The Peer Tutoring Center is set to close by July, with each department assuming responsibility for providing individual students, with academic support Provost Ahmed Abdelal announced recently.
The move is intended to increase the role that faculty and graduate assistants play in tutoring students, said Michael DeRamo, the Student Government Association interim-vice president for academic affairs.
By placing tutors within each department, students will turn to professors and teaching assistants (TA) for help.
“The best supplemental instruction in English comes from the English department, instruction in math from the math department, and so forth,” Abdelal said.
Julie Levy, a sophomore physical therapy major, and Caitlyn Bauer, a sophomore international affairs major, both tutors at the Peer Tutoring Center, said they are concerned about sending students to professors and TAs.
Levy, who serves as president of the Northeastern University Tutoring Society, said she has developed one-on-one relationships with many of the students she tutors and has become a mentor to students, especially freshmen, when university-related questions on topics like housing and co-op have arose.
“Students are often uncomfortable seeking help from their professors and graduate assistants, who control their grades,” DeRamo said. “Moreover, peer tutors make themselves available at all hours of the evenings and weekends, when faculty members are not on campus.”
The discussion surrounding the center’s fate started in 2003, DeRamo said. “The university administration has become increasingly aware that the Peer Tutoring Center is an unfair financial burden on Snell Library.”
“The tutoring center offers an academic service, and therefore should be funded through the university’s academic budget,” DeRamo said. “Yet, Snell Library has been paying for the center since its inception, as the center is housed on the second floor of the library.”
Last year, a Faculty Senate committee recommended the university undertake an in-depth study of tutoring on campus to better understand its benefits and needs. However, DeRamo said the senate never responded to the committee’s recommendation while the provost and library administrators have spent years disagreeing about the center.
DeRamo said e-mails from the deans of the colleges show they are all in the early stages of planning for the decentralization of the tutoring system and that department chairs are even less prepared for the change.
“The departments are to be responsible for the hiring, certification, evaluation, coordination and supervision of tutors in one month’s time,” he said. “Budgets are already a stretched thing, and, as anyone who has gone to Holmes Hall knows, most have no rooms available to support tutoring.”
If a specific department needs special attention, Abdelal said it will receive whatever necessary and any issues that arise will be addressed.
“Our students are not shy,” the provost said. “I expect engagement from them.”
Levy tutors students in subjects like algebra, biology, physics, chemistry; and economics, while Bauer has a background in algebra, political science and French. Both said they are concerned about the potential for losing their jobs. Meanwhile, Abdelal said he is unsure whether Roberta Schotka, head of the tutoring department, will be reassigned to a new position.
Schotka could not be reached for comment at press time.
One change that Abdelal is certain of: The Peer Tutoring Center’s space in the library will be used for more study group space, while the language labs will be expanded with new equipment.
