By James Nwankpah/reporter
A group designed to make school simpler, help students get smarter and even encourage them to enjoy studying made its case to NE students Sept. 4.
The Academic Learning Center sent the message to the student body about all of its facilities by sponsoring its second annual Sail to Success event.
Students who attended this event were exposed to various information booths with representatives from several learning departments as well as a presentation on how they could take advantage of all the tutoring resources at TCC.
“The goal of this event is to spread the word about the Learning Center to all students because, honestly, a lot of people don’t know about all the resources at their disposal,” learning lab manager Jared Landin said.
The booths included the math lab, writing, language acquisition, SOS, computer learning, writing and skills centers.
Diane Pierce, the instructional assistant and coordinator of NE’s SOS Center, also noted the lack of student awareness about the resources.
“There’s so much they don’t know about,” she said, “even that there are student tutors who post their hours in the library. But most students tend to find all of this out at the last minute before a test or something, when it’s too late.”
Learning Center officials suggested that students use the learning sources available to them.
All students can use these learning centers almost any time they can fit into their schedule.
“Students can access the centers all the time,” Pierce said. “Every one is open at least five to six days a week with some even open for seven days.”
Landin said the centers give numerous benefits to students.
“Students can walk away with a stronger knowledge of these resources and, if they take advantage of them, they’ll retain more, succeed in their classes, perform better on tests and ultimately as a result of this trickle-down effect, they can even receive more scholarships and become more successful students,” he said.
Center officials said they can back up their claims of helping students. Kate Johnson, math lab instructional associate, spoke about a former student whose second language was English and came to TCC with a bare minimum of developmental math skills.
“She was literally counting on her fingers,” Johnson said, “but in a little over the two standard semesters, she had made an unreal turnaround and had built all the way up to logarithmic problems and solving quadratic formulas.”
And, according to Learning Center officials, students are grateful for the assistance.
“So many students come back and say, ‘I couldn’t have done it without the tutors,’” said science center instructional associate Anu Rajpurohit.
Students said they came away from the open house better equipped for any academic obstacle.
“It’s pretty cool because they have a ton of stuff to offer, so that’s really awesome,” Mayann Sasser said.
For those students unable to attend the event, Pierce recommended that they go to the TCC main webpage, type in “tutoring centers” and a link will pop up.
