George Sperling, a 1936 alumnus of Penn State in liberal arts currently practicing law in Santa Monica, California, has a keen interest in seeing students succeed in science and math courses. For this reason, he has been a generous supporter of the math department's tutorial program.

Teresa Cohen was the first female mathematics professor at Penn State, joining the faculty in 1920. Although she retired from that position in 1962, she continued tutoring students for the next 25 years from her second floor office in McAllister Building. When she died at the age of 100, she left behind a legacy as someone devoted to students and to the study of mathematics.

Spring 1999: We saw a very successful semester in tutoring. There are two main reasons for this success. The first reason is the invitation process and the instructors' cooperation. With support and advising from the instructors, we are able to help students determine if they are in need of assistance in learning calculus on an ongoing basis, or a drop in basis (in which they would use the Tutoring Center), or if a drop into a pre-calculus course is required for success. The second factor is due to total cooperation of the tutors with the administration duties of submitting payroll, attendance and attending meetings. We encouraged this by implementing a pay increase process according to the individual tutor's participation.

Fall 1998 we continued to stress attendance. One thing we noticed is that there is a demand for calculus tutoring at the beginning from students of all levels of skills. However, around two weeks into the tutoring program it became more apparent that those with the stronger background in mathematics dropped the tutoring program. To help control the adding and dropping of the program, we implemented a by invitation of instructor only policy. Our goal is to establish student/teacher communication to help determine if the regular tutoring is what the student is needing or if the student should be referred to the Math Center for drop in tutoring on those occasional problems that may arise.

Summer 1998 we offered the tutoring program 3 times a week. We felt that since the summer session was offered at such a rapid pace, the students would benefit by meeting with the tutors three times a week versus only 2. The tutors also felt that this was a benefit for them financially.

Spring 1998 we went back to stressing the attendance. This proved to us that attendance is an important aspect to the program. For the upcoming Summer Semester 1998, we are hoping to offer the tutoring program three days a week during the very rapid semester of calculus.

Fall 1997 we did not stress the attendance issue to see how it would effect the overall performance of the students who participate in the tutoring program. It was discovered is that with the lack of attendance the success rate of the students dropped greatly. One of the reasons for this is because the weaker students, who do not attend the program, ended up dropping their calculus course. Those spaces were not filled by the students who may needed the help and would have been able to gain a grade of a C or higher. Attendance will be stressed and closely monitored.

Each semester, we have a number of students who begin the tutoring program, but choose not to stick with it. We have kept track of how those students fare in the course, and compared them with how the students who remained in the tutoring program performed. In every case, the students who stay in the tutoring program for the entire semester outperform the students who drop it - usually by very significant margins.

Specifically, Spring 1996, we found:

Students tutored receiving C or Better: 77%

Students tutored receiving D, F or Late Dropped: 23%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving C or Better: 43%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving D, F or Late Dropped: 57%

Students tutored receiving C or Better: 62%

Students tutored receiving D, F or Late Dropped: 38%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving C or Better: 39%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving D, F, or Late Dropped: 61%

For Summer 1996, the results were as follows (note that the number of students tutored in the summer semester is lower due to a lower demand for tutoring.):

Students tutored receiving C or Better: 75%

Students tutored receiving D, F, or Late Dropped: 25%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving C or Better: 0%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving D, F or Late Dropped: 100% (only 1 student dropped)

Math 141:

Students tutored receiving C or Better: 80%

Students tutored receiving D, F, or Late Dropped: 20%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving C or Better: 0%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving D, F or Late Dropped: 100% (only 1 student dropped)

For Fall 1996, the results were as follows:

Students tutored receiving C or Better: 80.46%

Students tutored receiving D, F, or Late Dropped: 19.54%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving C or Better: 35.29%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving D, F, or Late Dropped: 64.71%

Students tutored receiving C or Better: 63.64%

Students tutored receiving D, F, or Late Dropped: 36.36%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving C or Better: 17.39%

Students who dropped tutoring receiving D, F, or Late Dropped: 82.61%

This page was last updated on 11 July 2002