The Latest at LARC

Spring 2023 Edition: Spotlight Edition!

We are hiring!

Are you looking for an on-campus job for fall? Do you find yourself helping other students to understand tough course material, study for tests, or write that essay? We may have the perfect job for you! We are hiring for subject-specific tutors, writing tutors, and Supplemental Instruction Leaders for Fall 2023. All our positions come with paid training, regular raises, flexible hours, and leadership opportunities in a fantastic work environment! Applications accepted through April 14th, so APPLY NOW through our Working in the LARC page or on Handshake! Unsure about applying? Here's what one of our current Writing Tutors has to say: "Working at the LARC has provided me not only with a great network on campus, but a fun and positive work culture that I have yet to find anywhere else. I love being able to help others in their education while having enough time to focus on my own education. The LARC is truly a family environment where we are all there for each other.” Vic V., Writing Tutor & Lead, 2021-2023

LARC Alum Spotlight

To further convince you to apply, we are featuring a former LARC employee, Caeli Matanky, who worked in the LARC as a subject-specific tutor, Supplemental Instruction Leader and Lead Tutor between 2018-2020. Here is what she has to say about SSU, the LARC, and where she is now:

"I graduated from SSU in 2020 with a bachelors of science in nursing and minor in women’s health. While in undergrad I worked at the LARC as a peer tutor, supplemental instruction leader and lead tutor. My favorite part of working at the LARC was all the amazing people that I got to meet, both my coworkers and students I tutored. The greatest challenge that I encountered while working there was that at first I felt like I needed to have all the answers right off the top of my head or I was a bad tutor. However, I learned that it actually can be helpful to model for my students how to find information you don’t know. As a nurse, patient education is a huge part of my job and working at the LARC has definitely helped me in this area. I love being able to explain things to patients in a way that they are able to understand. Right now I am working as a registered nurse at a full scope women’s health clinic. I am also in graduate school; pursuing my Doctor of Nursing Practice degree to become a Family Nurse Practitioner. I’m most excited to graduate and work as a provider in women’s and gender health!"

Spotlight Event: Spring into Success Workshop!

On February 14th, love of learning was in the air when LARC, FAST, and Advising hosted two Freshmen Learning Communities for a fun academic success skills workshop. Students were able to choose from four stations which all covered different topics: Time Management, Reading Strategies, Improving your GPA, and Understanding your ARR. Students who responded to a post-workshop survey all reported feeling like the workshop was helpful, so look for more success skill workshops in the future!

Faculty Partner Spotlight

About Dr. Nadiyah Parekh:
Nadiya Parekh is an Assistant Professor, Management & Social Entrepreneurship at the School of Business & Economics, Sonoma State University. She was educated at the management schools of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and National Institute of Technology, Calicut. After her doctoral studies she worked as Assistant Professor in Social Entrepreneurship academia in India. Later she worked in the impact investment industry in the United States in the research and analytics domain before starting her current role at SSU. As a faculty trained in business who has consciously chosen to step away from that industry's focus on maximizing wealth for the wealthy, her research and practice has been on exploring how with a sustainable mindset business can be more inclusive. Her teaching brings this transformation in business into action by collaborating with young and creative minds at SSU who care to make a difference in our community.

How did your partnership with the LARC help your students?
My partnership with LARC has helped my students realize that the evaluation rubric for their writing intensive business capstone project report was not designed for assessment purposes alone but to help them experience the 'power of clarity’ amidst 'business uncertainty'. For their capstone project/BUS491, students workshop with LARC tutors to get an external yet expert view on their draft reports and ensure that their write-up meets the logical clarity expected in a strategic argument. Following the workshop, students are given opportunities to strengthen the evidence for their strategic argument. I notice that once students experience the clarity gained in a learning-through-writing-approach and know that a friendly community exists at LARC to support them with this skill, writing often becomes like a meditative experience. In both meditation and writing, it’s hard to find the ‘flow’ and it only happens with repeated practice. Having a dedicated center on campus to focus on this practice matters.

Your favorite place on campus or favorite place in Sonoma County?
Children’s book section at the SSU library

What would you want the Sonoma State community to know about you?
Nothing empowers like education that cares for our community and I’m living that experience here at SSU.

Nadiyah Parekh has written two books: "Social Enterprises – Cases and Analysis for Understanding Social Business"and “Sustainability of Indian Microfinance Institutions: A Mixed Methods Approach”. She also co-edited a book titled “Technology and Innovation for Social Change".

Ask A Tutor!

Do you have a question for a tutor? You can submit your question through this Google Form: Ask a Tutor! or by email to larcdeskw@sonoma.edu, and we will try to feature it in an upcoming issue. 

Question? How many appointments can I have each week?

Answer: This is a great question! You can actually have FOUR free tutoring sessions each week, two on each schedule: Writing Center and Tutorial Program/MESA. That means you can have two writing appointments, and two with a math tutor, or two writing appointments, one chemistry appointment, and one computer science session, or however you want to mix it up! You can also do small group tutoring with other folks from your class(es), as long as you are all working on the same project or assignment. 

We have all these answers, and much more, in our Appointment Guide!

Where Can You See More?

We have very active Social Media channels (@ssularc), so check us out (and follow us!) on Instagram, Facebook, and/or Twitter! We share LARC and Campus events, celebrate holidays, offer study and writing tips from our staff, and we feature student staff on our IG Takeover Tuesdays! Here you can follow along on a day-in-the-life of a Tutor, Learning Community Mentor, or Supplemental Instruction (SI) Leader!

Looking for past editions?

Please check out our Newsletter Archive. Past editions are provided in an accessible PDF format.