Association for the Coaching and Tutoring Profession

Our Mission

To provide a platform linking academic coaches, coaching supervisors, tutors, tutor coordinators, and administrators who are committed to the development of a successful learner.

Our Motto

Engage. Educate. Empower.

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Annual Conference

17th Annual Conference
March 21 - 24, 2021
Tampa, Florida

Thinking of joining us in Tampa?

Check out some of our session descriptions from previous conferences!

Explaining the What, Why, and How We Do What We Do

Academic Coaches deal with a combination of academic and non-academic factors that impede student success. When considering which activities to implement, it can be difficult to explain the difference between Academic Coaching and other Student Success or Student Affairs activities. As a program that serves the sophomores, we understand that research is limited regarding our population and academic coaching best practices. Therefore, we have relied on available research and professional development to help guide our practices. In this presentation, the presenters will illustrate the challenges of assessment and how easy it is to structure and explain your activities with research. In doing so, participants will be introduced to an adopted logic model from James Madison University that ultimately led to the creation of an activity proposal form that is now being used as a standard form and best practice for our department and other campus departments.

Study Group Tutoring: An overview of the model, program evaluation and training techniques

Study Group tutoring sessions are weekly tutoring sessions that have been recently developed by the Center for Academic Success at Louisiana State University. These sessions promote peer to peer learning, collaborative learning techniques, and critical thinking among a group of students. Differences between group tutoring versus individual tutoring, training resources to target student engagement, as well as some of the data analysis outcomes that show the distribution of usage between different courses will be discussed in this session. The benefits and the challenges of these tutoring models will be also discussed in this presentation.

Inspiring Program Innovation Utilizing Student Staff

Do you feel limited on being able to innovate due to strained professional staffing? Too much on your plate to implement that great new idea? Come learn how the University of Michigan's Study Group Program tackles this all too common problem. Hear about the innovative ways we are bringing technology into study groups, connecting facilitators to one another, developing a facilitator mentor program, even launching a Giving Tuesday campaign! During this workshop, you will explore your own innovation ideas and how to launch them as well!

Designing a Peer Coaching Program to Support Men of Color Interested in Healthcare

In 2016, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) released a call for action to address the lack of black male physicians by confronting the challenges facing black males seeking to pursue a medical degree. In 2018, Augusta University’s African American Male Initiative (AAMI) Program began a collaboration with the Student National Medical Association (SNMA) to respond to the AAMC’s call for action. The coaching and mentoring focus of the collaboration between AAMI and SNMA generated a number of successful strategies to support students interested in the health sciences. The program template could be adapted for other educational and occupational pathways. In this session, we describe how the program supported a sense of belonging for our first year students, how we connected them to opportunities, and how this impacted them personally. We also address the positive impact on the retention and progression numbers for the students.

Building a Foundation of Emotional Intelligence in a Tutor/Tutee Relationship

“Know thyself!” (Socrates) These words are still important today as we ask, “How well do we know ourselves?” Emotional Intelligence can be understood as the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others. This can allow us to understand and manage our emotions as well as motivate and foster healthy relationship with those around us. A student who is emotionally intelligent is confident, intentional, successful, empathetic, and reflective. Within the tutor/tutee relationship, effective learning goals can be set and achieved with the help of strong emotional awareness. In this session we discuss how internal and external emotional intelligence impacts the harmony and effectiveness of the tutor/tutee relationship, as well as the intellectual prosperity gained from each meeting.

#flexibility: Reflecting on the first three years of a new center

Opening a new Academic Success Center is both exciting and exhausting. There are many unexpected details that pop up and there are always new challenges to address as programs grow and centers become established. The one phrase we use a lot was/is #flexibility! In this session, we review the previous three years for one Academic Success Center, taking us from the planning stages to the grand opening and through our growing pains. One of the first challenges was getting students in the door and working with tutors – not an issue we expected. We address how we discovered and honed our most effective strategies and practices in the realms of tutoring, marketing, and campus collaborations, all designed to promote our services and make our presence on campus known. We now have a vibrant center, a space that creates a sense of belonging among our students while positively impacting our student retention rate. Participants will be encouraged to contribute to the conversation with small group guided activities on the topics so we can learn from each other as we move forward.