A new school year often brings upgrades to help with the education of students. It is no different for the APEX center. This year the APEX center is changing its name to Tech Learning Center and moving from Doc Bryan to Ross Pendergraft Library.
“While the APEX acronym promoted academic excellence, students, staff and faculty had a hard time remembering what the acronym stood for and would often just refer to it as the tutoring center,” Dr. Barbara Johnson vice president for academic affairs, said. “However, tutoring can sometimes have a negative connotation for some students. By changing the name and location, our aim was to shift how students view academic support.”
The library was chosen for the new location because of its proximity to academic buildings and the number of students who use the library daily, Johnson said.
The TLC offers tutoring in a variety of courses, test preparation, and other resources to help students succeed.
“Additionally, the TLC offers academic coaching with trained faculty and staff volunteers and workshops for student success (i.e., note-taking, stress management, time management, test anxiety). The TLC is a resource to help ATU students achieve their educational goals,” Johnson said.
If a student needs help in a course that the TLC does not offer, it will reach out to the professor of the class to find someone who can help the student.
“The overarching mission is to provide resources and tools to help students be successful,” Johnson said.
In the future, the TLC would like to offer supplemental instruction as a resource to students and have applied for a grant to help in the effort. The idea of supplemental instruction is that if students are struggling in a specific class a staff member of the TLC would go sit in on the class. There would then be a group tutoring session for the students.
Tutoring is available Sunday through Thursday 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., both online and in-person. Students can make an appointment and view a list of the courses offered on the TLC website.
The TLC is located on the first floor of the library behind the reference desk.
