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The Earll M. Murman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising
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Every undergraduate at MIT has an advisor, typically a faculty or other department member. Each term, your advisor signs your forms, and under faculty regulations, approves your academic program. If you build a strong relationship, your advisor can become a guide and mentor for your years at MIT and beyond. In addition to your advisor, you will turn to many people in the MIT community for advice. Maximize these contacts, so that you have a network of mentors—people who know you personally, what you like to do, and what your goals are. Turn to these people for individualized help and advice about choosing a major, developing skills, looking for a job. Your goal should be to build a network of mentors, so that by the time you are ready to leave MIT, you can identify them as references, colleagues, and even friends. The Committee on the Undergraduate Program (CUP) and the Committee on Student Life (CSL) have made recommendations in a Report to the Faculty on Advising and Mentoring of Undergraduates about how MIT can help you build this network, and discussions are under way about what steps to take to improve advising and mentoring. But in the meantime, you can and should consciously build your own network of advisors and mentors. A good place to begin building your network is to maintain contact with your freshman advisor and instructors you got to know in your first year. This section describes the many advising relationships you can have and suggests ways to maximize your advising interactions.
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