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CYCLES OF REEMPHASIS AND RENEWAL:

A HISTORY OF THE CHANGING RELATIONSHIPBETWEEN FACULTY AND

STUDENTS IN ACADEMIC ADVISING

Megan H. L. Tucker

George Mason University – CTCH 821

December 13, 2012

Cycles of Reemphasis and Renewal: A History of the Changing Relationship Between Faculty and Students in Academic Advising

Introduction

Though academic advising existed informally throughout the history of American higher education, it has developed into a formal, professional mechanism at colleges and universities. Modern academic advising is defined as "a series of intentional interactions with acurriculum, apedagogy, and a set of student learning outcomes. Academic advising synthesizes and contextualizes students' educational experiences within the frameworks of their aspirations, abilities and lives to extend learning beyond campus boundaries and timeframes."[1] Academic advising in its earliest form emerged in U.S. higher education as far back as 1636 at Harvard College.[2] Those who then served in the role of advisors for college students were known as “tutors” as this was before “academic advisor” was a defined role for faculty. [3] The role of the college professors, tutors and presidents were considered to bein loco parentis or “in place of a parent.”[4] Over time, however, the roles of faculty advisors changed to what we see in current higher education. By examining the changes in the advising function over the years, we learn the history and evolution of the role of academic advisors from their inception to the present, and how these changes have influenced or been reflective of the relationships between academic advisors and college students.

As the curriculum and campus environments change, so do the needs of students. With these changing student needs, the faculty academic advisors’ roles have altered to meet student wishes and expectations. Different phases of academic advising have defined and redefined the roles of advisors and the relationships that advisors are expected to have with the student body. A reflection on the history of advising helps to answer the following questions: How has the role of the advisor evolved over time in U.S. colleges and universities?How have the relationships between advisors and students changed throughout the history of U.S. higher education? What were factors contributing to these relationship changes?

There is an extensive history of academic advising and how it has changed with the evolving needs of college students. [5]The development of college advising since 1636 is marked by adaptation to changing student and faculty cultures, includingthe roles of tutors and professors in colonial America. Advising and tutoring during the antebellum period marked a time of turmoil between faculty and students. The turn of the century to the 1900s saw a slow change in the social climate between faculty and students for the better, as well as the emergence of academic advising as a defined function, and ending with how we view advising and advisors in modern higher education. Each time periodis divided chronologically, highlighting major events and changes surrounding students' and advisors' relationships.

Earliest Advisors – The Role of the Tutors(1600s-1800)

"In Loco Parentis"

Early forms of academic advising can be found as far back as the early 1600s in the American colonial era at historical institutions which still hold great prestige, such as Harvard, Yale, and the College of William and Mary.[6] During this time period the role of advisors were most closely aligned with the Harvard tutors who served in place of parents for the college students[7]. The concept of tutors was adapted from the pedagogy associated with Oxford and Cambridge in Great Britain.

In colonial American colleges the president of the college, and later the faculty, were responsible for advising students regarding their extracurricular activities, their moral life, and intellectual habits.[8]The earlier colonial period in American colleges saw the rise of tutors who acted "in loco parentis" or in the stead of parents. [9] Today we would think of tutors as a mixture of modern academic advisors, term faculty and resident assistants or hall directors.

Students were reliant on their tutors and tutorial sessions for achievement. However, colleges during this time were very small and lacked funding. As such, the instructors or "tutors" were paid minimally, though they made up a majority of the university. The professorial positions were rare. [10] The typical picture of the tutorship is that of an "ill-compensated, low-status" temporary position made up of "youngsters for whom teaching was only a bypath to more desired careers" Moore's research found that:

In Clifford Shipton's words, it was a "miserable life." However, subsequent studies have indicated that was not the whole picture. According to Smith's research, as the Harvard tutorship developed over time, terms of service lengthened and a more favorable career climate emerged. By 1758 terms of nine years or more were common and even lifetime careers like Henry Flynt's were a possibility.[11]

It was the norm that every student took the same subjects at the same time of day with the same tutor. After four years of developing this one on one relationship with the tutors, it is suggested that some solidarity continued beyond school. However, because tutors were frequently graduates who were serving in tutorship only as a transitional position, the turnover rates did increase. [12]

Relationships Between Tutors & Students in Colonial America

The end of the colonial era saw unrest among the faculty and students which reached a pinnacle during the antebellum era of higher education. Moore described the "war with the tutors" from 1745-1771. She notes that a possible cause of student discontent and rebellion rested with the system of social superiority that was held by colleges and subsequently the tutors that worked there. [13]An example of student rebellion occurred in 1769 at Harvard when the students launched a full-scale attack upon all the tutors. Moore notes that the battle was waged on both literary and physical fronts. The three tutors involved were Stephen Scales, Andrew Eliot and Joseph Willard. All three had reputations as able scholars, but they were also known as haughty and arrogant, which provoked the students to burn them in effigy one evening. When the students were caught and punished, they revenged themselves by publishing a "number of scurrilous libels" in the form of a poem entitled, "A True Description of a Number of Tyrannical Pedagogues."[14] The students’ lack of voice and independence created a rift between faculty and students which continued into the next century; influencing the formation of social fraternities and violence on campus.[15] The cycle of rebellion and discipline created a maelstrom of dissent between faculty tutors and students.

The Academic Civil War: Unrest among Faculty & Students (1800-1870)

Changing View of the Tutors & Student Rebellion

The role of the tutors and faculty became central in the struggles between faculty and students during the early to mid 1800s. A synopsis of the history of U.S. higher education notes that during the nineteenth century, the role of the tutor was reserved for younger men typically in his early twenties who was a recent graduate from that institution.[16] The tutor’s duties during this time period were to hear student recitations and act as a student overseer and, when required, the students' disciplinarian. [17]

The time period before and during the American Civil War saw vast changes in lifestyle, government and higher education. As college became more accessible, and the number of institutions grew, so did unrest among faculty and students. The Antebellum period of the United States was a tumultuous time for colleges. Uprisings took place during the 19th century against the combined authority of college professors and college presidents. This continued in some overtly violent and some other more covert forms of rebellion which Horowitz describes as the emergence of “college life.”[18]

The antebellum period in higher education was marked by grievances from students, and a continually strained relationship between faculty and their charges.Accounts were collected from newspapers, articles and journals during this time period; noting instances of violence and rebellions. In one instance at the University of North Carolina, students horsewhipped the college president, stoned two professors and threated other faculty members with personal injury. In the 1820s, Yale students bombed a residence hall and later a student killed a tutor who was trying to break up a fight. [19] At the University of Virginia in 1830, "honorable satisfaction" was the excuse given for violence by a student who struck a professor when the faculty member refused to offer an apology for what the student considered an insulting remark. The student was subsequently expelled, but his friends assembled and passed a resolution justifying the assault as a matter of honor.[20]Years later these same two students reemerged; one of whom had just been expelled and the other suspended for actions the chairman allegedly had labeled as "disgraceful." In a defensive response to the insult to their reputations, the students challenged the professor to fight. However, the professor refused to engage in violence on religious grounds. In frustration over their damaged honor, the students "collared" and shook the professor, calling him a coward. When the faculty member then called their acts "disgraceful," one student held him while the other began flogging him with a horsewhip. [21]

The mid-1800s marked the high point of a communication breakdown between faculty (the tutors) and students. What was once seen as a parental relationship had deescalated to opposition and even enemies in certain cases. The social status of faculty, and their power dynamic over the student body led to rebellions and unrest on campuses. It was at this point that the role of the faculty tutors needed to be addressed and redefined in hopes of re-establishing some discipline in the universities.

Revising In Loco Parentisin Response to Rebellion

In loco parentis as a concept changed greatly during the antebellum era of college development, however, the foundations of it remained well into the 1800s. Publications even harkened back to higher education when in loco parentis was the standard for the tutors. An address delivered before the society of the alumni of Harvard University, on their Anniversary, August 27, 1844 made mention of the need for a social bond between college men and their tutors; referring back to in loco parentis. "We wish that there were some mode, in which the students of the University could be brought into more intimate social relations with their instructors." [22] In the address, the presenter makes mention of the growing tensions between teacher and pupil:

Nor are we ignorant of the kind and persevering efforts of the present head of the College to introduce the students into social intercourse with the members of the faculty and their families. Yet there still remains too much of mutual distance and reserve. The forth-putting and self-confident among the students may, indeed, cultivate the acquaintance of their teachers, and feel always sure of a kind reception; but ought not the retiring and timid to be sought out, and made to feel that there are those ready and glad to stand to them in loco parentis? [23]

White's address goes on to acknowledge the history of the Harvard tutor and how they once filled the role of the parental relation. His wish was that the student would resort to the tutor of his class for special counsel and direction, when needed, and that the tutor would seek out other occasions of meeting the individuals of his class than those of set exercises and formal classroom settings. According to this plan, there should be a quota of students assigned to every member of the faculty. With them it should be the tutor's duty to make himself acquainted to the student, study their personal characteristics, watch over their forming habits, and "to give them advice on all subjects of importance, as to recreation, reading, and modes of study, and to act as their special moral guardian, in pointing out sources of danger and of evil." [24] The hope for this "arrangement" would be meant to go towards establishing a greater regard for moral obligation without which, White notes, "the literary attainments are empty and worthless." [25]

Likewise, in 1878, James McCosh again addressed the rise of rebellion and lack of discipline in U.S. colleges. McCosh notes, "I believe that the whole four hundred colleges which we have, happily or unhappily, profess to take a moral, most of them a religious, charge of their young men, in fact, coming in loco parentis." [26] In the case of some, this role was considered only a profession, and in such it were better that there should be no profession, that parents might make some other provision for their children (the students). In essence, the guardianship would extend no further than to secure that there are no disorders at the recitations or disgraceful disturbances in the college-rooms and no riots or protests on the streets. But in the great body of the American colleges, male and female, there is a real oversight, moral and religious, of the students. [27]

A 1897 article published in The William and Mary Quarterly notes of colonial Virginia tutors: “No well defined line can be drawn between the teachers of schools and private tutors, as the tutor generally had under his instruction others besides those in whose house he might reside.” [28] The article goes on to liken tutors to indentured servants as schoolmasters and educators. The notion of this "servitude" rested in the parental responsibilities that tutors took on during that era. Tutors were not only there to assist in schooling, but also in students' well-being. These early institutions were seen as a large socializing force for young men. Families paid good money to not only educate these men, but also have a sense of leadership instilled in them. The faculty, administration and tutors were "charged with transforming little boys into little men." [29]

These rebellions and lack of discipline led academics to reevaluate the role of the tutor and the approach to reforming students. In an article he wrote for The North American Review in 1878, McClosh notes that the current tutors may at times be too strict in order to maintain a sense of their authority, whereas others were quite as frequently much too lax themselves, as they were recent graduates. He notes that the professors seemed to be awfully solemn, "with looks that threaten the profane," but they are trying all the while to keep down a "tender feeling within." [30] In this connection it is important to note that it is advantageous to have in a faculty a mixture of older men and of young men as tutors; the former to restrain both from too great and too small of a punishment, and the latter to be there to sympathize with the student situation when need be. [31]

However, it is important to note that the strain between student and tutor did not occur in every circumstance. By the 1820s, Kenyon College in Ohio introduced the first known formal system of advising. Each student was teamed with a faculty member who served as the student's adviser. Furthermore, Rutherford Hayes described a rule instituted by Kenyon College which stipulated that each student choose a faculty member to be an adviser and friend in 1841.[32]It is important to note that the Kenyon College rule was still established before advising was a widely defined function, thus making this an important piece of progress during a time in which courteous relationships between faculty and students were practically nonexistent.

The Antebellum era of colleges became known as a time when moral philosophy emerged and the curriculum expanded to include literature, history and rhetoric. Frederick Rudolph is quoted in saying that “the curriculum had shifted from explaining the ways of God to exploring the ways of man.”[33] Students sought this new found independence of mind and sought to have their grievances known. When the demands of students were not met by faculty and administration, students subsequently revolted.
Relationships Between Faculty & Students in Antebellum America

By the 1870s the social climate on campus had become very rigid and formal. Students were kept in line by an “inflexible system of rules, regulations and punishments”; a rebuttal to the campus revolts in years past.[34] It became inappropriate for faculty to speak with students on a personal basis and students were considered improper if they approached faculty outside of class. [35] Furthermore, students came to think of faculty as a “necessary evil” and faculty saw the study body as an “unavoidable nuisance.” [36] There was a lack of mutual respect among faculty and students during this time, making the work of guidance and acceptance that much harder. The relationships between faculty and students needed to change.