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Civilian students receive transition help

The CAM program is now being offered for civilian students after seeing success in its corps of cade

By Marco Wiederaenders

On November 19, 2011

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The transfer from high school to college is a huge transition that is often a lot to handle for new college students. A new program at Norwich, called the Civilian Academic Mentoring program (CAM), was started to help.

According to Dr. Peg Meyer, director of academic achievement and educational assistance who created the program, "The CAM program consists of fairly high achieving sophomores that mentor and coach three to five freshmen for 20 to 30 minutes each week."

"For the first 13 weeks, they go over a curriculum that includes note taking, time management, and other various skills to help adapt to the college life," Meyer said. Various studies have shown that the first semester of college is the hardest simply because of the change freshmen go through.

The corps implemented its freshmen mentoring program last year.

The civilian program has already made an impact on participating freshmen.

"The transition to coming to a college has really been tough for me, especially at the beginning when I didn't know what to expect," said Austin Coleman, a 19-year-old freshman English major from Oakland, Calif. "Having a mentor that knows the ropes, and meeting with him weekly, has been a really helpful form of support, especially being so far away from home where that support hasn't been as present like it was in high school."

All freshmen were assigned a student mentor before their fall semester began, according to CAM officials. Meyer said it is a requirement for students to interact with their mentors.

Anyone can become a civilian mentor; the only requirement is to have an accumulative GPA of 2.5 or higher, said Shelby Wallace, assistant director of academic achievement and co-chair of the CAM program.

Students who want to be mentors next year can apply in the spring.

"What we will be doing this year is, after midterms of the spring semester we will send out a call for upperclassmen with a 2.5 or higher to become a mentor for the following fall semester," Wallace said. "We will then ask those interested in being a mentor to come back to school during freshmen orientation to meet and get familiar with their respected freshmen."

For upperclassmen struggling in the classroom, "We still have them use the traditional help provided by the AAC to address their problems," said Meyer.

Even though freshmen have upperclassmen mentors, they are still encouraged to go to the Academic Achievement Center to obtain professional help on homework assignments, papers and projects, according to Wallace.

Academic mentors to freshmen will receive "CAM pins" at the end of the school year, and gain leadership experience in the teaching field.

When asked about the program success and how much the freshmen have benefitted this year, Meyer said that "80 percent of freshmen on a recent survey said the CAM program had done nothing but benefit them in huge ways with coping the transition from high school to college."

Meyer said she plans to "continuously upgrade and monitor the program curriculum to better serve individual student needs."