Academic Resources II: Academic Advising & Peer Tutoring

• Academic Resources support students outside the classroom in responding to the myriad challenges of college work — conceptual, logistical, personal, and professional.
• Academic advising focuses on helping students navigate their trajectory through the college, from course selection to complicated conversations with faculty; strategizing with them around academic challenges, both intellectual and logistical; and staying focused through the conflicts that can arise between student life and everything else.
• Peer tutoring is central to the BPI experience. Like their counterparts on the main campus, students inside may take a for-credit course to learn basic principles and practices of effective, student-centered pedagogy. Those who go on to become writing and math tutors are a crucial force in the collaborative learning ethos and practice that define the college community inside. This community extends to include undergraduates from the main campus, similarly trained through the college’s Learning Commons, who come in weekly to the prisons. This session situates the hows and whys of tutoring within the big picture of the college inside. In addition to hearing from those who train and manage both categories of tutors (those inside and those coming in from outside), we will talk with alum who have worked as tutors about the ways in which tutoring figured in their own educational trajectory.