Information for Faculty : Home

The Learning Center provides one-on-one, small group, and embedded peer tutoring for Meredith students. Our four most popular subject areas are writing (for all contents at all levels), world languages, mathematics, and chemistry. We want to support your students. Please consider embedding a tutor and/or recommending to your classes that they use our services if we already have tutors who are trained to work with your students.

The Learning Center operates in partnership with the faculty. Students are much more likely to make an appointment with a tutor when a faculty member has recommended it; thus, without faculty support, the Learning Center would not be able to do the work that it does. We appreciate the opportunity to supplement instruction with our one-on-one and small group tutoring sessions!

In 2019-2020, the Learning Center began a content-area liaison program for the four highest-demand content areas: writing, math (calculus and statistics), chemistry, and world languages. Content-area liaisons help to keep the academic departments informed of Learning Center activity and provide initial and ongoing professional development for tutors in that area. Our liaisons are:

Writing: Eloise Grathwohl

Math: Julie Kolb

Chemistry: Cassie Lilly

World Languages: Callie DeBellis

Please feel free to reach out to your liaison if you have questions or concerns about tutoring in one of these areas. Of course, regardless of content area, the Learning Center desires partnerships with all faculty. If you would like to share ideas or ask questions about the Learning Center, please email Tina Romanelli.

Embedded tutoring is one service offered by the Meredith College Learning Center for students. Faculty, students, and tutors benefit from the opportunity to have an embedded tutor because it builds an academic community at Meredith College. The goals of embedded tutoring align with the mission and values of the Learning Center. 

Goals of Embedded Tutoring
Embedded tutoring seeks to locate tutors and tutoring services where the students are. This proximity allows us to strive for the following goals:

• Address the learning needs of ALL students in the class, not just those who self-select for tutoring services.
• Collaborate more closely with the professor in the class to promote student learning and tutor professional development.
• Build an academic learning community across campus that values collaboration as central to learning and knowledge.
• Close the equity gap in academic performance at the college.
• Support the college’s retention efforts and increase the graduation rate. 

Definition of Embedded Tutoring
At Meredith College, embedded tutoring refers to trained Learning Center tutors being added to Brightspace, our learning management system. The tutor is there to build relationships with ALL members of the class, promote individual tutoring services, and offer course-specific assistance, such as workshops, review sessions, or drop-in hours. Tutors are encouraged to attend class at least once in the semester to introduce themselves and explain their role; however, it is possible to embed one or more tutors in a class who have conflicts during the actual class time. All tutors who are embedded have been recommended by faculty in that discipline. They may have taken the class at Meredith; however, they may have demonstrated credentials from other classes or institutions. 

In collaboration with the professor, embedded tutors may:

• Engage in class activities and discussions as a fellow student, a model student per se
• Facilitate small group discussion or activities
• Offer the perspective of a more experienced peer during class, in review sessions, or in individual appointments
• Assist students in effectively utilizing software, tools, technology, etc.
• Prepare review sessions, activities, or model materials for students
• Work with individual students outside of the class time
• Work with small groups or the whole class in drop-in or review sessions outside of class time

Embedded tutors should NOT:

• Teach new concepts
• Lead the class without the instructor present
• Grade or do assignments for students
• Enforce classroom management or discipline
• Function as a personal or teaching assistant (prepare lessons, run errands, photocopy materials, etc.)

Tutors are PAID for all time that they spend working on communicating with students, attending class or preparing videos for class, preparing materials for workshops or reviews, and facilitating workshops or reviews. 

(Note - Right now, the budget allows for tutors to spend around three hours a week on embedded tutoring ON AVERAGE. Some weeks, tutors might spend five hours; other weeks, they might not have any embedded tutoring duties for that class.)

Request an Embedded Tutor!

If we don’t have a tutor in your area and you feel your students would benefit from peer tutoring, please feel free to contact the director to discuss the possibility. We want to make sure that all the tutors we train have the opportunity to use their skills once they have been trained. 

The Learning Center has a twice-per-year hiring cycle for new peer tutors. We solicit applications and recommendations, primarily through our faculty liaisons, in September and in February. Students who are interested in tutoring are required to complete three steps:

1. Obtain a faculty recommendation form in their tutoring content area
2. Complete an application
3. Complete an interview with the Learning Center director

Once students have completed these three steps, they are eligible to be enrolled in IDS 155: Tutor Training, a one-credit-hour course in peer learning pedagogy and best practices in tutoring. The students who would like to tutor work with the director to find a time to hold the course synchronously. The course is generally held in the evenings for two or three hours for between three and six weeks, but many other options are possible. Once students are enrolled in the course, they become tutors-in-training. 

The Meredith College Learning Center is a College Reading and Learning Association (CRLA) certified tutor training program. The tutor training course (IDS: 155) runs once per semester and provides one hour of credit to students who successfully complete the course requirements.

It is required for tutors-in-training to earn an A in the course in order to become tutors the following semester. Once the course and all coursework is completed, tutors may begin work in the Learning Center. Tutors are not paid for taking the credit-bearing course; however, they are paid for any and all work they do for the Learning Center outside of course requirements and after the course is completed. Current tutors may attend the training course for additional pay. Thus far, we do not offer a second level of the tutor training course.

Please consider perusing the list of current tutors to see if you can recommend any tutors for an additional subject area using this form.

During the Fall 2021, the Learning Center provided 1,136 sessions and 100 small group sessions to 396 Meredith students.

The following chart provides more information about these sessions.

The four subject areas with the largest demand are writing, world languages, mathematics, and chemistry.