AUCA’s Writing and Academic Resource Center

March 29, 2016

Mariya Antonova, Director of AUCA’s Writing and Academic Resource Center (WARC), and Paul Drosnes, WARC Coordinator, share with us some information about the university’s tutoring center.  

Tell us general information about WARC?

Mariya: The WARC dates back to the very beginning of the Bard-AUCA Partnership. It was established in the Fall of 2010 by Peg Peoples, a representative of Bard College at AUCA, along with the First Year Seminar Program. Firstly, a university tutoring center where every student can receive free help with their coursework is a valuable academic resource, and is considered a necessary feature of almost every postsecondary educational institution in the United States. Equally importantly, the two things that were—and still are—particularly emphasized by Bard College were instilling the values of liberal arts education and development of the writing culture, for one cannot be a truly educated person without possessing well-developed writing skills. The purpose of the center was not confined solely to supporting the efforts of the First Year Seminar, of course, but to assist in the development of the writing culture at the AUCA overall. By now we have a number of writing tutors, as well as tutors in economics, mathematics, and accounting. Those are the most requested and popular subjects, and we are always open to hearing from students who may need help with other subjects as well.

 

Who can work at the WARC? And how do you select students who can work here?

Mariya: We select our students based on a number of factors. The first is the overall academic performance—I think that for the past few years, most of AUCA’s valedictorians were at some point employed at the WARC. If we’re talking about subject tutors, such as those that tutor economics, accounting, or mathematics, we take a close look at their performance in those particular subjects. Also, we rely heavily on faculty recommendations, and we maintain close relationship with individual departments so that they recommend their very best students to us. Interpersonal skills matter a great deal. We are not recruiting robots: we need people who are capable of connecting with others and would be enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge with others. As far as the writing tutors go, in addition to all the requirements listed above, they are also required to take a special six-credit course called “Composition Theory and Tutoring Pedagogy”. It is offered every spring and includes not only writing papers and classwork, but also a practicum at the WARC. Out of those students, we select the best to become the WARC’s writing tutors. It’s a highly competitive and selective process.

 

Tell us about WARC’s achievements and its work during 2015. What has it done, and what is planned for next academic year?

Mariya: As I said before, our primary mission is supporting students in their academic success. Given AUCA’s reputation as an elite institution, a lot of the times the students fear (especially during their first year) that they won’t be able to keep up with their classmates or the university’s standards. A big part of what the WARC has done is to provide a different environment which supports our students’ transition from the insecure freshmen to more personally and academically assured university students. Although they should not be, some students may feel uncomfortable approaching their professors about an issue, but confiding their concerns to a peer tutor is sometimes much easier.

Paul: In the past year, we’ve been doing a lot of work bringing the WARC into the 21st century. Last year, we decided on a number of priorities that included ease of access and scheduling, as well as a greater awareness of the WARC and its services. And then there were some management tasks that were bundled into this. We started planning and piloting our online scheduling system last spring, working very closely with Karim Zerhouni, the Chief Information Officer, and his entire office. At first, we were trying to develop a third party program, but when we raised the issue with the CIO, it turned out that it was something that we could do in-house. A recent AUCA graduate, Chyngyz Dyikanbaev, who works at the OCIO, was assigned that particular task and he put together this great scheduling program that we’ve been using for the past academic year.

 

Can you tell us a little bit more about this online scheduling system?

Mariya: Up until the last year, in order to make an appointment for a tutoring session, students would have to come to the WARC and sign themselves up in a special journal. Nowadays we have our own domain, warc.auca.kg, and any student can log in using their AUCA login. That gives them access to the WARC’s entire schedule, and all of the subjects are color-coded. If you, let’s say, have a mathematics problem and want to make an appointment, you simply click on your preferred time slot, write a brief summary of your issue, and click “submit”. You then receive an automatic reminder e-mail saying that you’ve booked an appointment. Obviously, the domain can be accessed from anywhere, so students no longer have to come to the WARC to make an appointment; they can do it from home. We think that the students’ supervisors and professors will also be using this system, because if they know what they are students are struggling with, they can direct them to the site. Additionally, the site hosts all kinds of information about the WARC, such as our tutors’ profiles.

 

How many students work at WARC?

Mariya: At the moment, we have 23 tutors. Three of them are studying abroad this semester. We hire high-performing students who keep winning scholarships, so in the Fall we also had three people abroad: in France, Canada, and at Bard. They came back, and then another three left this semester.

 

Tell us about WARC’s popularity among students.

Mariya: One of our major goals was to raise awareness of WARC among students. It’s the 21st century and we resort to more modern ways of spreading information about WARC.

Paul: Before, we used a lot of printed posters. You can print all the posters you want, but sometimes people just don’t look at them. So, we’ve tried to put ourselves where the students are and use social media a lot to try and generate more interest in what we do. We have a Facebook page, and it’s becoming more and more popular. We’ve been really impressed and surprised by the reactions we’ve been getting on Facebook. Even alumni are coming back and saying “I love your Facebook page, it’s the first thing I look at every morning.” That’s made a big difference,which is reflected in our schedule as well. We’re always busy now. We made it easier for students and we’re seeing results.

Mariya: This year we have also made a special effort to reach out to the faculty. They are the ones who deal with students on an everyday basis, know their strength and weaknesses, and therefore they are in the best position to recommend that a student gets help at WARC. We gave presentations to a number of academic departments explaining what we do and how we can be effective in helping both the students and the faculty. We also cooperate with Advising Office because they receive all the information about struggling students. And in addition to maintaining the tutoring center, we also offer workshop and other events.

What kind of workshops and events?

Mariya: We have done a mixture of training events for the tutors, as well as for the entire AUCA community. There were workshops on how to apply to graduate school, on source citation and credibility, and several others, including two separate workshops for students writing their senior thesis, for Psychology and European Studies departments. We also hosted a meeting with the legendary founder of the Mathematical Lyceum 61, Yefum Borisovich Yakir.

 

What kind of skills do students get working at WARC?

Mariya: We recently had private, face-to-face conversations with all of our tutors, and the one question that we were interested in was, “What does WARC do for you? How has it contributed to YOUR development?” And we got some very encouraging answers.

Paul: They get their jobs here because they are experts in their field. Everybody says they feel like more of an expert after working here—even if it’s just a few semesters. Across the board, everybody says teaching helps them learn. They all feel there’s something they get out of it. Of course, that’s great for us to hear.

Mariya: As I already said, we select people with good interpersonal skills to begin with, but teaching is particularly good at developing those skills even further. Teaching definitely contributes to the development of the tutors’ interpersonal skills and their professionalization. Our overarching purpose has always been to professionalize the WARC, to treat our tutors as a part of a professional organization where people get paid and are completely accountable to what they do. There is an ongoing effort on our part to develop their professional skills and build a closely-bound, well-functioning team.

 

 

Who is mentoring the tutors who work at the WARC?

Mariya: Starting from this year, we’ve launched a mentoring program for the tutors. Each new tutor is assigned to a more experienced tutor. It’s a fairly formal, multi-step process, that requires the mentoring pair to first hold a preliminary meeting to establish their goals and verbalize what they both want to get out of this process. For example, if you’re a new tutor, you probably have a number of questions you want to ask, and the more experienced tutor would have some skills that they want to impart. Then each month they observe each other tutoring at least once, and share the results of their observations with us, as well as with each other, and discuss how things are going overall. The process goes on for the entire semester, so in the fall we have a lot of mentoring pairs. And although it’s not part of the formal mentoring process, a lot of the workshops that we host for the tutors are delivered by guest speakers, as we also work with people outside the university to bring their expertise to students.

 

WARC is not only for students but also for professors, can you explain how?

Mariya: First, let’s talk a little about the “students” part, which I cannot emphasize enough.Please correct me if I am wrong, but I do not imagine that a lot of the institutions of higher learning in Kyrgyzstan have in-house tutoring centers similar to the WARC. What we have here in very unique in terms of the academic support that is available to our students. As for the professors, we can be fairly sure that a student who has gone to the WARC is bound to produce a better paper than the one who hasn’t. So, the WARC raises the quality of work produced for classes. That makes things easier by default, allowing them to address more advanced topics. The WARC also offers workshops for faculty and staff. Last spring, for example, the WARC organized a training series for the faculty who teach writing-intensive courses, and Paul also did a series of workshops on professional communication for the administrative staff.

 

 

What are you most proud of in your work with WARC?

Paul: What I really like about working with the WARC is that I can tell we are making a difference. We talked with alumni who have worked here before and they’ve all loved their experience at the WARC. Every day, working with our tutors is awesome because we have an amazing team of students. These guys are responsible, smart, and always in a good mood, so it’s great to work with them. What’s also great is our team; with the WARC Management we can do anything. Of course, problems arise, but to every problem we encounter we are able to react quickly and come up with great solutions. On top of that, I know that we do does affect students, making our services better and more accessible. Reaching our own capacity has really made a big difference. Hopefully, we’ll see a ripple effect from that and that we’ll continue to see that effect.

Mariya: The one thing I want to bring up is that I think we are perfectly positioned between the administration, the students, and the services. We are unique because we are service for students that is also staffed by students themselves, so we have this direct pipeline to students’ problems, concerns, joys, etc. On the other hand, a lot of what we do is administrative work, which gives us a chance to collaborate with a lot of other offices to make the WARC run well, for example, collaborating with the OCIO to build the online scheduling system. In that regard, I think, we are one of the most well-informed offices on campus, because we feel like we’re in the middle of so many things. That’s what I enjoy about it. I think I would echo Paul and also say that we have a really amazing team. Paul and I, of course, do spend a lot of time thinking about what we can improve, but sometimes all we have to do is keep our ears open and listen to our tutors. They contribute a lot of ideas, and often they are the ones who know things and suggest improvements. It is a pleasure collaborating with these wonderful people.

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