Over the past 20 years, multiple stakeholders have identified and recommended improvements for first-year advising at MIT. More recently, students who participated in the Designing the First Year Experience undergraduate class in the spring of 2018 identified advising as a key priority.

In response, the Teaching + Learning Lab (TLL), the Office of the Vice Chancellor (OVC), and the Office of the First Year (OFY) collaborated to review past advising reports and studies and to implement a model focused on an advising network. This model was piloted last fall with a subset of the class of 2023.

This presentation will describe the reasons for the pilot and the accompanying study of the first-year advising experience from the perspectives of the faculty, OFY staff, and first-year students, and the findings and recommendations for future implementation.

Presenters: Melissa Barnett, Lauren Pouchak, Elizabeth Young