Each semester, the Center for Academic Program Support (CAPS) provides tutoring assistance to more than 4,000 students in several areas of study.
While many students are satisfied with the outcomes of these sessions, some students, like Miguel Aragon, said they aren’t getting the help that they’re looking for.
On a scale from one to 10, Aragon said he rates CAPS a five.
“I wouldn’t go there unless I absolutely had to,” he said. “There’d be situations where I needed help, but I didn’t think I would get any help, so I just kind of do it on my own.”
Although no official statistical evidence exists concerning UNM students’ level of satisfaction with CAPS, anecdotal evidence suggests students aren’t happy with their CAPS experiences.
After a few bad experiences at CAPS, Aragon said he became weary of the peer-tutoring service.
He said he once sought help on an English assignment, but a tutor told him to ask someone else because she was working on a homework assignment.
Daniel Sanford, interim senior program manager at CAPS, said the incident Aragon described was a direct violation of the policies for CAPS employees.
“That’s exactly the type of situation I would very much like people to bring to my attention,” Sanford said. “That’s a situation that I can use as a discussion point in training the tutors.”
Other students said the ratio of tutors to students is too low, making it difficult for students to get adequate help.
“Before the exams it is really hard to get help,” student Artem Kuskov said. “There are 200 students and only like three or four tutors. Everybody needs help.”
Student Fatima Tannagda said on Tuesday she had to wait for half an hour to get help because tutors were busy with other students.
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Emma Mathews, another student, said she tries to keep her time with tutors short so others have a chance to get their questions answered.
“It just sucks when there’s a lot of students here and there’s only like two people helping, and you’re raising your hand for a long time, and then you feel rushed because you don’t want to take away from other people’s time with them, either,” she said. “You want more people to help you, I guess.”
Sanford said students who have issues with CAPS or with tutors should drop a comment in the comment box located in the CAPS lobby on the third floor of Zimmerman Library. They can also fill out the Contact CAPS form on the website.
“We really do pay close attention to those things,” Sanford said. “There’s nothing that arrives in either of those channels that we don’t pay attention to.”
Still, Sanford acknowledges that students and tutors don’t always have perfect relationships.
“With so many interactions between tutors and between students in a semester, there are bound to be some number of interactions that don’t go the way that either the student wanted them to go or the tutor wanted them to go,” he said. “When those disconnects happen, we see it as something we can address in training or in individualized talks.”
CAPS physics tutor Matthew Capo said he does his best to do more than just answer questions.
“We try to work through a problem, but if we can’t work through a whole problem, we usually consult each other,” he said.
Still, some students, like Robert Stone, are more than satisfied with CAPS’ service.
“I was able to get my questions answered, and because I was studying language, they were able to help me with pronunciation of words that I couldn’t do on my own,” Stone said. “It was really worth the time and effort. It’s very convenient.”
