<p>Hi,
I recently went to the Binghamton open house and felt that the advising was kind of poor. There are only 7 advisors in the Harpur College and it seemed like it was really hard to get an appt. with them. This is a little concerning as I'm going in undecided and may need some guidance.</p>
<p>For students or parents of students at Binghamton, what was your experience with the advisors? Were you able to reach them? Did they take time to help? If not, what did you do?</p>
<p>Hi! My name is Rob and I’m a Binghamton University Student Ambassador.</p>
<p>I think you may have misunderstood how our advising system works - it’s a bit different than at other schools. We use what is called a dual-advising model. Basically, it works on the premise that the people best able to advise you on your major are the faculty within that major. Here’s how it works:</p>
<p>Harpur Advising (or the advising office for any other school) specializes in general questions, assistance in scheduling, and general education requirements. They’re incredibly knowledgeable in the gen-ed requirements and can be extremely helpful if you need advice on which major you should look into or help figuring out what you want to do, but they aren’t there to help you with fulfilling major requirements once you’ve declared a major. They’re normally the people you would see in your first year (and maybe second) if you were having any issues or needed any advice. The fact that there are only seven advisers may seem crazy, but this is because they are NOT the only advising available for Harpur College - they help with only one area, basically. This way they can learn that area really well and be 100% able to help you with anything related to it.</p>
<p>Once you declare your major, you are set up with an adviser within the department. This adviser will be a faculty member that teaches classes within that department. They will be the person you go to with questions about your major. This is beneficial to our students. There’s no-one better able to help you figure out what classes you need to be taking and what you need to do to graduate than the professors that are teaching those very classes in that very major. This would be the person you rely on during your last two years at the college more so than Harpur Advising.</p>
<p>It’s very easy to get in touch with either type of adviser. We’ve tried to make it as flexible as possible to get in touch with Harpur Advising. They have hours for walk-ins and phone-ins Monday through Friday; you can see those hours online here to get an idea of how often they’re available: [Binghamton</a> University - Academics: Harpur College of Arts and Sciences: Academic Advising: Home](<a href=“http://www2.binghamton.edu/harpur/advising/]Binghamton”>Harpur Academic Advising | Harpur Advising | Binghamton University). As for the faculty adviser within your major, they hold office hours like any other professor, which is when students would normally stop in and meet with them. Our professors, in my experience, are also very good about setting up appointments if necessary to make sure they’re available as a resource to you if you have a conflict with their normal office hours.</p>
<p>Another cool feature about our advising is that we don’t choose advisers FOR our students. Our students can choose their own adviser. If you go down to advising and meet with someone you think really understood your goals and you want to keep meeting with them instead of another random adviser, you can do that easily - just ask for that person in the future. On the other hand, if you go down to Harpur Advising and really hate someone you meet with for whatever reason, then you never have to see them again. While you are initially set up with a faculty adviser in your major department, you can change that adviser at any time to another faculty member that agrees to fulfill that role if you find a professor that you really get along with. This lets our students determine which people they want advising them instead of forcing any adviser on a student.</p>
<p>We also have other services available on-campus for our students, including Pre-Health and Pre-Law advising and Discovery Advisers, which are students that are trained to help their peers in issues of scheduling classes. If you decide to come to Binghamton, you’ll hear a lot about all of the advising options available to you and utilize them during your summer orientation, where you schedule your fall classes.</p>
<p>Let me know if you have any other questions!</p>
<p>~Rob</p>
<p>Not to hijack this thread Rob, but is SOM similar in terms of advising? Does being a transfer have any impact on that?</p>
<p>Um, we have Jill Seymour. Enough said.</p>
<p>Because SOM is a much smaller program than Harpur, in the case of SOM, there is a separate SOM Advising office that is your one stop for all advising. You can find more information about them here: [Binghamton</a> University - School of Management: Undergraduate programs: Academic Advising](<a href=“Undergraduate Academic Advising - School of Management | Binghamton University”>Undergraduate Academic Advising - School of Management | Binghamton University)</p>
<p>~Rob</p>