Jared Klein-Cordova was struggling with an assignment for his freshman writing course. He wanted to write a research paper about causes of violence and reform of the U.S. prison system, but was overwhelmed with information.
Instead of scheduling an appointment with his instructor in the program in writing and rhetoric, Klein-Cordova dropped in at the advising satellite in his dorm complex and talked with Christina Mesa, the academic director for Wilbur Hall. “She went over the paper and omitted things that were unnecessary and helped with my grammar,” he recalls. “She also gave me a really interesting website that said one of the reasons why violence is so high in the inner city is that toxins can change brain cells and affect some behavior.”
The Rinconada freshman says friends of his who’ve sought help from Mesa have had similar experiences. “Teachers are sort of ethereal about things and you can’t get close to them,” he says. “But Christina’s very down-to-earth, and she puts herself at our level and talks like we’re close friends.”
Mesa, ’82, PhD ’99, is piloting a new position that aims to help students where they live. Her position is part of the University’s overhaul of undergraduate advising—as is the appointment of Lorraine Sterritt as director of undergraduate advising programs. A former dean of freshmen and director of academic advising at the University of Pennsylvania, Sterritt thinks residence-based advisers like Mesa can create “an additional layer of support” for students. “What we hear over and over is that they want to have services right there where they live,” she says.
Mesa remembers how hesitant she was as an undergraduate, and she also remembers how difficult it was to initiate a conversation with a faculty member. “One of the things that makes students most timid is feeling like professors are very busy and don’t always have a whole lot of time to sit,” she says. “So I sometimes talk with students for 50 minutes, or an hour and a half. You never know what’s going to come out, and sometimes you start out having a conversation about bioengineering and end up having a conversation about learning disabilities.”
Mesa majored in political science as an undergraduate, partly because the application process to become an international relations major was daunting: “I was somebody who really, really needed academic guidance.” She comes to the job with experience teaching freshmen—in Writing and Critical Thinking, Structured Liberal Education, IHUM and English—and she hopes she can help them avoid some of her misadventures.
“A lot of what I was doing in fall quarter was talking with people about how to make choices,” Mesa says. “In some cases, I could say, ‘I know this professor, and this course will change your life.’ Or, ‘I don’t know this professor, but the reading is so excellent that it really doesn’t matter.’ There are ways to have a good experience with any kind of professor, if you choose to.”
As a freshman, Mesa lived in Wilbur (Otero, to be precise) and these days, she’s there from 9 to 5—or later, if students have clustered outside her door. On one recent evening, a freshman stopped by to say that she wanted to take an introductory seminar, Mark Twain and American Culture, but was afraid to write a proposal and afraid she wouldn’t be admitted. “I said, ‘Shelley Fishkin is teaching this—she’s fabulous!’” Mesa recalls. She then advised the young woman to go to the bookstore, find Fishkin’s book about Huckleberry Finn, read at least the introduction and write an informed essay about why she was interested in the course. “It’s such a tiny thing,” Mesa says. “But I wouldn’t have known, and I might have written a lousy essay and not gotten in.” Thanks to Mesa’s advice, no such trouble for this freshman.
