A roomful of tutors patiently await their eager students who have yet to seek out help in the first week back. | Hendrick Rosmond/The Daily Cougar
After moving to Cougar Village from the Graduate School of Social Work, Learning Support Services continues to advance its overall mission: student success.
“We want (students) to continue enrollment and progress toward graduation so we’re more interested in retention and graduation — help the students come here, help them to complete the degree in a timely fashion and get them the support they need,” said LSS executive director Patrick Daniel.
LSS has created a number of workshops for the semester, tailored for students to reach any goals they may set for themselves. It has started a series of workshops including “Get Your Semester off to a Good Start,” which will end Feb. 11; followed by “Mid Semester Test Preparation,” which will be between Feb. 12 and 27; and will conclude with “Ending the Semester Successfully,” which will be between March 6 and April 23.
“For this upcoming semester, we really want to provide more learning strategies counseling — this is where students can meet with our learning strategies counselor one-on-one, where they can more clearly identify what our needs might be to become more efficient learners,” Daniel said.
“So that’s something that we will be able to provide: identifying courses where students are having difficulty and try to identify tutors and have more tutors available for those courses.”
Faculty-in-residence of Cougar Village and associate history professor Raúl Ramos views the center to be a wonderful and welcoming environment for students.
“No one judges, and everyone is there to lend a hand. The extra seminars and workshops on study habits and time management should be required of all freshmen,” Ramos said.
LSS will also begin its “Jump Start Your Semester, Attention Deficit Disorder and Graduate Student Workshop” series in an effort to reach students of all needs and disciplines.
“When students come in, they sign into our computer system, and there is a list at the screen, and if there is nobody waiting, a tutor will work with them for 30 minutes, and they can always sign back in,” Daniel said. “Part of the reason is because we want the students to become independent learners; we don’t want them to be dependent on the tutors.”
Freshman students in CV can benefit most from LSS because of the close distance.
Ramos offers a gentle reminder of the presence of their resources.
“Going to college should be a transformational time in a student’s life. One change involves developing the ability to become a self-learner,” Ramos said. “How that happens is not obvious, and LSS provides the resources and mentoring for students to master the material in their courses through their time at UH.”
