Shevawn: Like you, we are entirely a peer-tutor organization. We do employ a few graduate students, but usually they were tutors as undergraduates and have stayed on as they continued on to grad school. Most of them aren't really even tutoring in their majors. (For example, I've had a law student and now have an MSW student working as statistics tutors.) Our department does serve a small number of "majors" courses. They represent a fraction of the tutoring we do, and they are selected and trained the same as any other tutors-i.e. by grade in course, overall GPA, accumulated credit hours, and (sometimes) recommendations. I mostly chose to respond, though, to give a small warning: make sure your faculty are on-board! I have been informed (and have no reason to doubt) that a small minority of faculty here will punish upper-division students for attending tutoring sessions. Their belief is that at this point in a student's career, s/he should be able to go it alone. Jered Wasburn-Moses Math Center Coordinator Learning Assistance Programs Northern Kentucky University http://lap.nku.edu <http://lap.nku.edu/> University Center 170F (859) 572-5779 # -----Original Message----- # From: Open Forum for Learning Assistance Professionals [mailto:LRNASST- # [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Shevawn Eaton # Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 3:21 PM # To: [log in to unmask] # Subject: Tutoring Upper Division Courses # # Greetings everyone, I"m hoping you can assist me with your thoughts. # # My new boss has told me more than once in the last couple of weeks that # we should start to focus our energies on tutoring upper division (eg # courses in the major). # # We have never set out to do upper division. It has always been policy # here that we only support General education courses and core # requirements. As a result, we are entirely an undergraduate student # tutor supported program. # # So here is my question for the four year university folks out # there..... # # If your services are NOT part of the academic college or department, # but are a campus wide service, and you tutor upper division courses, # how do you do that? # # Do you use upper division students? Graduate students? Professional # tutors? # # Do you use generalist tutors, working on the basic study strategies, # etc, or do you have content based tutors that work that way. # # Do you work directly with faculty who teach these courses to be sure # the tutoring provided is on target? # # Do you know what proportion of the tutoring you do is for major # courses? What proportions of funds? # # Anything else I should know? Any advice? Any suggestions? Any # warnings? # # I'm really at a loss on this. I never thought we would be at this # point, but demographic shifts in the student population have created # new issues. # # Please feel free to give me a call or email me privately on the email # below. # # Thanks for your help. # # # # Shevawn Eaton, Ph.D. # Director, ACCESS/ESP # Northern Illinois University # DeKalb, IL 60115 # PH: (815) 753-0581 # www.tutoring.niu.edu # [log in to unmask] # # FAX: (815) 753-4115 # # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ # To access the LRNASST-L archives or User Guide, or to change your # subscription options (including subscribe/unsubscribe), point your web # browser to # http://www.lists.ufl.edu/archives/lrnasst-l.html # # To contact the LRNASST-L owner, email [log in to unmask] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To access the LRNASST-L archives or User Guide, or to change your subscription options (including subscribe/unsubscribe), point your web browser to http://www.lists.ufl.edu/archives/lrnasst-l.html To contact the LRNASST-L owner, email [log in to unmask]