In an effort to ensure every student thrives, Student Success provides an assortment of programs to provide the personal, social, professional and academic skills necessary to succeed in school and life.

“The biggest benefit of peer tutors is that they have shared their students’ experience of learning (and perhaps, struggling through) the same material. Asking us for help would be just like asking one of your roommates, except we’re required to know what we’re talking about.” – tutor Chase Lawson ’18

Located in the Turner Lynch Campus Center, Academic Success is designed to address academic challenges, and to help students set and achieve goals. It’s more than just another faculty or staff member repeating the same information over and over again; it’s an assessment of what will work for each person.

Maybe what Academic Success is best known for is offering tutoring. Peer tutoring services focus on building an academic foundation with the added benefit of speaking with a fellow student.

“Rather that hiring outside providers, we find that student tutors bring some great added advantages,” says Assistant Director of Academic Success Tracy Hall. “Tutors are more familiar with Oglethorpe classes, the unique elements of the COR program and with Oglethorpe professors and their expectations.”

Academic Success likes to see students visit early to gain a larger understanding of material and concepts as it means the students are more likely to achieve their academic goals, rather than waiting until the last minute when the material has become too overwhelming.

So far this year, first-year students alone have received more than 130 hours of individual tutoring sessions. One-on-one tutoring is available for those who prefer it, but drop-in tutoring times are becoming more popular and are held almost every day for 20 courses.

A new segment of tutoring is Peer Academic Leaders, or PALs. PALs are upperclassmen assigned to at-risk first year students as academic mentors. Only halfway through the fall semester, PALs have logged more than 160 hours with students.

While services such as tutoring, supplemental writing instruction and coaching are available to all classes, a recent initiative, Advising, is aimed at first year students with a mission to create good practices students can carry with them for all four years at Oglethorpe.

Compass Academic Advisors, of which there are 42, are there to perform general academic wellness checks, to erase the stigma that may be attached to seeking academic aid and to change the perception of advising from exclusively course-planning to career-oriented.

Under the guidance of Director of Academic Advising Rene Alvarez, the first semester of Compass is already paying dividends. Advisors have seen most students 2-3 each and Career Development has seen a 500% increase in visits from first years, and that doesn’t include the majority of students who were volunteers at recent career and graduate school fairs that were first years.

It’s about combining academic preparation with career trajectory, and creating productive practices students can carry over from school to the office place.