Drexel University students will be able to obtain help for both literature and sciences in the Korman Center with the opening of the Writing and Tutoring Centers May 29.
The new complex encompasses five new offices spread throughout the Korman Center with the Biology Resource Center, the Chemistry Resource Center, the Drexel Writing Center and the Physics Help! Center all residing on the first floor. The already established Math Resource Center is still on the second floor. All of the centers are managed by their subject departments in the College of Arts and Sciences.
“We are a university that’s pretty fast-paced and where 10 weeks go by really quickly for our students,” Maria T. Schultheis, the interim dean of the CoAS who cut the ribbon to inaugurate the centers, said. “We want to make sure that we are empowering them and supporting them to develop the skills and strategy they need to be successful at Drexel and beyond.”
The goals for these centers that were started by the previous dean of CoAS are to enhance interdisciplinary expertises and strengthen the college’s educational foundation, according to Schultheis.
Followed by the Interim Dean, Janel McCloskey, associate director of the University Writing Program, spoke on behalf of the Drexel Writing Center, and Shari Moskow, department head of Mathematics, spoke on behalf of the sciences departments.
Over 1,200 students use the Drexel Writing Center, which is reported to have around 3,000 meetings per year. With this new location — where they hope to be completely moved in by the beginning of the summer quarter — CoAS expects those numbers to grow. To accommodate the growth, they plan to expand the services they offer in addition to the peer readers, graduate writing consultants and ESL specialists, McCloskey explained.
“The Drexel Writing Center has always been really hidden in the basement of MacAlister below the bookstore, so the most common thing said in the writing center is ‘we couldn’t find you.’ So having a new location on the center of campus where students wouldn’t look for us but just naturally will walk by and see us, it’s going to be transformative,” McCloskey said.
On behalf of the Math Resource Center, Moskow said that they receive around 10,000 students per year. However, those students are not just math majors, but poll from any college of the university.
“The most important thing about this space is that all of these [offices] used to be in separate buildings, separate places and students will only go if they were having trouble in a specific area,” Schultheis said.
When Schultheis started working as an interim dean in July 2018, the conversations to inaugurate the offices were being held, so she is excited to finish this process within this year and before she steps down for the next CoAS dean, she elaborated.
“Let’s say they’re having trouble with chemistry, but they also have to write a lab report. Now they can see their chemistry tutor and their writing tutor all in one place, and also people get to know about services they didn’t know they had before,” Schultheis concluded.