By: Giang Vu
The BE learning center aims to provide all students with learning support services in every subject which helps them improve and succeed in their academic performance. However, there are some drawbacks.
“We have 30-35 tutors ready to assist the Central students,” said Jamal Ahmed, the program coordinator. The results are impressive.
Ahmed says the BE Learning Center has served 805 students, with 3000 student’s checked-in since last Fall. The quality of the tutors seems to be assured because tutors have to pass a test given out by the center with a score above 85% to get the job.
“We have an excellent tutor team and some, such as Danielle, can tutor in three subjects. She has a Philosophy degree so she can do Logic, Humanities, and Writing. It is the same with Joe who can tutor Math, Business Statistics, Writing,” said Ahmed.
Tutors also have to abide by 10 conduct and 12 learning center policies. The fifth conduct policy? “Never flirt with or try to date a student who has come to the Learning Center for help.”
The International Education Program (IEP) helps fund the BE Learning Center.
“We actually pay our own tutors directly for tutoring services to international students in our College Bridge program,” says Andrea Insley, Dean of the IEP. “Tutoring services are very important to our students.”
“We’ve been doing this for about 2 years. We send the College Bridge students to the Tutoring Center for these services so that they will become accustomed to getting assistance in this location–like other college students,” Insley continued.
“Regarding transferring any other funds to the Tutoring Center, it was recently approved by the President’s Cabinet that International Education Programs contribute approximately $50,000 per year to support the Tutoring Center. It hasn’t actually happened yet. We expect to reimburse the Tutoring Center budget up to $50,000 at the end of this fiscal year,” she says.
The center still has some other issues to work on though.
First, students say they don’t always have great experiences with every tutor. “I checked in for a math tutor and I found he was not helpful at all,” said Gee Lee, a student working on her AA degree.
“The tutor fixed my essay only,” said Tue Nguyen. “He did not give any opinion when being asked. I needed other ideas to improve my assignment not just grammar.”
Students also have their favorite tutors, whom they seek out. “I think Ed is the most helpful tutor,” said student Son Nguyen. “I always wait to make an appointment with him no matter how long it takes.”
Secondly, is the 30 minutes tutoring time of the published policy enough? And do the students have enough patience and time to wait 30 minutes for the next appointment?
“I am not blaming the center because I know there are a lot of students who need help and are waiting,” said Thinh Pham. “But I think 30 minutes a day per subject is not enough, and I do not have the time to go to the tutoring center often.”
“I really want to have more time with my tutor. Usually, it takes me more than one day to finish my assignment. I have to check in and check out three times per week to finish my essay.” said Sasha Nayaka.
Ahmed says he is working on a way to solve the problem. “Two and a half hours per week for a subject is the published policy, but I can change it depending on the period. Along with the policy, we are trying to balance time. The hardest period is the last three weeks of the quarter. All the tutors are busy especially with the writing-related subjects because students always want to turn in the assignment in the last minutes.” said Ahmed.
“We do not want to hire more tutors so we don’t encourage students to do everything at the last minute.” Ahmed continued.
The BE Learning Center is very important to students, getting them to know and understand the policy of the center seems to be the biggest problem. Students say they can only find a little information on the school website and it’s very hard to find the section.
“I could not find anything about the tutoring center on the school webpage until last month when I tried the link on the website and even then the information was not helpful at all,” said Inchun Su.
Amhed says he’s working on that, too. “The published policy on the school’s website is old and we are trying to build another which will help us update the information easily. We already have eTutoring which is online tutoring, students can visit it at www.etutoring.org.” he says.
The Seattle Central Learning Center has evolved from the former College-wide tutoring center, which was run by the Student Academic Assistance program and funded in part by federal grants. Together with math and science tutoring, it is part of the Learning Support Network. The tutoring center is “the result of a non-stop effort to create a perfect place for student services at the school where students can both find physical and online tutoring,” says one college staffer.
The BE Learning Center is trying to do the best they can for students, but Jamal Ahmed and the tutoring team still have a lot of work to do.
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