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UCR Profile Topics: Academic Resource Center

University of California, Riverside has more than one hundred different organizations and extracurricular resources and activities available to students and staff. These organizations include cultural clubs, career clubs, fraternities and sororities, and learning resources. All of these serve the purpose of supplementing student’s lives as well as enriching their college experiences. Among these is the Academic Resource Center (ARC) at UCR. The ARC is basically a team of learning support specialists, including undergraduates, graduates, and staff, who all provide a variety of academic aid in order to help students succeed in college. These services are available to all current UCR students and are mostly free or reduced priced. Even though these services are available to all current students, the ARC mostly focuses its attention on first years, new transfers, and students who come from underprivileged families because they tend to have more trouble adjusting to college life.

There are a lot of help offered by staff and fellow student peers, including undergraduate ad graduate students, at the ARC. There are around twenty staff members at the ARC that help serve as resources for students in need of any academic aid. These staff members serve as mentors for student employees, who are tutors or also mentors to other students. Staff members also collaborate with the university and the community in order to stay in touch with student experiences. One of the main responsibilities of the staff at the ARC is to provide continuing evaluations and assessments of current programs in order to enhance and develop services that would help supplement student success. In addition to staff members at the ARC, there are also students there that serve as an academic resource as well. This is one of the benefits of the ARC: providing additional jobs for students as well as providing them with experiences with leadership rolls, teaching, and teamwork. There are over one hundred students employed by the ARC every year. These student employees serve as Supplemental Instruction Leaders, Peer Counselors, and Tutorial Assistance Program (TAP) Tutors, Early Assist (EA) Peer Educators, and Peer Counselors for academic intervention programs. With the extra help from these staff and students, struggling students are able to better adapt to the demanding academics at UCR. This is done through these programs by helping students develop good habits, attitudes, and knowledge that is required for academic success. Things such as how to take notes, how to manage time, scheduling, and how to study are all skills that students can benefit from if utilized correctly. By using these skills, individuals can learn how to become better students and therefore be able advance in academic settings.

In addition to the services provided through personal interactions with staff and student peers, there are also other resources available to current UCR students as well that would help them achieve academic excellence. The Academic Resource Center contains a computer lab for students to utilize. This lab consists of twenty-nine computers where students would be able to conduct research, complete homework, and study. This setting is ideal for students who require a quitter and less distracting setting. In addition, students can ask for assistance from staff or other students or tutors if they need help with completing their academic work. The computer lab is also useful for students who do not own their own laptops or computers or if students do not have internet access back in their apartments. Furthermore, the ARC provides workshops focused primarily on study skills in order for students to learn how they can better adapt to the academic challenges that they encounter. The workshops are all free to current registered students and there are no reservations required. The schedule of workshops is posted on the ARC website and includes the available workshops throughout the quarter. Workshops are repeated every week at different times just in case students are unable to attend a certain workshop. These workshops include time management, goal setting, note taking & marking textbooks, examination preparations & learning styles, motivation for academic success, stress management, college reading and speed reading, and lastly, college writing – which teaches common writing mistakes and how to mix them as well as worksheets that help to visibly present schedules for time management. Writing workshops can be through one-on-one help with writing tutors or even from writing specialists who offer non-course based writing support. Even though these things might seem like common knowledge to some people, struggling students might not be able to multitask with everything going on and they might not be able to academically perform well because of many different factors. These workshops can help guide troubled students to form better work ethics and habits in order to perform better in their classes. Student organizations of other individuals may request these workshop presentations for on-campus groups so that these services may be provided and geared towards specific groups outside the regularly scheduled times available on a weekly basis. Moreover, the ARC arranges supplemental instruction programs. Supplemental instruction is offered weekly and is given to struggling students based on classes that are known to be consistently difficult subjects – such as Organic Chemistry. In this setting, students are able to be more active in learning by interacting with classmates as well as the tutors. The tutors consist of qualified UCR undergraduate students who have excelled in the field at which they are tutoring and have also received training in which they learn teaching strategies as well as how to improve students’ active learning capabilities. Additionally, tutoring is available to students in subjects such as math, chemistry, and writing. Other programs that focus on enhancing educational performance are the Commuter Connect Program (CCP), the Assistance, Counseling, and Encouragement program (ACE), and the Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) initiative. The Satisfactory Academic Progress is a requirement for all students that receive any type of financial aid. This shows that there is satisfactory academic progress toward their degree and academic aspirations and allows further receiving of financial aid. This motivates financial aid students to continue doing well in school and continually reminds them of the progress that they have made as well as the progress that they need in order to continue receiving funds.

Ultimately, there are resounding benefits from the programs that the ARC offers. One of the most beneficial perks of the ARC is their ability to help prepare students for graduate and professional school. This is very helpful because a lot of the time, students do not have access to aid in helping them prepare for life after they graduate. In addition to this, the ARC also offers graduate exam prep seminars so that students not only have help in completing their applications for further schooling, but are also receiving help on how to become accepted into these schools. These seminars are reduced-cost and support students in preparing for the exams that are required by graduate and professional schools. These examines include the GRE, GMAT, LSAT, and MCAT. By having these exams be reduced-cost, students will be more inclined to learn more on how they can prepare for these important exams. Ultimately, looking at the bigger picture, the skills learned in workshops and from staff and other students can be applied to other areas other than the college setting, such as in the work environment. In the work settings, it is beneficial that workers have time management skills, and that they know how to multitask, handle stress, how to set goals, and how to write. All of these skills are offered through workshops at the ARC. In other words, the ARC doesn’t only prepare one for advancing in school, but, better yet, the ARC prepares one for life.