(right) Sophomore Vicky Smith reviews her homework with (left) Ellis Hooley, assistant director of the Center for Writers. The Center for Writers is one of the many tutoring services around campus.
Casey Brown
A&E Editor
@CaseyBrown_CU
On Aug. 11 the Center for Academic Success opened its doors for the first time. This new service is offered by the Office of Teaching and Learning and occupies the space where the Reading Lab once was in Nance-Boyer 1008.
Director of the Center for Academic Success, Jared Neumann, said that the new space absorbed the mission of the reading lab and expanded on it.
“We will help with reading skills, especially textbooks, and we will help with other study skills like how to keep up with a professor during a lecture,” Neumann said.
Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Margery Kingsley, said that the rebranding of the space provides students with a title that more aptly explains the services offered there.
“Certainly the reading lab was a great thing,” Kingsley said, “but I think sometimes the name of it didn’t really indicate what it was capable of doing. I think a lot of students saw reading lab and were like I can read. I’m not going there.’
“The reality is, yeah our students are literate, but being able to read is not necessarily the same thing as being able to comprehend and understand to question, to move what you are reading from short-term to long-term memory, to remembering what you read – all of the things you have to do as a student to really get an understanding of that material and be able to apply it and bring it back on a test.”
The purpose of the Center for Academic Success is to help students perform well in all courses. For example, students can learn tips on how to better study from a textbook.
In addition to general information, students receive subject-specific help. “We do plan on adding subject content – things that the math lab and the writing lab don’t offer. So if you need help with Biology or Physics, we will help with that,” Neumann said.
Just like the other tutoring services on campus, the Center for Academic Success is free to Cameron University students, teachers and staff.
Students can expect a personalized tutoring session from Neumann and the student tutors who work in the lab.
“I like to ask the students to sign in first, so that we get a sense of what kind of student traffic we are getting,” Neumann said. “Since this place is so young, we don’t really know what students want out of it, what they are coming in from.
“I then try and diagnose what problems they are actually having. A lot of students come in and they don’t actually know what kind of difficulties they are having. I sit down with them and ask them about how it is going in their classes, what kind of questions they are having.”
Kingsley said she hopes the Center for Academic Success and the other tutoring services on campus, in addition to the UNIV courses, give students the support they need during the transition from high school to college.
“There are a lot of things that students don’t expect, however well prepared they come out of high school,” Kingsley said. “Hopefully they are going to get a sense that those resources are there for them.”
Another new tutoring service offered to CU students is Tutor.com, which is an online tutoring service that is open 24/7.
The Office of Teaching and Learning also offers other tutoring services across campus including the Mathematics Lab located in Burch Hall 104, the Center for Writers in Nance-Boyer 2060 and the Academic Commons Tutoring Center in Academic Commons 138. For more information and hours go to www.cameron.edu/teaching_and_learning.