Embedded tutoring program joins Learning Commons services to help students succeed I Published October 14

By: Sarah Rosales

To seek out tutoring comes with an unspoken stigma of its own. You need a tutor? Oh, then you must be a moron or you must be pathetically falling behind in your classes, right?

Of course, neither of these things are true. A tutor is a valuable resource to help further a student’s education and career.

At the heart of Kean University’s main campus in Union Township lies the Nancy Thompson Learning Commons (NTLC), the hub for research and academic support.

Mary Garofolo, the Director of the Learning Support Services (LSS), and Briana Murray, the Supplemental Instructor Coordinator, work closely together with the rest of the NTLC in order for students to achieve the best academic version of themselves within the classroom. The library offers many services such as one-to-one tutoring, writing support, and public speaking support.

The 2024 Fall semester saw the pilot launch of the Embedded Tutoring (ET) program. The ET program builds writing and critical thinking competency in classes. It’s a peer-to-peer model where peers who have taken the course and received an A or higher are trained and paired with a faculty member in courses with traditionally high DFW rates, which refers to the rate of students who are enrolled in a particular class and the percentage of those students who received a D, an F, or a W.

“It’s a question of removing boundaries or barriers to support. So instead of having to figure out where to get help, the students already know there’s a peer in the classroom,” says Garofolo.

Murray adds, “It’s really about helping students develop reading comprehension abilities, the ability to distinguish what is good research, what is bad research, and enhance their writing because it transfers into every single one of their classes.”

Anne Nelson, a current ET for English, finds that the ET program is a two-way street in that she can help students in her class and they can help her with her career goals.

“I want to become an English teacher once I graduate, but I don’t have any work experience to prove my qualifications…” says Nelson. “By working as an embedded tutor, I can practice some of the skills I’ll need as an English teacher while tutoring.”

Alongside the ET program is the academic coaching program, which was launched in Fall of 2023. The academic coaching program teaches students necessary strategies to be successful in college like time management, study skills, organization, how to communicate with faculty, and how to get through midterms or finals.

There is also the Supplemental Instruction program, like the ET program, also centers around mastering course content. It targets STEM classes on the 1000 and 2000 level, whereas the ET program targets  first year general education classes. As a student goes on with their college education, classes will only grow more rigorous, and so it’s better to catch them at the freshman or sophomore level in order to develop the foundational skills needed to succeed.

Many of the students who attend Kean are majority minority as well as first-generation college students, and the programs the NTLC have founded set out to level the playing field so that every one of them can receive the resources needed to succeed in their future. The NTLC uses data from academic growth, student performance, faculty surveys, and other metrics to truly understand the impact of its services on campus.

Through Navigate360, students can easily set up an appointment with the many tutors available. Whether they need assistance in math, physics, English, or communications, every single tutor wants to lessen the struggles within the classroom.

“Our goal is to set up support structures to make sure every student feels supported in order to get to graduation,” remarks Garofolo. “It’s really about getting each of our students over that finish line whatever their trajectory is.”

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