Ann Gaylin, the new dean responsible for first-year and sophomore students, is committed to reviving Brown's sophomore advising and has already made changes to bring students and faculty together outside the classroom more often.
In an interview Tuesday, Gaylin said she was generally pleased with the first-year Meiklejohn and faculty advising programs. She said she plans to immediately focus on amending the sophomore advising program that before last year did not require second-year students to have advisers.
Above all, she said, she was concerned with improving communication between sophomores, their advisers and the administration.
"Sophomores can feel they're cut adrift," said Gaylin, the associate dean for first-year and sophomore studies. "We want to let them know there is help, there is advising ... (their) path is less obvious than others'."
Deputy Dean of the College Stephen Lassonde, who took primary responsibility for those students in an interim role last year, his first at Brown, said Gaylin's arrival will allow the University to better document and utilize information about each sophomore's advising situation.
Last year, the Office of the Dean of the College was unable to fully tend to all sophomores' advising needs, Lassonde said. "Now we have the personnel to do follow-up."
"It's a relief," he added. "I feel like I have a new power tool."
Gaylin said interactions between sophomores and their advisers should constitute "intellectual relations and conversations that are substantial and meaningful." In order to better establish such relationships, Gaylin and others have improved the Faculty Fellows Advising Program, which sponsors regular "study breaks" at the residences of various professors around campus.
In addition to study breaks and advising seminars, FFAP residences will host lectures, talent shows and other events several times a month.
"(The study breaks) weren't enough," Gaylin said. "Now it's more than just something to come out, get food and leave."
Sophomores also received a booklet on academic planning and were invited to an ice cream social advising party, which Gaylin said was attended by more than 600 students. There will be several more such events this year, she added.
Gaylin said she is committed to establishing a more personal feel to advising relationships that first-years can carry through graduation.
"We are making sure students are aware they can approach faculty," said Gaylin, adding that "most faculty would be delighted" to meet with first-years and sophomores more often.
"I was very lucky to be at a small place and work one-on-one with faculty," said Gaylin, who graduated with a B.A. in comparative literature from Brandeis University in 1984.
Gaylin received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton in 1995 and was an associate professor in comparative literature and director of undergraduate studies for literature majors at Yale before coming to Brown in July.
Gaylin, who cited her rich experience working closely with professors at Brandeis and later with students at Yale, suggested that intellectually motivated Brown students deserve more from their advising program.
"Students here are fantastic people, people with really interesting ideas outside the classroom," Gaylin said. "I'm trying (to develop advising) in a more holistic way ... developing mentors for students ... relationships that they can carry with them."
Gaylin joins Lassonde and Assistant Dean of the College for First Year and Sophomore Studies Tahia Reynaga as former Yale staff to arrive in the dean of the College's office in the past calendar year.
