The Educational Resource Center has increased its roster of tutors and now meets 97 percent of student demand for tutors, reversing last semester’s shortage, ERC staff said.
The ERC now has more than 200 tutors, with about 75 for math and science courses, ERC Assistant Director Virginia Schaffer said. So far this semester, the ERC has tutored 985 students, she said.
“The spring is sometimes lower than the fall,” she said. “The spring numbers are starting to match fall numbers.”
At last semester’s midpoint, the ERC had received more than 2,000 requests for tutoring sessions, but could not meet the demand with only 65 biology, chemistry and math tutors, according to a Nov. 6 Daily Free Press article.
At that time, ERC Director Glenn Wrigley said if the volume of tutor requests increased the ERC would need to reevaluate how the program was managed.
Although the demand for math and sciences tutors is still growing, last semester’s planning allowed the ERC to handle the demand more efficiently, Schaffer said.
While tutor supply and demand have increased, the difficulty of math and science courses results in a high demand for tutors and led to the 3 percent tutor shortage overall, she said.
“Focusing in on math, science and physics and the likelihood of someone being qualified to tutor that, you’re going to find inevitable shortages,” she said.
“Some of the confusion last semester was that we didn’t have some of the classes, and we had to hire people,” ERC office assistant Melanie Nemoy, a College of Communication senior, said.
“Some students had to wait because we had to train our tutors . . . People were angry because they’d call and immediately want a tutor.”
Schaffer said there is never a waitlist to get a tutor, but the staff sometimes needs time to find a tutor for certain subject areas. As a “resource center,” the ERC also helps students find other forms of academic assistance.
Wrigley said math and science majors often have other educational prospects preventing them from becoming tutors.
“When students get to the point in their academic year, it’s really to their advantage to make use of research opportunities in the field,” he said. “Students have other opportunities they have to tend to. We’re competing with other teaching, learning and research opportunities in the fields.”
To qualify as a tutor, a student must have a B grade or higher in the class he wishes to tutor and have a faculty recommendation, Schaffer said.
Kristin Tabor, a College of Arts and Sciences junior, is a tutor for chemistry, biology and genetics courses, she said. She is assigned about 10 students and works anywhere from one to six hours a week.
Tabor said she became a tutor after the biology department sent out an email asking for tutors.
“I know a lot of people that got recruited last semester,” she said. “I started tutoring genetics because they didn’t have a genetics tutor.”
Graduate student Julianne Shaw said she found the ERC to be helpful and efficient when she requested help for Spanish coursework.
“I came in, filled in the paper work and they found someone that day,” she said.
Tutors are required to have a minimum of four students, Schaffer said, but many have taken on more.
“We make it very clear to the tutors when we hire them that they’re free to tell us at any point if they can take on more or if we should stop assigning them at all,” Wrigley said.
