By Shannon West
Staff Writer
First-Year Experience’s Supplement Instruction (SI) program continued to work to revamp for the spring semester by announcing it will hire students to serve as Supplemental Instruction Leaders.
SI is an academic support service modeled by the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The program incorporates peer-assisted study sessions into historically challenging courses with a high rate of non-successful completion, said Chris Brown, director of First-Year Experience (FYE). Although it has gone through a lot of phases, as an overall program SI has existed three years at St. Bonaventure, according to Brown. The SI sessions teach students study skills, textbook use and review of notes to grasp the material better.
“Both the national research and our data here at Bonaventure show that the students who attend SI do better in those historically challenging courses,” said Brown. “So the grades are higher for the students who attend, and if you put on a chart the number of SI sessions that you attend and the grades you get, there’s a strong increase, so it goes up consistently.”
According to Brown, one key aspect of the SI program is that it doesn’t target students who are at risk or not performing well, but rather approaches courses that are known to be difficult. Though SI falls under the FYE office, it is a free service offered to all students in historically challenging classes.
“The SI sessions are designed to be interactive and to have students collaborate to go over the student material and review for the course,” said Brown. “So it’s not an additional lecture, it is not a tutor, but the SI leader facilitates different activities to help students learn the material, but also learn how to learn.”
These sessions usually meet once a week and are taught by SI Leaders. SI Leaders are students who have previously done well in the course, said Brown. The SI Leader positions qualify for Federal Work-Study and Bona Work. They are paid for the hours per week they spend in the SI class, time to prepare their review sessions, and for the weekly review sessions they host. To qualify, students must have successfully completed the course as well as have a minimum GPA of a 3.0.
The FYE office will announce which courses will have SI as soon as they are officially finalized.
“SI isn’t just for freshmen,” said Brown. “We are not just targeting freshman classes. Even though our office is First Year Experience and this program definitely benefits freshman, we aren’t only targeting freshman classes, but classes that are historically difficult.”
Students interested in the SI leadership positions can request an application by emailing Chris Brown at cbrown@sbu.edu.
westsm14@bonaventure.edu
