During his career, Copland met and helped hundreds of young composers, whom he met and who were drawn to him by his continual interest and acuity into the contemporary musical scene. This assistance came mainly outside an institutional framework—other than his summers at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, a decade of teaching and curating at The New School, and a few semesters at Harvard and the State University of New York at Buffalo, Copland operated outside an academic setting. Pollack writes: "Those composers who actually studied with him were small in number and did so for only brief periods; rather, Copland helped younger composers more informally, with intermittent advice and aid." This advice included focusing on expressive content rather than on purely technical points and on developing a personal style.