By Kristina Kopplin/reporter
The South Campus coordinator of the center for academic success loves being in charge and helping students.
Chris Carcerano performs interventions, plans and conducts workshops, guides students throughout their academic progress and helps with the South Campus probation program.
Through the probation program, he helps students stay on track and presents them with tips on how to get “unstuck.”
Carcerano oversees students’ progress by looking at progress reports, checking attendance rates and encouraging counseling if the student appears to have troubles.
Working one-on-one with students “gets him going,” he said.
Carcerano presents seminars that help students with common struggles many college students face, such as study aids, how-to presentations and ways to improve one’s college career. The students who show up for the seminars gain skills, and he wishes more students would take advantage of the free seminars.
“A lot of students feel like they can do it on their own,” he said. “They feel like since they are at college, they actually don’t need help from a seminar.”
The CAS, located in SACA 1102, also offers a tutoring center, which has private tutoring, group tutoring and computer-assisted learning.
The tutoring is “an open lab where students can come as often as they would like,” he said.
The learning center, also in SACA 1120, offers seminars, a study area and books used in on-campus classes.
Time management is something Carcerano encourages students to obtain.
“Time is the student’s form of currency,” he said. “So if I can help students manage their time and be more productive, that is what I am going to do.”
Carcerano enjoys working with students because it allows him to feel “young at heart.”
For the future, he would like students to grasp what they are learning in school as this will benefit them when employers are reviewing applicants.
“You need more than letters on a paper,” he said. “Employers look for what you know.”