Student Success Program evolves into long-awaited Student Success Center

Jessica Jackson

The Signal Staff

TIM RICHARDSON

The Student Success Program is expanding into a new Student Success Center, by hiring Tim Richardson as its new director.

Richardson has worked with various universities such as Boston College, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and the University of California at Berkley. His previous positions consist of admissions coordinator, academic counselor and assistant director of student services. He wants to enrich the quality of the student experience and make the center a place  students will like. He referred to the tutoring on campus as a “skeleton,” and said it is a resource that has not been well used.

The Student Success Center will help students with note taking, information management, and skills development. This type of tutoring is new to this campus.

Tutors will attend class to know exactly what the professor is teaching. They are not going to teach subjects, but instead will zero in on and polish up student understanding. The tutors will hold sessions with a group of students and review the skills they learned in class.

Supplemental Instruction is a program with intensified tutoring, Richardson stated that “he is a big fan and has been using it for years.”

In the near future, he wants the Student Success Center to be included in every class syllabus, similar to the Writing Center.

The center is “designed to build confidence to help students succeed academically and be fluent in the courses they are taking,” he said.

Richardson has “the credentials, expertise, and temperament to do an outstanding job,” said Anthony Jenkins, dean of students. Richardson has a strong background in tutoring and advising as well as working with first-generation college students.

Jenkins referred to Richardson as his “right hand man” for working on new strategies and helping with retention efforts in Student Services.

“His merits are based on an academic plan deeply rooted in plan and practice,” Jenkins said.

Richardson is challenged to come up with new ideas on how to provide services to the students at University of Houston-Clear Lake’s Pearland campus. Richardson will also focus on tutoring in the Academic Support Referral Program, which will refer students who appear to be in distress and put together a “blue-print” to put them back on the track to success.”

“The Student Success Center has been building over the past three years, as students have asked for help and especially for tutoring,” said Darlene Biggers, associate vice president for student services. “It started as a small pilot study to identify the classes students felt were most difficult in every department and we began offering tutoring in those courses first.

The Student Success Center is intended to become a first-hand resource for students struggling academically and will be available for all students.
“The success of the university depends on the students,” said Sameer Pande, associate director of intercultural and international student services.
“Some students may have a disability they haven’t found out about yet,” Pande said. “A lot of the time there are resources that can help students instead of them struggling to figure things out on their own.”

Pande believes the Student Success Center should be a place where students automatically come, instead of waiting for a referral.

The Student Success Center is located in SSCB 3.101.02.  Richardson can be reached at RichardsonT@uhcl.edu or 281-283-2452.