To the students, a tutor should be a friendly face in an anonymous institution, a source of information, advice, and sympathetic concern.
A tutor is someone who will interpret the system, monitor progress, help with mathematics, provide feedback, deal with an emergency, and perhaps some day write a reference for a job. Tutors are expected to take a personal interest in their students' welfare and to act as counsel for the defence when they fall foul of the system. By encouraging students to become independent learners and to take full responsibility for their lives, tutors may be glad to find that their duties become gradually less onerous as their tutees progress through the system.
To the Mathematics Department, a tutor provides a direct link to its students and gives assurance that their needs are being met. When students stumble or fail in some way -- for example, by missing academic deadlines, by registering for the wrong courses, or, more generally, by not fulfilling their potential -- then their tutors are sometimes called upon to account for it. Conversely, when the Department fails to deliver, either to individual students or to the student body at large, tutors should feel bound to tell the Chairman or his deputies, or, as a last resort, to raise the problem at a Staff Meeting.
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