Transcendent Tutoring

Before students begin to file into the Engineering Tutoring Center on a recent fall day, Kathy Friedenreich does a quick scan of the room.  

The work stations are neatly organized. The glass white boards and tables – perfect for diagramming engineering equations – have been wiped clean of the previous day’s work. The center is immaculate. 

Students soon begin to arrive for the day’s tutoring sessions, ranging from individual, drop-in and group appointments. And ever since the Brown-Kopel Center opened its doors in August, students have been arriving to the Tutoring Center in record numbers.

“When we were located in the Shelby Center, no one really knew where the Tutoring Center was,” said Friedenreich, an academic counselor for the college and manager of the Tutoring Center. “Students had to intentionally seek us out before. Now that we’re in Brown-Kopel, the students see us. We are where the students are now.” 

In addition to its new location in the heart of the engineering campus, the Tutoring Center has also dramatically expanded its space. The 1,303-square-foot room it now occupies dwarfs its previous location in the Shelby Center, which measured in at 523 square feet. 

The added space allows Friedenreich’s team, which has expanded from 12 to 40 tutors this year, to better serve its clients. 

“In Shelby, we were limited to running four tutoring sessions per hour,” she said. “We can easily accommodate seven to 10 students per hour now.” 

The students and peer tutors are very happy with the flexibility of the new space, Friedenreich said. The rolling white boards can be moved to divide the room into pods and tailor it for a particular tutoring session. 

The center can accommodate various learning styles by utilizing nearby small study rooms in place of the large tutoring room, if needed. Students can also take advantage of group tutoring services. 

The Tutoring Center offers services for more than 65 courses, primarily in high-demand subjects in engineering, calculus and physics. 

With the increased usage and demand for tutoring services within the college, Friedenreich is also working to change the perception of tutoring among engineering students, who often don’t like to ask for help. 

“We are attempting to change the culture by offering positive reinforcement for everyone who comes in,” she said.

“Even something as simple as saying, ‘We are glad you are here and seeking help.’ We train our tutors to encourage students to embrace asking for help with their coursework.”

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