Connor Misko
Contributing Writer
The ESU Senate has considered proposing to hire more professional tutors to assist struggling students. The push for more tutors stems from a desire to address student needs to cover harder classes with historically high failure rates. This proposal was shared by five members of the senate.
ESU officially disbanded its professional tutor program in 2010. The data from that year shows that the student retention rate dropped by eight percent. The amount of students that sought out tutoring significantly declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, but steadily rose afterward. However, within the past year, there has been another decline reported.
The biggest hurdle holding back this proposal is the financial burden that hiring professional tutors could have on the University. But retaining students lost due to academic troubles may offset that.
“Research shows that supplemental instruction could also save about 10% of students from dropping out,” said Susan Dill-Muth Miller, University Senate Executive Board member, about the positive impact of the proposal.
ESU still has one professional tutor actively employed. They not only tutor for classes that it’d be harder for peer tutors to cover, but they can also assist other tutors with students that they find difficult to work with.
The Director of the University-Wide Tutorial Program, Kelly McKenzie said this in regard to difficulties that surround hiring and maintaining peer tutors:
“The students who are tutoring are high-performing students, so they are really busy. They have a lot going on on campus. They’re involved in multiple organizations. They’re involved in research. And we’re asking them to tutor. Sometimes it’s challenging to find tutors, sometimes it’s challenging to keep tutors, only because they are so engaged on campus.”
There is a clear demand for professional tutors to help tutor upper-level courses and to assist other tutors as well.
Starting this semester, ESU is launching a new program in conjunction with the English department called: “Student Support Specialist.” The role of this new program is to assist students with study skills, test-taking strategies and to help them acclimate to the university environment.
“We find that sometimes it’s not necessarily the content,” said Matthew Simmons, the coordinator of the university-wide tutorial program at ESU. “It’s just kind of getting oriented to being a college student.”
The tutorial program also intends to shine a brighter spotlight on its online tutoring system. The system allows students to receive overnight and weekend assistance online. It was implemented last year, but it will now be accessible on D2L and WarriorFish.
Along with these programs, ESU has 81 students who work as peer tutors for the tutoring program on campus, and an additional nine students who work as learning assistants.
The tutoring programs at ESU are still an integral way for students to receive supplemental learning and assistance with their classes. Data collected from the Warrior Tutoring Center shows that 92 percent of students who received tutoring remain at ESU. After asking students who went to tutoring questions based on their satisfaction, the data showed a 98 percent satisfaction rate with the tutoring they received.
“Tutees get a sense of familiarity and trust with their tutors over time which makes them more likely to return,” said Rowan Medcraft, a tutor for classes such as calculus, applied algebraic methods and programming principles and practice.
According to data collected by the Warrior Tutoring Center, over 95 percent of students who have been tutored before come back to tutoring the following semester.
“Our philosophy in tutoring is if a student needs help, we try to figure out how to get help for them,” said McKenzie.