It’s 9 p.m. the night before an important essay assignment is due, you are simply stuck, unable to advance on your writing. As you begin to panic, you remember that all you have to do is call your college tutor by phone, and she/he will get you out of such a ghastly situation. With the new services in Skyline’s Writing and Reading Lab, this scenario is now a reality for its students.
     The new Writing and Reading Lab features phone-in tutoring, online tutoring and other improvements and it is located in The Learning Center, in building 5. This new lab is a merger of the Computer Writing Center and the English Assistance Lab.
     The new lab has most of the resources from the old lab, with the exception of the old computers, which will be going to surplus. New and more varied resources are also handy to the lab’s users.
     “We have a very extensive hand-out library, where we have about 60 to 70 different hand-outs ranging on all different advise about writing and reading and students are welcome to come in and take whatever they want,” said Rachel Bell, Writing and Reading Lab coordinator. “We have a library, where we have about 150 books, a lot of software, so we can really tailor it to the students in the level that they are at, as far as their skills.”
     The lab was originally located in building 1 because there were plans to move the Language Arts department there, with all the department’s offices surrounding the lab. But due to changes to construction plans around the campus, the lab was left without the proper supervision from the division.
     A temporary area with 38 computers in The Learning Center was designated for the new lab. The permanent area and setup for the lab is currently being designed.
     The tutors in the Computer Writing Center were funded for the last four years with a Partnership for Excellence (PFE) grant that Bell wrote several years ago. Those funds were combined with The Learning Center’s to bring both staffs together.
     The Writing and Reading Lab now consists of 20 tutoring staff members, about 9 more than last semester, which include English, Reading and ESL teachers, graduate tutors currently working on Master’s degrees, and student tutors. This way, the lab expects to reduce the amount of waiting time for tutoring by having usually two tutors on duty. General tutoring hours are the same as The Learning Center’s.
     Mick Lockey, one of the tutors on duty for phone-in an online tutoring, said that although it is early in the semester and students have not used these services, he expects them to start taking advantage of them as the semester progresses and they start getting assignments.”It is a brand new program and it is also convenient for students,” said Lockey. “When they are not able to get here and they have a question about a paper that they are writing, they can just shoot-off an email and we will be able to respond.”
     Lockey is in his first semester tutoring at Skyline. He has been a writing tutor at San Francisco State University and has also taught a writing class at UC Berkeley. He finds joy in helping others and is happy to be here to assist Skyline students.
     Another change is that students will be able to use the resources designated for the Writing and Reading Lab without being enrolled in English 835, which offers students college credit for the work they do while they are tutored, and was originally required in order to make use of the old lab.
     In the TLC, the English tutors will be in direct contact with tutors of Math, biology and other disciplines, in what Bell describes as, “a connected learning community in a much more visible area where I think we will be able to help a lot more students and also create a kind of a collegiality amongst the teachers and the tutors.”
     With these new services, especially phone-in and online tutoring, Skyline students can expect to get improved assistance that is rare in colleges and perhaps unique to Skyline.
     “I wish I had something like this when I was a student, when tutoring was very limited and there was a long waiting list,” Bell said. “I wish I could have got credit for all the college work I was doing. Students should really come in and take advantage of this.”