Smart Start Team replaces peer tutoring program at STU

The Smart Start Team will start working with students in James Dunn Hall on Sept. 15. (Credit: STU Communications)

The peer tutoring program has been replaced by the Student Start Team starting this September. 

St. Thomas University offers several student services that help the student community thrive in their academic journey. 

The Writing Centre was composed of two main programs — writing tutors who help students with their academic writing and peer tutors who assist students one-on-one with different subjects and class content. 

However, the peer tutoring program will no longer be active but replaced with a more didactic initiative meant to spark discussion among peers and study tables at James Dunn Hall.

Heather MacDonald, the writing centre coordinator, said she wanted to have a “vintage reboot on the studying table”.

“I remember coming out of classes and stopping at a table in James Dunn, and I knew my friends would be there,” she said. “We would sit and open our books and it was a social study time, and we would talk about what was happening in our classes.”

MacDonald analyzed the peer tutoring program situation and decided that students might benefit more from the new model.

The peer tutoring program was initially designed to be a proactive program, which they would use to catch up on their weekly readings and study leading up to tests and assignments. 

MacDonald said that students were seeking peer tutoring as a “panic service” where they would only want a peer tutor a couple of days before submitting an assignment or writing a test.

“I've been wanting to change the peer tutoring program for quite some time to focus more on those study skills, those fundamental, basic study skills that would make students feel more prepared when the assignments were coming.”

The Smart Start Team, composed of four upper-year students, will be offering primarily group study sessions for students who want to discuss and share ideas for different courses. 

Targeted peer tutoring for subjects that usually incorporate math skills will still be available on demand.

Rigel Testas, a Smart Start Team member and former peer tutor, said that the change took her by surprise since she thought the new initiative would be something “apart from the peer tutor program” and didn’t know “it was the substitution of it.”

She said “only four people” working on the new model would be challenging since she wouldn’t know how to answer every question regarding subjects she doesn’t study. 

Even so, Testas said she sees the core idea of the program being successful.

“The tables, I think, are gonna help people meet other people that are in their same courses, with the same questions,” she said. “So they can be a support for each other during their classes.”

She is excited to be a team member and help students as much as she can.

“I think this project, even though, of course, is new, and everything that is new has its own challenges and problems at the beginning, it can really grow into something really cool for this university.”