Advising

Advising is one of my favorite roles at Hampshire. As an advisor, I endeavor to give students clear, consistent structures to support their entries into college, their self-designed concentrations, and their Division III projects. 

At the Division I level, I meet frequently with students outside class in the first semester. In their second and third semesters, I meet with students as a group and individually to keep them updated about the process for passing Division I and starting Division II.

In Division II, I take on students from a range of interdisciplinary field interests, with most addressing fields of literature, American Studies, Cultural Studies, Comics Studies, Archival Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Ethnic Studies, culture and politics, Cold War Studies, Cuba Studies, as well as various modes of creative practice and other intersections of culture and politics. However, advising in Division II is less a matter of directing students through a standard concentration than it is accompanying students on a journey. I encourage students to think about their concentrations strategically, considering not just what interests them in the current course catalog but what knowledge and skills they want to build in the 3-4 semesters of their concentration. I encourage language learning and international exchange programs as often as I can, and I seek out possible Community Engaged Learning opportunities for students in my areas. 

In Division III, I help students to understand the shape of the year to come, and to break their projects down into a series of manageable tasks. In our initial meetings, I advise them on readings, research methods, and citational practices, and I make sure they submit a significant piece of work by the end of the first semester. I expect students to have complete drafts of their work by midway through the second semester, at which point we undertake several rounds of revision. Of course, sometimes a Division III will depart from this outline, given the experimental, creative, and interdisciplinary nature of many projects.

For more information and resources on advising at each divisional level, click on one of the links below.