A-LEC TUTORING
The A-LEC offers subject-specific tutoring in a wide range of undergraduate courses, concentrating especially on high-demand first- and second-year courses.
A-LEC tutoring is for all undergraduates, not just for those who are having trouble in a particular course. We are also used by students who want to do not just OK but really well in a course. Some students look to the support offered by A-LEC tutoring as a "safety net" that lets them make more ambitious choices--taking a harder course load, or a course in an unfamiliar area, or participating in many extracurricular activities. We enjoy, and take pride in, the wide variety of students and student needs we address in this program.
What is A-LEC tutoring like? Most tutors are upper-level undergraduates, who have taken the same courses they're working with you on; some graduate students also tutor. Our goal is to connect you with someone who's knowledgeable about the course and subject in question. Usually you'll work in a one-to-one format, though several students may work together with a tutor if they all have similar questions about the same course. The tutor will expect you to come with some sense of what your questions are and to bring your book and notes. The tutor's job is not to re-teach the course while you sit and nod your head; come prepared to be an active participant.
There is one important exception to our goal of doing most of our work in a one-to-one format. On the night before a test in a high-demand course, we may shift our work with that course into a group-session format, answering questions from the whole group rather than doing one-on-one work. Though our main motive here is practical necessity, we hope we will also suggest to you a fundamental truth about tutoring: tutoring makes the most difference when it is begun early and pursued steadily; it is least effective when it happens at the last minute, right before a test. By then you need to be already familiar with the material--we can help you answer last-minute questions, but we can't provide a magic alternative route that will keep you from having to learn it yourself.
How do I connect with LEC tutoring? On the LEC Home Page, you'll find a link that takes you to our current information about which courses are covered at what times. This information changes over time as we add new tutors to our system or as tutors' schedules change. We encourage you to use our website to keep current. When you come to the LEC, there will be someone at our reception desk who is "minding the store" and can help you connect with the specific subject or tutor you are looking for. And we may ask you to sign a waiting list, so that we can keep track of who's waiting and also so that we can use the information in our long-term effort to minimize your waiting time.
In the past, we have required students to begin work with LEC tutoring by scheduling a personal meeting with an LEC staff member. This year we have decided to let you use the resources on our website, as described above, to acquaint you with our setup and to make the most current information available to you. You are still encouraged to set up a meeting with Ben Thomas or Vicki Hill if you would like to discuss more individual questions about LEC tutoring or about other ways the LEC can help you reach your academic goals.
Most A-LEC tutoring is handled on a drop-in basis. If your tutor works from 2 to 5 PM, feel free to come anytime during that time. If other students are waiting, we will limit each student's session to about thirty minutes. And, in case you need to wait while a tutor is working with another student, we recommend that you bring a book or schoolwork so that you can get your own work done and your time isn't wasted. If you do need to wait, we appreciate your patience. But we'd also appreciate your letting us know when you've been waiting more than, say, twenty or thirty minutes; this will help us keep things on track.
Some students ask if they could work by appointment instead of in a drop-in format. Our answer is that we wish we could handle both formats, but we don't have the physical or human resources to do so.
A final note on waiting and congestion: Try coming in the afternoon! Afternoons are usually much less congested than evenings. There may be times, especially on mid-week nights in the first half of the fall term, when we are seriously crowded. We try hard to manage times of high traffic flow when they occur; still, if you happen to come when we're in a very crowded mode, we hope you'll forgive us--but try again. Almost all the time we operate fairly smoothly, without making students wait more than 30 minutes. The majority of the time there's no wait at all.
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