Academic Programming for members

[decadence]

Hi,

I'd like to ask about academic workshops/presentations which groups put on for their members within their university. By this I mean 'events' where members are taught study skills, time management, or a revision workshop, or essay/exam writing advice - you get the idea.

Whilst things like study hours, incentives, pairing those on the same major etc can be organised fairly easy; in supplying the above services to members, who does this and how? A chair of academics etc may find it difficult to be able to give workshops on such things or do they?

Each university usually has some sort of Academic Skills department but as far as getting someone from there to give workshops to the sorority or fraternity their response might be that providing a session for just students from a club or GLO does not fit into their remit or that there might be less of an issue if a chapter organised the events but advertised them to ALL students (which wouldn't do the chapter any favors and would reduce reasons to join an org) since the staff in there probably have limited resources and aren't really there for the benefit of a single group of students etc.

As far as such academic programming as above goes, who does this (and how) for the members in your organisation? Thank you for any responses.

[Betarulz!]

I think I can answer your question, but I'm not really sure I understand what you were trying to say in your 3rd paragraph.

For us, our Scholarship chair has set up several speakers. Most recently a person from Career Services was brought to the house to speak on preparing for graduate school - basically some typical things you can do to enhance your resume.

This is the 2nd spring in a row that we've had someone from Career services give a presentation (last year it was on interviewing skills). I've also had other clubs bring in people from Career Services present.

That said, I doubt there has ever been an issue with a presentation just given to a small group of students through an organization. I would tend to think that the offices are not being as effective as they possibly could be if they weren't allowed to give presentations to student groups.

I also know that I've suggested to academic advisors from my college's advising center on putting together workshops to be held in Greek houses where the chapter members would be in charge of spreading word of the event to other people they know. So again no issues there in doing a presentation for only a select group of people.

[Not a Mezzo]

I get what you're saying with the third paragraph...actually, I'm the VP Scholarship for our school's Panhellenic, and every time I've tried to set up a program with an academic development department, I've been met with lots of enthusiasm. The resources are there, but students often don't use them. There haven't been any problems with the fact that the information is presented to one particular group of people, rather than all students. With a group, the information can be tailored to what might be relevant and/or interesting to the group members, rather than an at-large group which is usually more diverse in its needs.

Of course, different schools are different, but in my experience, those folks are eager to present to individual groups.