This winter, the Academic Support Center (ASC) is rolling out a new program offering students scaffolding and structure to help them get work done. This term, there will be six total groups each running with four to six students and a trained facilitator. The program is currently nearing capacity, with over 32 students signed up to participate. Groups will meet weekly beginning in week three for a total of eight 90-minute sessions. Each session will have the first and last ten minutes dedicated to goal setting and reflecting, leaving a 70-minute block for focused work.
The ASC oversees a number of academic resources on campus, namely the Writing Center, the Math Skills Center, academic coaching and the prefect program. They aim to help students find the support they need across disciplines to pursue academic excellence. The resources are often helpful for first-years adapting to a more rigorous academic environment, but they are limited to developing concrete academic skills. This term is the first time the ASC has run formal accountability groups.
The Office of Accessibility Resources (OAR) offers a similar program called Carleton Academic Peer Support (CAPS). In this program which is targeted at students who have difficulties with issues such as organization and time management, students work one-on-one with a peer mentor, focusing intensively on work completion and study skills. CAPS is designed to offer hands-on, individualized support in twice-weekly, hour-long meetings.
The goal of this program, according to Director of the ASC Melanie Cashin, is to offer more support to students who may not need the intensity of existing programs. She said there has been an ongoing desire by students to have structured independent work groups with similar skill building opportunities to CAPS with more collaboration.
“We have a lot of students who want more of a sense of accountability, more time set aside to work, but they don’t necessarily need the academic support component; they don’t need the tutor or the writing consultant to sit down with them,” Cashin said.
She hopes that the accountability groups might help fill that need by providing a space for students to work alongside their peers with some support from a student facilitator to help keep everyone on task and provide opportunities for skill development and reflection. Joining one of these groups is a commitment, a feature designed to ensure ongoing attendance and participation.
For most programs that the ASC oversees, Fall Term is the busiest term as they help a new class of students acclimate to campus. Each first-year Argument and Inquiry seminar is assigned a writing assistant assigned to it to help build important writing skills and bridge the gap between high school and college writing expectations. Once winter term comes around, many of these skill-building programs are less busy as students have a better understanding of the academic load and more experience managing it. This provides the ASC with more time and bandwidth to try pilot programs such as these.
The ASC is developing specialized cohorts within the accountability group umbrella, working with organizations such as TRIO, OAR and Posse. They are also hoping to target seniors working on their comps who are looking for additional structure and support outside of comps groups and advisor meetings.
These groups aim to offer students a wide variety of benefits, primarily, accountability to stay on top of their work before it piles up and becomes overwhelming.
“These days, there are so many ways to get distracted, and it can be hard to individually stay on top of all the things you intend to do,” said Kaya Shin-Sherman ’28.“Having a designated time and place to do your work, away from typical distractions, could be helpful.”
Student facilitators for these groups are in charge of helping to create the distraction-free focused environment that Shin-Sherman desires. This term, the six facilitators are writing assistants who have received additional training on community building and time management. So far, they have begun working through asynchronous training modules outlining different tools and tips that they can help students integrate into their work routines. The facilitators will learn about a wide range of tools that the ASC often recommends to students, such as different schedulers like Google Calendar, and select those that best meet the needs of their specific group.
Accountability groups will begin meeting in week three and meet once a week for 90 minutes for the remainder of the term. Kody Winston ’26, facilitator of the TRIO accountability group, encourages anyone considering the program to give it a shot.
“Take a chance on it; with a group like this, it’s hard for it to be a disadvantage,” said Winston.
