Provost Organizes Advisory Research

Provost Buck yesterday named a ten-man faculty committee, headed by Dean Bender, to investigate the entire field of College advisory aid to students.

The new group will try to solve three main problems:

1. How responsible is the faculty for the active direction of its students?

2. How can all phases of advising, from academic to social-psychiatric to job placement be tied together to fulfill this responsibility?

3. What balance should advisors reach between spoon-feeding and passive availability for the best results in the separate phases of advising?

Others Serve

In addition to Bender, the Committee on Advising consists of Dean Kerby-Miller of Radcliffe; Professors John H. Finley and Gordon W. Allport; Associate Professors Charles R. Cherington, Albert J. Guerard, Hugh M. Raup, and Robert B. Woodward; and Assistant Dean Henry S Dyer, secretary.

Selection for the committee was based not only on expressed interest in student advising, but also on "open minds," Buck said. None of the members is associated with any part of the present advisory system.

Committee GE Result

Buck said that the committee was formed as a direct result of the General Education report, which listed advising as one of the major educational problems yet to be solved.

He also pointed to "the vast amount of experimentation in advising which had been carried on in the College in the last 25 years--experimentation which has never been made public or devised into a concrete plan of action."

The Provost referred to Dr. Arlie V. Bock's Grant Study of the normal boy, the various new methods of testing, the role of the House system, the Bureau of Study Counsel, and the Job Placement office.

Approach Uncertain

Dean Bender said that he did not know exactly from what angle that his committee would attack the problem of advising until its first regular meeting on November 26

The Student Council recently completed a similar study, and is now trying to get it printed by the University Press.