Editorial Welcome
What Does Academic Support Got to Do With It?
Humor Column
Understanding Today's Students
Stress and Spaghetti: Tips for Wellness
Effectiveness of Tutoring
Study Skills & Strategies
Brainteasers
Catch the Last Issue!

Welcome to the September/October 2007 issue of the new Learning Center Exchange!

To submit your compliments, suggestions, ideas, and articles, please contact the editor, Mona Pelkey, at mpelkey@learningassistance.com.
If you enjoy reading our publication each month, spread the word! Share this link with your fellow staffers so that they may receive notices of new issues: http://www.learningassistance.com/join.htm
Deadlines for publication occur on the 1st day of each month, September-June, but we will gladly accept your submissions for review at any time. Guidelines for submissions may be found at http://www.learningassistance.com/2006/common/guidelines.html

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Editorial Welcome

By Mona Pelkey

Editorial Welcome, September 2007

Dear Readers,
It’s another academic year—where did summer go?—and another year of collaborating with your friends and colleagues at The Learning Center Exchange. In this issue, you will find inspiration in our articles about study skills, stress, tutoring, writing, and more. You will also find opportunity: the opportunity to improve your own practice and to share your experiences and ideas in this forum to help improve the practices of others in our profession. Enjoy!

Mona

In the Spotlight: What Does Academic Support Got to Do With It? : Getting students to feel in control of their writing starts in the classroom

By Dr. Roseann Torsiello and Loren Kleinman, Berkeley College

Humor Column

By Barbara McLay, University of South Florida

Remember what it was like? As a beginning, or returning student, the thought of writing a paper can be overwhelming; while for others, it may be as simple as dotting an i. However different the scenario, writing is a process that allows all of us to tell the stories of our everyday lives; it is a process that should be fun; it is a process that requires time and dedication from both teacher and student. The process is a contract of academic support between teacher and student, which states: We will be there for each other for as long as it takes...
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When I was an undergrad at USF, you either had to pass a swimming test, swimming the length and back in an Olympic-size pool, or take a PE swimming course and learn four strokes. I could barely dog-paddle, so I had to take the course. I never did learn to do the breast stroke and so was prepared to fail the course and suffer through it again the next semester. During the final exam, I competently used the other three strokes to get across the pool—sidestroke…
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Understanding Today’s Students: Teaching by Example

By Julianne Scibetta

Stress and Spaghetti: Tips for Wellness

By Kyle Cushman, Vermont College of Union Institute and University

The beginning of the semester is a fantastic time for many things: friendly and exciting reunions, new people to meet, new decorations, new fashion, new trends, new courses. And yet the beginning of the semester is often the worst time for engaging students in material. For new students particularly, a fresh start means there’s a blank slate; nothing yet connects or makes sense. Juniors and seniors fall into their old habits of digging in to the ground and plowing ahead without a second thought to the meaning. Even in interdisciplinary or interconnected curricula, September is hardly enough time for themes to mesh and congeal...
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One inescapable aspect of student life or the life of a learning support professional is, of course, stress. Not so long ago I was a full-time student in an MFA program and balancing that with my full-time work as an Academic Support Specialist. I was complaining to a friend because I didn’t feel I was getting enough support from friends and family. She said, “Well, you have to remember that even though they all want you to succeed, they still want their spaghetti.” She was reminding me that outside responsibilities weren’t going to vanish just because I had a lot on my plate, and the implication was that my main...
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Generating Reports to Show the Effectiveness of Tutoring

By Cynthia Linton and Stephen Wentworth, California State University, San Bernardino

Generating reports that show the effectiveness of tutoring is a challenge to all who coordinate tutorial programs. Though to demonstrate this definitively is almost impossible, there are ways that programs can collect data and generate reports to help show a correlation – if not causation – between tutoring received and improved academic performance...
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Top 12 Study Skills & Strategies Necessary for Academic Success

By Dennis Congos, University of Central Florida

A study at Texas A & M University involved contacting leaders in the field of learning strategies and asking them to rank the skills they felt were most necessary for high school students. The results can easily apply to incoming college freshman and high school students. The top 12 Study Skills and Strategies Necessary for Student Success (out of 56 total skills) from a 1989 Survey of 20 Experts in the...
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Brainteasers: September 2007

Compiled by Julianne Scibetta-Messia

Let’s start the year off on a good foot together. Here, some questions to gently massage the mind into alertness.

1. If you put a coin in an empty bottle and insert a cork into the neck of the bottle, how could you remove the coin without taking the cork out or breaking the bottle?
2. I have two U.S. coins that add up to fifty-five cents. One is not a nickel. What coins are they?
3. You are a bus driver. At the first stop of the day, eight people get on board. At the second stop, four get off, and eleven get on. At the third stop, two get off, and six get on. At the fourth stop, thirteen get off, and one gets on. At the fifth stop, five get off, and three get on. At the sixth stop, three get off, and two get on. What color are the bus driver's eyes?
4. A certain five letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it. What is the word?
5. If a boy and a half could eat a hot dog and a half in a minute and a half, how many hot dogs could six boys eat in six minutes?

Please send your solutions, suggestions, grievances, and comments about the Brainteasers to messiaj@acp.edu.

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