Duties and Responsibilities of the Graduate Adviser

Graduate advisers play a key role in theacademic life of students and in the functions of the Graduate Division. When a graduatestudent enters a department to do graduate work, he or she is assigned a faculty adviser.Some departments have just one graduate adviser who counsels all graduate students; inother departments, some or all faculty members serve as advisers.The graduate advisers are appointed by the department chair orinterdepartmental degree program committee. The chair’s signature is required on someforms; in other cases, the graduate advisers’ signatures are the only departmentalsignatures, in addition to the chair, recognized as official on various Graduate Divisionforms and on petitions presented by graduate students. Graduate advisers formally approvestudents’ programs of study, advise them on advancement to candidacy for higher degrees,consider their petitions to change majors, to add or drop courses, to apply forreadmission, etc. In all of these matters, the adviser or...