By Fatima Salinas
From math tutoring to writing and languages, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers several academic support centers to help students during their academic careers.
Learn about three of these support centers available to you during your time in CLAS.
The Writing Center
The Writing Center is hosted by the Department of Rhetoric and offers free, personalized support for a wide range of writing projects, from course assignments to personal statements and creative pieces.
The Writing Center is located in room 110 of the English Philosophy Building (EPB).
For those unable to make it in person, there is also an online option. Students can make a 30-minute appointment for a video conference or submit their work to the online document review system to get written feedback within two business days.
The Writing Center oversees students from any major or minor, from students enrolled in their first Rhetoric course to seniors working on capstone projects. In addition to course assignments, the Writing Center provides feedback on emails, personal statements, cover letters, scholarship and job application materials, and creative writing.
The services are free and available to all students, faculty, and staff.
Math Tutorial Laboratory
Located in 125 Maclean Hall, the Mathematics Tutorial Laboratory offers free, drop-in tutoring and provides students with extra support in their math classes.
The lab is staffed by graduate teaching assistants and undergraduate math majors. With over 5,000 student visits each semester, it's a popular spot for getting one-on-one assistance
Students can receive one-on-one help from tutors and use the computers and ITC printer to complete assignments. The lab is equipped with reference sheets and textbooks on a variety of topics covered in math courses.
The lab helps students with factoring and solving quadratic equations, simplifying expressions, fractions review, functions review, trigonometry review, and graphing review.
Center for Culture and Language Learning
Located at 120 Phillips Hall, The Center for Language and Culture Learning (CLCL) offers study rooms equipped with One Button Studio (OBS) technology, providing both a quiet workspace and a facility for filming and editing audio/visual projects common in language, literature, linguistics, and culture courses. One study room is outfitted with podcasting equipment for high-quality audio recordings and is frequently used in Spanish and French department projects. Another is dedicated to high-quality video recordings, particularly useful for video-based assessments in the American Sign Language (ASL) Program.
Peer-to-peer learning opportunities include tutoring in ASL, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swahili. The Student Ambassador Program supports these language programs and Linguistics, International Studies, and Translation, assisting with recruitment and retention efforts at Admissions events and through social media content creation.
Other structured language exchange programs include the Campus Conversation Partners program, which pairs international students with English-speaking volunteers to foster linguistic growth, cross-cultural exchange, and meaningful connections. The Language Hub matches participants looking to improve a target language while offering their language expertise in return. Finally, the Center facilitates independent language study through BTAA CourseShare and native-speaker tutoring for students studying languages not offered at the university.
For additional information on academic and support resources, visit the CLAS website. The college has resources for student success, time management, and more, as well as information on the other tutoring and help centers available.