Tutoring Center news

Tutoring Center coordinator Linda Bigler reports that the Tutoring Center is "busier than ever, if that's possible!" Because some of the graduate student tutors left to begin their first academic jobs in other places, new tutors were hired. Mary Ann Hughes, Laura Laskowski, Kerry Ann Erickson and

tutoring lesson
Tutor Marie Gleason (right) advises student Ramy Sukarieh from Lebanon at the Tutoring Center.

Beth Ryan joined the staff. Tutoring options were expanded by the popular Short Story cluster, offered by Marie Gleason, in which an American short story is studied each week. Progress in enforcement of the "Speak English Only" policy in the Annex at all times, even outside of class, has become easier, said Bigler, with some students reminding each other to use the target language.

Corporate tutoring has expanded in 2000, too, with Marie Gleason joining Olive Yazid, Patrick Ruffin, Wendy Bulkowski and Bigler to provide that service. New companies receiving business tutoring for working professionals were Belfit Lyons and Shuman, Dade Behring, MBNA, Citibank, Mitsubishi and EDS.

Several locally-headquartered companies, such as Gore, DuPont and Hercules, continue to send their colleagues, often from Europe, to Newark especially for ELI's corporate tutoring. Former client Yves Leroi, of Gore France, refers other associates because, he says, he benefited so greatly from the intense training at ELI. In 1997 the human resources director spent four weeks in tutoring sessions lasting eight hours a day. That required four tutors, each working on four different tasks: letter writing, presentations and videotaping, grammar and reading comprehension of a human resources textbook.

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