Concentration forms are due for sophomores April 1. We believe this is an exciting and formative time in students' academic careers, but we worry that the concentration declaration has become a somewhat perfunctory process. As such, we are proposing some reforms that might help students connect more with their concentration advisers and plan out their academic paths.
We believe students should have mandatory conferences with their concentration advisers regarding their concentration essays. The University could only benefit if students discussed their proposed academic tracks, and students would gain from concentration advisers giving them face-to-face feedback. These meetings would also get concentration advisers to meet all of their advisees as soon as they declare. We believe Brown is serious about improving its advising, and these mandatory meetings are a simple improvement that will foster substantive conversations between advisor and advisee.
Concentration essays can serve different purposes for different students. For those particularly confident in their concentration decisions and who have a firm understanding of what they hope to accomplish in the department, concentration essays are statements of academic purpose.
For students who have reservations or concerns about their concentrations or are simply not as certain about their academic plans, this essay can be a jumping-off point for self-reflection and dialogue with concentration advisers. Forcing students to take a legitimate introspective look about their academic futures and express various concerns to members of the department is a great way for more apprehensive concentrators to get accustomed to their departments.
We were initially worried our plan would not allow concentration advisers enough time to read and comment thoroughly on all the essays. Some big departments have few concentration advisers, and the international relations department only has one. But Associate Director of International Relations Claudia Elliott MA'91 PhD'99, the lone international relations concentration adviser, enthusiastically encouraged a more intense process and said it would not place too much of a burden on professors or students.
Finally — not to go all Hogwarts on our readers — we would like to propose declaration ceremonies. These would not have to be too dramatic — every department would hold its own ceremony attended by all its professors and recently declared students. At these ceremonies, there could be a few speeches from faculty members, including the head of the department, a senior concentrator offering a few words of wisdom and two exemplary members of the recent class delivering excerpts from their concentration essays. Such ceremonies would provide a sense of magnitude to the concentration declaration process that is currently lacking. It would also allow recently declared students to feel immediately part of a community and interact with department professors and their fellow concentrators.
We hope the University will become more proactive in its concentration declaration process. Elliott also suggested rewording the prompts to make them more specific, which would make these essays more tangible and perhaps easier to write. Declaring a concentration should be a genuinely academic and exciting process, and our reforms will help to fulfill its potential.
Editorials are written by The Herald's editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
