At Luther, a number of resources are available for students who wish to seek academic support outside of their classrooms. Along with attending professional office hours or personal study groups, there are a variety of tutoring services available to help students succeed in their courses. These include the Center for Academic Enrichment (CAE) and Language Learning Center (LLC) tutors, as well as tutors for specific departments, like the writing center.

Over the last year, many changes have occurred that impacted the way tutoring is organized at Luther. In September of 2020, the Student Academic Support Center was rebranded as the current CAE, but CAE tutor coordinator Adam Lenehan believes that, although they have a new name, the center’s goals haven’t changed.

 “Our mission was, and continues to be, to support students and provide them with skills that will facilitate their success here at Luther,” Lenehan said. “The goal of tutoring is to help students become more independent learners through the use of temporary, supplemental assistance from a peer who has completed the course.”  

CAE tutors receive training in certain areas to assist students in setting goals, time management, and executive functioning, in an effort to help them become better scholars and show their skills to the best of their ability. LLC tutors focus more on bolstering and offering assistance with foreign languages taught at Luther. Departmental tutors specialize in teaching specific skills that correlate with their department. Some centers, like the Barry Writing Center and Speech and Debate Center, can assist peers from a wide range of classes, from paideia to senior projects. LLC tutor Katelyn Siebert (‘23) clarifies the differences between her job as an LLC tutor and CAE tutors. 

“LLC tutoring is more of ‘drop-in’ tutoring. This means you can just show up and you don’t need an appointment,” Sibert said. “With CAE tutoring, you need to fill out a form and schedule a meeting. Another difference is that I am a tutor for specific classes. For example, I am the tutor for French 101 and 102. The CAE tutors do tutoring more by subject area, so the french tutor in the CAE department is there for anyone that needs french tutoring.” 

Sarah Schreiner (‘23) is a tutor at the Writing Center, and further explained that the work she does differs from LLC or CAE tutoring.

 “At the Writing Center, we don’t specialize in a certain class: anyone with any writing need can come in. This can be for a Paideia paper, a lab report, an essay for a grad school application, etc,” Schreiner said.“We help with strengthening writing skills and helping students improve the paper at hand, rather than working with specific content or study skills for their class.” 

Along with a new name, tutoring has also become more personal as Luther returns to in-person tutoring in 2021-22. Both Siebert and Schreiner mention the willingness of students to participate more and their desire to return to in-person tutoring. 

“Students generally feel more comfortable discussing their work in-person, especially being removed from distractions in their dorm room, and roommates or friends potentially overhearing conversations,” Schriener said. “We’ve seen a dramatic rise in the amount of students making appointments this year in relation to last, and comfort level with the environment may be a factor in this.” 

All students can utilize and benefit from the tutoring services at Luther. Whether it be languages in LLC tutoring, executive functioning in CAE tutoring, department specific like the Writing Center, or any combination of the three, Luther has services designed to meet the needs of its students. For students who could use some academic help, regardless of subject or situation, you can visit the CAE tutoring page on Luther’s website, https://www.luther.edu/cae/tutoring/, to sign up to meet with a tutor, or to look at the departmental tutors and see when tutoring hours are available.