Brady Vinlove and Charles Anderson / The Mossy Log
ACADEMIC RESOURCES at Lewis & Clark are currently in a transitional period, sparking departments across the campus to find a way to continue providing the resource to students. The Student Academic Affairs Board (SAAB) is part of the Associated Student Body and has offered a peer tutoring program in the past to promote their goal of offering academic support and opportunities. However, according to the SAAB tutoring website, the program is not offering student tutoring services this semester.
At the ASB Senate meeting on Sept. 23, Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students Ben Meoz and Associate Vice President of Student Engagement and Experiential Learning Rocky Campbell ’00 addressed the current status of SAAB tutoring. Meoz explained that the program was created before other academic support resources were available, such as the Symbolic and Quantitative Reasoning Center (SQRC) and the Writing Center which provide individual support in different fields. In both the senate meeting and an interview with The Mossy Log, Campbell cited concerns from ASB about the financial practicality of funding multiple peer tutoring programs and the potential to duplicate student needs.
“We’re still doing peer-to-peer tutoring in most of these other offices. Over the years, in student government there have been some questions about how efficient and effective is this setup,” Campbell said.
He went on to explain that prior to this year, ASB had not taken action to address these concerns. This academic year, however, staffing changes meant that the position for managing SAAB tutoring was eliminated, leaving the program without a staff adviser. At the senate meeting, Meoz clarified that this position had never belonged to one specific department and has consistently shifted. Most recently, the role was part of the First Year Experience Office. However, as part of college-wide reorganizations to manage the budget deficit, this office was merged with Student Engagement. Campbell attributed the changes to SAAB tutoring to these staffing changes.
He also emphasized that SAAB tutoring was an important resource for students, so he wanted to make a plan to offer similar services despite the staffing changes. This sentiment was echoed by Julián Orozco ’27, the current SAAB chair whose role is to represent student voices regarding academic concerns. He explained that he learned that SAAB tutoring would not be offered this year through his peers and not through direct communication from the college.
“That was something I couldn’t stand,” Orozco said in reference to SAAB tutoring being paused. “I wanted SAAB tutoring. I know it’s something essential to students at LC and I just wanted it to be available.”
Earlier in the semester, there appeared to be general confusion among students about the status of SAAB tutoring this year. Campbell said that at the senate meeting, some students believed that SAAB tutoring was disappearing entirely, which he disputed. While SAAB’s centralized program — with its own budget line and dedicated tutors for different subjects — is not continuing this year, the funding and the underlying tutoring services are being redirected rather than eliminated. Peer tutoring will still be offered to students, but the structure will be different from what the SAAB program was previously.
Orozco said that at the beginning of the year, he, too, was confused about the program’s status based on conversations with his peers.
Consequently, Orozco started talking with Campbell about potential solutions for this academic year. Campbell noted that it took some more time to coordinate with the Office of the Dean on this issue due to changes in staffing. Eventually, the dean’s office was able to meet with ASB and Campbell, which established that filling the former SAAB tutoring supervisor position was not possible with limited staffing and financial resources. They worked with Rebecca Lingafelter, the associate dean for faculty development, to examine data on which courses students used SAAB tutoring for. They also surveyed department chairs about the areas with the greatest need for tutoring to identify the gaps they could fill.
“We looked at the past data of what students were coming to us. And then we looked at, in those subjects, what was already being tutored in other places,” Campbell said. “Sometimes there was duplication.”
They identified four departments and campus resources that showed a need for additional tutoring support and planned to spread the money allocated for SAAB tutors to these areas to meet student demand. The Data Cafe is one resource that will receive redirected SAAB funding. It already provides free peer tutoring related to statistics for courses in psychology, math and economics. The Keck Interactive Learning Center offers support in language learning with language assistants and will also receive more funding to hire student tutors. The biology department and the sociology and anthropology department were also identified as needing more support. With the additional funding, these departments will be hiring department-specific tutors.
Campbell described some of the potential benefits he sees to this plan.
“The funding for this year will be pushed out to those four areas to manage and direct tutors themselves, which I think, in some ways, will have an advantage for the tutors — they’ll be closer to the subjects that they’re actually teaching.”
Orozco expressed confidence in the advantages of delegating the administrative work from one person to many.
“It’s basically gonna be a new process which is supposed to be more efficient because it won’t rely all on one person. It will be more triaged and routed to adequate departments,” Orozco said.
Campbell also noted that the Writing Center and SQRC already provide robust peer tutoring with funds not related to ASB and will not be receiving funding from SAAB.
However, Campbell acknowledged that expanding peer tutoring across different departments and resources could present a disadvantage regarding administration.
“Instead of it being reported under one budget line, it will be managed by five different people,” Campbell said.
Campbell and Orozco stressed that this plan is an interim solution for peer tutoring meant for this academic year. It will be evaluated throughout the year based on costs and data about its effectiveness. Next year, this system of peer tutoring will likely change again based on feedback from this year.
“That’s the goal that we’re trying to achieve, to leave this with a good groundwork and foundation, but we also want feedback from students,” Orozco said.
He encouraged students to email him with any questions or concerns about the peer tutoring or attend his office hours on Mondays from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. in the ASB office.
The two noted that they were able to develop a solution quicker than originally anticipated. Earlier this semester, they thought there would be no replacement for SAAB tutoring until the spring. But now, they anticipate that in the coming weeks students will have access to more tutoring support than in the beginning of the semester.
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