Academic Advising

Advising is integral to helping students in the Adult Bachelor’s Program attain their professional and personal goals. Advising in the program is provided primarily by Core Faculty Advisors, a select group of instructors with broad knowledge of The New School and the liberal arts. You are assigned a Core Faculty Advisor in your first semester who will work with you throughout your studies to develop a coherent plan of study that not only assists you in attaining your degree, but also positions you for what comes next.
You should meet with your Core Faculty Advisor at least once a semester, and we recommend more frequent meetings as needed. Advisors are available to meet with you in person, as well as by phone or via Skype.
Plan Your Program in a Dedicated Course
The Pathways to Learning course is an efficient and effective way to address many new student needs in a group setting. The course provides a community-building point of entry for new students and an opportunity to learn about The New School, the history and purposes of higher education, and the nature of liberal arts education. You will gain or improve core skills, especially in communication (written and oral), research, problem solving, and critical thinking. During this course, you will also develop an individualized degree plan to guide you through the completion of your degree. The course is taught by Core Faculty Advisors on a rotating basis.
Designing a Degree Plan
Because you may either self-design your liberal arts curriculum or select a more structured major, the Degree Plan is an essential part of your educational experience. The Degree Plan identifies core competencies and establishes a practice of self-reflection as part of your ongoing educational process. The Degree Plan is intended as a guide, not a contract, for you and your advisor. It can be revised as goals, circumstances, and resources change and may serve as a tool for self-assessment. Core Faculty Advisors work with students on perfecting and polishing this plan throughout their academic career at The New School.
Core Faculty Advisors
Core Faculty Advisors are instructors who have a nuanced understanding of the curriculum, policies, and structures of the Bachelor's Program for Adults. Core Faculty Advisors are the primary point of contact for students who have any concerns related to their academic program. The core philosophy of Core Faculty Advising is grounded in the following principles:
Self-determination: Students have the freedom to control their individual educational pathways.
Personalized and purposeful: We create an atmosphere that fosters an education and experience that is informed, purposeful, individualized, and tailored to each student's needs and goals.
Ongoing support: Core Faculty Advising is an essential element of this program, particularly in supporting the further development of informed citizens who see education as a critical part of their career path and lifelong growth.
- Ujju Aggarwal
  
  Ujju Aggarwal is an assistant professor of anthropology and experiential learning in the Bachelors’ Program for Adults and Transfer Students and coordinator of the Self-Directed Learning Program. She teaches in Liberal Arts and Global Studies. As a core faculty advisor, Ujju works to ensure that students find and make a home at The New School and are supported as they forge their educational pathways. Ujju’s research grows out of and is informed by her training as a cultural anthropologist and more than 20 years of working to build local and national organizations and initiatives promoting educational justice, immigrants’ rights, and transformative justice as well as projects that focus on the intersection of the arts and social justice, popular education, and adult literacy. Her work has appeared in popular outlets, scholarly journals, and edited volumes. She is co-editor of the second edition of What’s race got to do with it? How current school reform policy maintains racial and economic inequality (Peter Lang, 2020) and co-editor of Women’s Studies Quarterly , Fall/Winter 2019. She is currently completing her first monograph, The Color of Choice: Raced Rights, the Structure of Citizenship, and Inequality in Education . Ujju serves on the boards of organizations including the Parent Leadership Project, PARCEO, and Teachers Unite and as a mentor for the Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.
- Pani Farvid
  
  Pani Farvid is an associate professor of applied psychology at the Schools of Public Engagement at The New School in New York City. Her expertise, research, teaching, and advocacy work center on the psychology of gender and sexuality. She is the founder and director of the SexTech Lab at The New School, which examines evolving social issues at the intersection of sexuality, gender, race and ethnicity, culture, technology, and intimacy. She is also the chair of Psychology in the BPATS program. Her work addresses various intersections of contemporary interpersonal, social, and structural inequities, with a view to mobilizing empirically driven social and political change. She is widely published, in and outside academia, with a sole-authored book coming out next year, The Psychology of Heterosexuality , as well as an edited collection, Sexual Racism , the year after. She is deeply committed to student mentorship and success, helping non-traditional and diverse students thrive and reimagining university cultures and curricula.
- Melissa Friedling
  
  Melissa Friedling (PhD, University of Iowa) is a film and media maker, scholar, and educator. She has been teaching undergraduate- and graduate-level courses in film and media production, history, and theory at The New School since 2003. She also previously served as director of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Media Studies and as dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies (BPATS). In her teaching, advising, and administrative service roles, she remains deeply committed to supporting and collaborating with adult and post-traditional students and helping them identify, clarify, and realize their educational, personal, and professional objectives.
- Jürgen von Mahs
  
  Jürgen von Mahs is an associate professor in the Urban Studies program at The New School and currently serves as a Core Faculty Advisor at BPATS and as director of sophomore and transfer advising at Eugene Lang College. His research and teaching interests are interdisciplinary in nature and include poverty and homelessness, comparative social policy analyses, drug policy research, globalization processes, social control and the criminalization of the poor, social movements, and ethnographic and life course research.
- Ricardo Montez
  
  Ricardo Montez is an associate professor of performance studies and the chair of Liberal Arts at BPATS. As a queer Latinx scholar of visual culture and performance, he incorporates his commitments to the fields of race and ethnicity studies and gender and sexuality studies in his research and teaching. His book, Keith Haring’s Line: Race and the Performance of Desire, was published by Duke University Press in 2020. A member of the BPATS faculty since 2011, Montez draws on his experience as a professor and mentor to guide students as they design challenging and rewarding paths toward the completion of their degrees.

Plan Your Program in a Dedicated Course

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