Thursday, September 4, 2008
Although she was an honor-roll student in high school, Xavier Hankins’ first year of college “started off kind of rough.” Hawkins, a first-generation college student, enrolled in the the Student Educational Services peer-tutoring program that semester. She said she had used tutoring to maximum effect every semester since.
“I find it easier if I have somebody there to talk about the work with,” Hankins, Kansas City, Kan., fifth-year senior, said. “No matter if it’s a theory course or a Western Civ. course, if I could just sit and talk to somebody about the work and get their views and opinions on it, that kind of helps me to understand it more.”
Caitlin Hilton, Lawrence sophomore, reviews a psychology lesson with Sam Stepp, Mission Hills first-year graduate student, in Strong Hall during a tutoring session Wednesday morning. Hilton is one of about 180 students using the Student Educational Services peer-tutoring service. Stepp has been tutoring students in psychology and history since Fall 2007.
The Student Educational Services program arranges peer-tutoring sessions for as many as 250 students who qualify each semester. The program is beneficial for both students who are struggling and their peer-tutors.
Because SES is funded through the U.S. Department of Education and relies on competitive grants, the program carefully tracks peer-tutoring data. SES sets achievement goals in four areas — persistence, student academic standing, graduation rates and tutoring session attendance — and has consistently surpassed those goals, Gretchen Heasty, SES program coordinator, said.
Sam Stepp, Mission Hills first-year graduate student, began tutoring in his senior year, while he was completing majors in history, political science and psychology.
“I was thinking about graduate school, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get experience working with students one-on-one,” Stepp said. “I had heard wonderful things about the program, and I wanted to be a part of it.”
Stepp said that tutoring had been one of his most rewarding experiences at the University.
“I was so proud when (a student) came back and said they had gotten an A on their test, because you could see the excitement in their eyes. You could tell they were proud of what they had done, and I was proud of myself, too. I felt like I was a part of that,” Stepp said.
The strict reliance on students to provide academic assistance to their peers, and their willingness to adapt to individual students’ circumstances, is a point of pride for Rod Oelschlager, SES Academic Coordinator.
“We do a lot of catch-up work with students who are under-prepared to handle their college course,” Oelschlager said. “That’s what’s so amazing about our peer tutoring staff: They’re willing to step up and go well beyond just tutoring what’s in that particular course according to the syllabus. They’re willing to step back and help students get caught up.”
The three most-requested tutoring subjects come from students dealing with the complexities of mathematics and sciences, Oelschlager said.
“It’s a pretty dead-even heat,” Oelschlager said. “Mathematics certainly would be at the top of the list, with chemistry and biology being close seconds.”
Oelshlager said many students who were enrolled in the program were taking high-level classes. “My requests at this point are all at the upper level. That makes it particularly difficult to find good tutors, but we’ve been fortunate so far and managed to do that,” he said.
Currently about 180 students are enrolled in tutoring sessions, and the program is still taking applications. The program’s semester limit of 250 students is usually reached mid-October, Heasty said.
— —Edited Becka Cremer
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