are, or ought to be, adequate: the grading of individual courses, the good-standing reviews every summer (which prevent students from moving forward in the program with more than two incompletes), the two exams. Faculty should not regard the advising meetings as opportunities to "fail" students who have passed all classes and exams and remained in good standing. In most cases these will be very positive meetings with excellent students who are eager to hear their advisers' assessments and advice.

On the other hand, the instituting of these formal meetings at the end of the first three years is meant to mark a substantive change in the way the faculty evaluate and advise Ph.D. students, particularly students who are not thriving in the program. Where a student is not in good standing, or has not passed (with a grade of B or better) all of his or her classes, or has not passed the 50-book or field exam, the Advising Committee can recommend that the student not be allowed to continue. This will ensure that the graduate chair is not left to decide by him or herself how to handle difficult cases and that several faculty members work together to come up with a workable plan to help the student back onto track. Even where a student has met the minimum criteria for continuing, but is only just barely managing to do so, or has been egregiously unsuccessful as a teacher in the English Writing program, an Advising Committee may well feel that their best advice is for that student to take a Masters degree and not pursue the Ph.D. at Penn. In this case, the Committee's recommendation would not be binding. But one could expect that in some cases at least their arguments, and the subsequent elaboration of those arguments by the graduate chair, would be persuasive to the student.

Even where a student is doing very well in the program and is in no danger whatsoever of failing, the Advising Committee should regard these meetings as opportunities to speak frankly and seriously about the student's weaknesses as well as strengths, about the challenges that lie ahead in the program and in the profession, and about ways for the student to improve the quality of his or her work and the chances of his or her professional success. In sum, while the advising meeting does not represent a new and additional pass/fail screening mechanism, it is very important that the faculty refuse to allow it to become an anodyne and merely symbolic year-end ceremony.