Many students use academic support services based on advice and encouragement from faculty and staff. You can partner with the Academic Support Centers in a variety of ways to ensure your students receive the support they need to succeed in your courses. Whether you refer individual students to us, invite us into your classrooms, or meet with students in the Centers, we appreciate your partnership!
You can encourage your students to take advantage of our services by including a blurb in your syllabus, by showing our video in class (or assigning it to your asynchronous classes), and by mentioning us in advance of major exams and writing assignments.
You can also encourage individual students to try our services by walking them through our doors or by submitting a referral through Back on Track. Our front desk attendants call those students referred to us and offer to schedule tutoring appointments for them.
To help a student better understand how to maintain their academic integrity while writing, you can refer them to the Writing Center’s Writing with Integrity Tutorial. This is an hour-long, one-on-one session with the Writing Center Coordinator focused on teaching students why and how to avoid plagiarism and unethical use of generative AI tools.
We would love to visit your on-campus or online synchronous course to speak to your students about our services and answer any questions you or they may have. To request a classroom visit, please complete this visit request form.
We also have bookmarks that you can distribute to your students. To request ASC informational brochures or bookmarks, please email your request to tutoringcenter@normandale.edu.
PASS is typically offered in high-enrollment, high-DFW (drop, fail, withdraw) courses—often in STEM and gateway disciplines. Courses are selected in consultation with academic departments and student success programs. To inquire about or request a PASS Leader for a STEM course, contact Corbin.Condon@normandale.edu. To inquire about or request a PASS Leader for a humanities or social sciences course, contact Jessica.Johnson@normandale.edu.
Embedded Tutors offer support to students during class time, in courses where at least 60% of class time is spent in active learning (group activities, discussions, in-class work time) and where PASS may not be a good fit. This is a new program, and in our first few semesters we are focusing on developmental education courses. To inquire about or request an Embedded Tutor, contact Megan.Shakow@normandale.edu.
We employ over 70 Normandale students every year in several different roles, and we rely on faculty recommendations to help us build the next cohort of student workers to suppor your future students.
We employ students who align with our mission and meet the following requirements:
We are eager to build a cohort of student workers whose identities and experiences reflect the unique and varied student body here at Normandale.
You can recommend students at any time by completing this Student Worker Recommendation Form, and we will reach out to recommended students when we begin each hiring season, inviting them to apply.
Holding a weekly office hour in the Tutoring & Writing Center is a great way to bridge the gap between your students and our academic support services and to destigmatize seeking help. We welcome you to join us in our space!
Because our hours may not accommodate all students’ schedules, we discourage faculty from requiring students to come to the Tutoring & Writing Center. If you choose to offer extra credit to encourage students to use our services, consider how to ensure opportunities to earn extra credit are accessible to all students.
FERPA laws protect students’ academic information, so we cannot tell you if a student has worked with a tutor unless that student gives us permission to do so. The Tutoring Center does not regularly inform faculty members when their students work with tutors. The Writing Center Coordinator, on the other hand, sends out weekly Writing Center Notification emails to faculty members whose students have worked with tutors that week and asked us to notify their instructor.
Our policy is that our student workers will not work with students on graded assignments like homework problems, quizzes, labs, and exams. Most students who seek support through the ASC do so for legitimate purposes, but we do occasionally encounter students trying to obtain help for assignments that they should be completing alone.
To make it less likely that our tutors will inadvertently work with students on such graded material, please label them clearly or include guidance in the instructions that the work should be completed independently. You may also proactively email tutoringcenter@normandale.edu (for STEM courses) and/or writingcenter@normandale.edu (for essays) to let us know that you are assigning a take-home exam. We will alert our tutors to avoid working with your students on it.
"For me, college has always meant collaboration and a community of scholars, of all ages and levels of experience. Spending office hours in the Tutoring Center gives me the opportunity to connect with my fellow scholars who are just starting their journey through higher education, without titles getting in the way. We are all colleagues and fellows here.”
Tutoring and Writing Center – C2190 (2nd floor of College Services)
Normandale offers free peer tutoring for many academic courses, writing, and English language learning. Tutoring is available by appointment both on campus in C2190 and online via Zoom, and for walk-ins on campus.
The Tutoring Center supports students in 75+ courses including Math, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Accounting, Economics, Psychology, Philosophy, Nursing, Dental Hygiene, and Computer Science courses, and more. The Writing Center supports students writing for any Normandale course, applications, and practical purposes, at any stage of the writing process, including brainstorming, thesis development, idea organizing, revision, and citations.
To learn more and book an appointment, students should visit https://www.normandale.edu/current-students/tutoring-and-support/academic-support-centers/index.html
Tutors are also available 24/7 to all MinnState students on Tutor.com, which students can access through D2L by clicking on the Academics tab. Each student can access 15 hours of Tutor.com time per year.
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