By Alison Sandstrom, TLS Staff Writer
With a population of more than 28,000 students at Carleton, instructors are bound to come across some who might be struggling with a range of academic challenges. Thankfully, there are a wide variety of services on campus that can help support these students, including the Student Academic Success Centre (SASC).
SASC offers a range of services, including advising, to help students navigate academic challenges. Over 22,000 individual advising sessions were booked at the centre in 2015 alone.
SASC’s Writing Tutorial Service on the library’s fourth floor offers hour-long one-on-one appointments during which students hone their academic writing skills. Learning Support Services, also on the fourth floor of the library, runs study skill workshops that cover everything from time management to tips for taking multiple-choice exams.
Many courses that traditionally have high dropout or failure rates are now supported by Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS), where students work through a handout with their peers and with guidance from the facilitator. Even if a course does not have a PASS session, students can attend peer assisted subject coaching for one-on-one help in an subject they’re struggling in.
“For example, a psychology student having to take a statistics class, those are really hard courses for a lot of arts students because they’re math based, so they could go to peer assisted subject coaching if their course wasn’t supported by PASS,” says Caitlin MacGregor, manager of SASC’s advising services.
SASC’s services are most effective when students use them proactively rather than reactively, says MacGregor, so a professor connecting a student to SASC early in their university career can make a huge difference.
“We want to catch students at the first opportunity to correct behaviour, study habits, essay writing, or whatever it is that’s going to allow them to be successful,” she says.
Professors can invite a SASC advisor to their classroom to give a presentation on how to read an academic audit. MacGregor especially recommends this to those teaching first-year seminars because the classes are smaller so students are more engaged.
“One advisor can reach 30-35 people in the span of a couple hours, whereas during an advising session, I’ll meet with one individual student for 45 minutes,” says MacGregor.
If not a full on audit reading presentation, advisors are happy to drop by to quickly go over SASC’s services.
Increasingly students want to see the correlation between what they learn in the classroom and its applicability in the real world. MacGregor suggests directing students to Career Services can motivate them to work harder in school.
MacGregor encourages professors to contact SASC if they have any questions about the services and resources available to their students.
“Never ever hesitate to call over and say ‘I have a student in this scenario what would you recommend?’”