2023 Academic Advising Awards winners Christopher Schmitt, assistant professor of anthropology and biology at the College of Arts & Sciences (left) and Matt Bae, an academic adviser at the College of General Studies, benefitted from advisers in their own undergraduate days. Photos by Jackie Ricciardi

Accolades

2023 Academic Advising Awards Go to Two With Skin in the Game

CAS’s Christopher Schmitt and CGS’s Matt Bae benefitted from advisers in their student days

Christopher Schmitt has been an academic adviser at BU for the seven years he’s been on the faculty. He’d experienced the impact an adviser could have on students during his undergraduate days at the University of Wisconsin, where “it was very easy to get lost in the shuffle” of 40,000 students, he says, especially as a young person who’d just come out about his sexuality.

“I didn’t really connect with good advisers until my junior year, and I wondered then what I could have accomplished with someone to guide me a bit earlier,” recalls Schmitt, an assistant professor of anthropology and biology at the College of Arts & Sciences. “I had also only recently come out as queer, in the late ’90s, which made my experience a bit more complicated insofar as getting advising that really spoke to my lived experience. There were not many queer faculty or advising staff that were visible or out at the time, so it was difficult to get mentoring that overlapped with my needs as an aspiring primatologist and a queer person.” 

Then his postdoctoral mentor at Berkeley “showed me how to be a complete mentor: empathetic, student-focused, collaborative, scientifically rigorous and with clear love of the work that incorporated rather than erased her personal subjectivities. I aspire to be the kind of adviser she was for me.”

He has succeeded, as attested by his being one of two winners of BU’s annual academic advising awards. The other is Matt Bae (CGS’10, COM’12, Wheelock’17) academic adviser at the College of General Studies.

The two will be honored in the afternoon portion of the 10th annual Academic Advising Symposium on March 3. RSVP here for the symposium, to be held from 9 am to 3 pm in the Metcalf Trustee Center at One Silber Way.

The Undergraduate Academic Advising Awards each confer $1,500 to advisers “who have engaged students in the collaborative process of advising and have had a significant impact on students’ academic careers.” The awards have two categories; Schmitt, who is also an affiliated faculty member with CAS’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, received this year’s award for “faculty academic advisor,” presented to a faculty member whose primary focus is teaching and/or research, but who devotes part of their time to advising. Bae won as a “professional academic advisor,” a BU staff member whose primary job is advising. 

Personal experience drew Bae to advising, as well. As a CGS undergraduate, he heeded the advice of his own academic adviser at the college, John Lyons (now retired), who “encouraged me to seek out student leadership opportunities at the University,” including a CGS internship the summer before his senior year, ”that ultimately shaped my career outlook and made me realize that I wanted to work in higher education.” 

Bae summarizes his advice to students as: “Learn to define success in your own terms. Once you have a solid idea of how you view success for yourself, the pathway to reaching your goals becomes clearer, and you’ll spend less time worrying about what everyone else is doing.”

Schmitt’s advice: “Find not just an adviser but a mentor on campus. Someone who you feel gets you, and who can help you get to where you want to be. Having that support is so incredibly helpful. Just be mindful that it might take a bit of time–as it does to build any meaningful relationship.”

A committee—comprising undergraduates, a representative from the Office of the Provost, two previous Academic Advising Award winners, and faculty/staff from the Provost’s Advising Network—chooses the annual advising honorees from nominations made by students, faculty, staff, and alumni.