Faculty Partnerships

Peer Coaching:

Leading the Learning Center has afforded me the opportunity to communicate with many faculty from many different disciplines over the years about their expectations and their concerns for students’ success. Related topics such as low self-efficacy, anxiety, and lack of motivation have been common concerns expressed. These are all aspects of learning that are not necessarily addressed in the classroom, yet they can impact students’ success. In Fall 2019, the Learning Center launched a pilot Academic Coaching program that includes these, and other similar learning attitudes and behaviors students should develop to be successful.

 In Summer 2022, Dr. Tsay and his graduate student, Melissa Price, approached the Academic Coaching program in search of strategies and resources to address math anxiety of pre-service elementary math students. After researching math anxiety, I developed four sequential topics of content; What is math anxiety?; Self-Awareness and Reflection; Growth Mindset, and Self-Regulated Learning that I felt would be beneficial for both their intended audience and students coming to academic coaching. The delivery of the content was not in a format that met Dr. Tsay’s needs so I connected him with Jessica Sanchez of COLTT and they are working together to create content that can be offered as professional development for other faculty as well as embedded in the course for pre-service elementary teacher students enrolled in the math courses.

Jessica Sanchez of COLTT is also working with Julio Mireles, Learning Center Academic Coach Program Coordinator, to take this content and the rest of our Academic Coaching training content and develop it into a more impactful training.

Much appreciation to the wonderful collaborators these people have been this summer,

Dr. Leslie Kimberling Jones, Executive Director of Student Success