College advisor Kate Oliver resigned on February 8, 2008 after working for one-and-a-half years at Stuyvesant.

She stepped down to work closer to her home. “I have a two hour commute [to Stuyvesant],” Oliver said.

“Basically, [Oliver] had a group of students she did college applications for,” college advisor Gregg Walkins said. “She did a lot of work processing scholarship applications and publicizing scholarship applications.” College advisors each handle about a third of the 692 seniors in the class of 2008, and are beginning to work with the junior class.

Despite citywide budget cuts, Principal Stanley Teitel said he will replace Oliver by either finding a new replacement to work in the college office or by transferring a guidance counselor from the current guidance staff. “There’s no question that we have to find a replacement,” Teitel said. “There has to be a new body. The question is where the new body is going.”

“I have not made any final decisions,” Teitel said.

For the time being, guidance counselor Diana Ferrer will take over Oliver’s work in the college office.

“[Ferrer] was very kind and agreed to work in both offices,” Assistant Principal Guidance Eleanor Archie said. “She will work in the college office in the morning and go back to her guidance duties in the afternoon.”

Archie said she is currently interviewing replacements.

Some student feel that it will be difficult to find a replacement for Oliver.

“[The college advisors] have to deal with so much work that they don’t have the time to help everyone specifically,” senior Richard Huang said. “It’s going to be hard [to replace her] because the advisor has to know a lot about colleges and they need to have experience with what they do.”

“It’s one of those things that you have to have done to be good at,” senior Sue Yee Chen said.