College helps students make the adjustment
COLLEGE LIFE CAN BE INTIMIDATING FOR NEW STUDENTS
The first weeks at college, far from a students’ home, can be challenging. First-year students have to find their way around campus, start potentially difficult courses and make new friends.
Some “night owls” must find ways to get to morning classes on time, and many students will have to learn how to live on a budget.
Those and many more learning tasks await southern Alberta students when they start their college or university careers in September.
But there are many services and supports to help them succeed, parents were assured Friday at Lethbridge College.
“We want our students to succeed, not just academically but we want them to grow emotionally, socially, physically, and all of that is supported through the classroom and outside of the classroom,” says Nancy Russell, the college’s manager of student engagement and retention. “We’re here for students.” While incoming students learned more about college life during a mix-and-mingle session in the Cave, parents and partners met down the hall to hear about the spectrum of student-help programs offered at Lethbridge College.
“If we can help parents or partners feel a little more comfortable when they get in the car and drive away — especially if they’re leaving the student here for a semester because they live out of town — then we’ve achieved what we wanted,” Russell says.
The family’s support is key to a student’s success, she points out, because parents and partners are the biggest influences in a student’s life, she says. So it’s important that they know about the range of services and can encourage students to make use of them.
And while the college offers such basics as health services, and academic and career counselling, parents heard about many more.
The learning services staff, for example, can offer tutoring, report writing skills, exam-writing strategies and course-load adjustments, as well as logistical and financial assistance for students with disabilities — and the college’s successful “Learning Cafe.”
A “circle of services” is available for indigenous students and friends, along with a cultural support program which includes time with volunteer grandparents and elders.
The college also offers a variety of counselling programs, including sessions on budgetting, healthier eating, and quitting tobacco. Awards and financial aid staff are there to help students apply for and receive the funding they need to complete their studies.
And for students who live on the campus, the residence life staff and assistants do all they can to make a college dorm as home-like as possible.
Russell says another session, for partners and parents as well as incoming students, will be held Sept. 2. All interested can sign up through the college website. Sept. 4 will be a day of orientation for all students, then classes for most programs begin Sept. 5.
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