Institute/Session Summary:

The purpose of this presentation is to help learning assistance directors, supervisors, and coordinators find ways to make their student staff members aware of the rich skill set that they are developing as a result of their work in learning assistance centers.  Student staff includes both tutors and students who also work as front desk assistants at learning assistance centers.  Often, students underestimate the skills they are developing or enhancing as a result of their work in our centers.  Consequently, student staff could benefit from professional development opportunities that help them to recognize their expanding skills while also learning how to articulate their skills verbally (i.e. in interviews) and in writing (i.e. in cover letters and resumes).  This presentation will discuss ways that directors, supervisors, and coordinators can help present structured opportunities designed to make their student staff aware of the skill sets they are gaining and to also discover topics that students want to learn more in order to enhance their professional development.

The learning objectives include the following:

1. Participants will learn new strategies for supporting the professional development of their student staff that supplements training curricula,
2. Participants will learn ways of surveying their student staff to discover their interests and ways of organizing events or workshops,
3. Participants will discuss examples of professional development opportunities offered through learning assistance centers at two Arizona State University campuses and will have the opportunity to apply them to their own centers/contexts.

The outline for the session includes:

1. the introduction of the presenters and participants,
2. an overview of the session agenda and its objectives,
3. a brief presentation of the student staff development practices in use at learning assistance centers at two Arizona State University campuses,
4. small group brainstorming sessions, and
5. large group de-briefing.  Using a PowerPoint presentation and providing copies of the presentation to the audience, the presenters will specifically describe the following student staff development practices:  a professional development workshop series, spring in-service training, and fall conference training. 

To explain the workshop series, the presenters will discuss how topics are selected, how the workshop series is structured, and what can be learned from workshop evaluations.  To explain the spring in-service training, the presenters will give the audience the theory behind the training and an overview of training topics used.  To explain the fall training conference, the presenters will briefly describe how to organize a training conference, how to collaborate with campus departments as partners to maximize resources, and how to promote student development through their involvement as presenters.

In the small group brainstorming sessions, the goal is to collaboratively find ways that the audience's learning assistance centers can promote the professional development of their student staff.  The groups will be organized according to the following 3 categories and will present their small group discussion to the entire group in attendance: 

1. Current student development opportunities/practices,
2. New ideas for providing/presenting opportunities to student staff, and
3. Creative solutions for addressing potential roadblocks. 

We will pose the following questions to the small groups: 

1. What are some current examples of student development opportunities that your department/center currently offers?,
2. What kind of development opportunities do you think your student staff needs, and how do you know?,
3. Who are possible partners to involve in presenting information to student staff?,
4. What options or platforms exist for delivering this information?,
5. What are some potential roadblocks?, and
6. What are some creative ways of addressing these roadblocks?

The audience will be engaged through breakout sessions and will participate in small and large group discussion in order to learn from each other.  We will have handouts of information that we present, and we will use flip charts and pens so that the groups can record and share their discussion.

The significance to the field is through the development of a learning assistance center student staff who are aware of their skill sets and who can communicate them.  The relevance of this presentation to CRLA members and to other conference attendees is through the provision of real strategies and ideas that they can take away and apply to suit the needs of their own student staff and their own centers' contexts.  CRLA members will also be able to tie some of the ideas presented to their CRLA-certified training already in place in their centers.

Both presenters have experience training and supervising student staff in learning assistance centers and have collaborated to co-develop and co-present workshops to their student staff, planned spring in-service agendas and arranged for speakers, organized fall training conferences, and provided discipline-specific training to tutors.  They have worked together to train student staff since 2005.  Ivette has worked for the Arizona State University (ASU) Tempe Campus Learning Resource Center (LRC) for four years as coordinator for its evening tutoring program.  More recently, she has been a member of the Center's management team and has worked with other academic departments to establish tutoring partnerships.  She also created and coordinated the LRC's fall training conference which is in its third year. Lisa has been involved in writing centers since 1996 in a tutoring role.  In 2000, she helped to develop the Arizona State University Polytechnic campus writing center.  She developed a writing tutoring program for the ASU Tempe Campus LRC in 2005 and trained writing tutors.  She now directs and trains writing, math, science, and technology tutors at the Polytechnic campus.  Together, Ivette and Lisa coordinated professional development workshops for ASU LRC tutors and front desk assistants and worked together to train tutors in their subjects.

Presenter1 Name: Ivette Chavez
Presenter1 Institution: Arizona State University
Presenter1 Bio: Ivette Chavez was born in Nicaragua and moved to the United States when she was young. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in International Studies from the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater and her Master's degree in Counseling from Northern Arizona University. She has worked for the Arizona State University Learning Resource Center for four years as the evening tutoring program coordinator and as a member of the Center's management team.

Presenter2 Name: Lisa Cahill
Presenter2 Institution: Arizona State University
Presenter2 Bio: Lisa Cahill earned her Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in English and a minor in Spanish from Northern Arizona University. She also earned her Master's degree in English with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Composition from Northern Arizona University where she worked as a writing tutor for the English Department. She extended her work in writing tutor training to include math, science, and technology tutor training when she began working at the Arizona State University Polytechnic campus Learning Center.