The Center for Academic Program Support, a free campus tutoring service, is improving freshmen retention rates and raising grade point averages for its users, according to the center's usage reports from last year.
It states that students who used the program had higher grade point averages on average than non-users. The report on beginning freshman also states "CAPS users have higher retention rates for the second and third semesters than non-users."
"We actually are considered by the University as one of the highest retention programs because students who seek assistance stay at UNM longer," said Karen Olson, CAPS director since 1994.
She said CAPS provides direction for new students.
"This school is big and when you come here as a freshman it can be sort of a lonely, intimidating place," she said. "And when you make a connection, you stay longer. And if you make a connection with an academic support program of some sort you get the help you need academically and you stay longer."
The program, which opened in 1979 as a skills center, employs about 75 students who tutor about 4,500 of their peers every academic year. CAPS is on the third floor of Zimmerman Library and is open six days a week. It is available to all UNM students, but the majority of its users are undergraduate students taking 100 and 200 level classes. Tutors at CAPS are upper-class undergraduates and graduate students. Students must have a current Lobo identification card to make an appointment with a CAPS receptionist.
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John Dunbar, who transferred to UNM this semester as a junior, said this kind of program was not available at his former school. Dunbar said he found out about CAPS through his chemistry class and found a tutor that he really likes. He said he signs up for help once a week.
"I don't really know anyone in my classes yet and it really helps me to talk with somebody about the class and the homework," Dunbar said. "It's nice to have an outlet on campus to help me out when I get stuck on a problem."
Olson says that the program is designed to promote student interaction.
"We really try to make this students-meeting-students so when you come up to the reception-window to make an appointment, you encounter a student and they're the tutors," Olson said.
She added that students who work as tutors receive tremendous support from the program's administrators.
Li Luo, a senior, has been a CAPS Chinese tutor for more than three years. Luo, who is from China, says that his job is very rewarding.
"I get to share my native culture," he said, adding that he has made many friends and continues to meet new people.
Luo says that one of the most interesting people he has tutored is a 78-year-old man who knows numerous languages. He has been tutoring him for three years in Chinese and said that, in return, the man has helped him learn other languages and brings him sweets on holidays.
The student tutors usually work between 10 and 20 hours a week and 60 percent of them are work-study qualified. Academic Affairs and student fees fund the program, Olson said.
"Student fees give us approximately $120,000 a year and we put all of that money back into student salaries," she said.
Olson says that all kinds of students - not just those with low grades - seek academic assistance from CAPS.
"We work with students who are getting Ds and want Cs and who are getting B+s and want As, and we work with A students who are just struggling with a particular problem for a couple of weeks."
Aside from the one-on-one tutoring, CAPS also offers walk-in labs for chemistry, biology, physics and astronomy, writing, algebra, trigonometry and calculus.
It also offers workshops in different subjects that vary on a weekly basis.
The program has recently expanded to the Internet.
"We've got links to sites that help you with writing and links to sites that help you with physics," Olson said. "We're really looking forward to the day when you can email us your questions and we can e-mail back."
Additional information can be found on the CAPS web page, www.unm.edu/~caps.
