The Academic Achievement Center helps students with grades

The Academic Achievement Center is an academic support system to help students with their academic needs, according to its director.

"It provides tutoring, feedback on and helping people organize their time, study skills, as well as support in specific course work through our peer tutoring, and writing and math through our senior tutors," said Peg Myers.

The center has been part of Norwich for around 30 years. Though it has had name changes its overall purpose of has not changed.

"The purpose of the AAC is to support faculty and students, and to try to promote the academic achievement and academic excellence of students at Norwich," said Ted Ingham, coordinator of specialized student services. "We do that by tutoring in specific subject areas and in general college level study skills and we also work to promote the achievement of students who end up in academic difficulty because of ending up on academic probation."

The center uses many means to work with students.

"The AAC provides general academic tutoring for all students at Norwich and so we help people with the basic college skills you need to be successful.  We also provide help for people in specific content areas, we have a math specialist, and we have English specialists who work on writing and English classes," Ingham said. "We also provide help to students on campus who have learning disabilities."

In addition to the senior tutors, the center has 40 peer tutors who provide one-on-one tutoring to students.  They also run help sessions for a lot of courses on campus. All these services are free to students.

 "The AAC is funded as part of the division of academic affairs, so we are under the authority and funding line of the vice president for academic affairs," Ingham said. "None of our work requires students to pay for service; it's all free and available to all students without any fees."

The center's name changed in the start of the 2008-2009 school year, from the Learning Support Center to the Academic Achievement Center.

"There was a real change in vision. In many instances the learning support center or the notion of learning and support on other campus denotes students who are not capable learning on their own," Myers said. "So the real vision shift was from students not able to be on their own, to students who want to maximize their education and potential and that's why the name change."

"A lot of the students that we serve form a cross section of the university, but many of the students we serve are people who are doing quite well academically and want to improve their academics so we see a lot of C students who come here to be B students, and a lot of B students who come here to be A students," said Neal Shannon, coordinator for readmitted students and learning specialist.

Students can contact the center at its offices on the fourth floor of the Kreitzberg Library or by calling the administrative assistant Lana Parker at 485-2130.