Maple Living Center is the place to be on Monday nights for engineering students who want to connect to faculty, advisors or their peers.
These Monday night sessions are one example of recent initiatives established by the Padnos College of Engineering to help students persist and thrive in the program.
Tim Born, interim dean, said other initiatives are a living-learning community (Maple), peer-assisted learning and First-Year Learning Community classes. "Engineering has worked over the last few years to provide additional academic support services to our students and we’ve really started to see them take off," Born said.
Kathryn Christopher, affiliate faculty of engineering, leads the living-learning community and holds office hours during Monday night tutoring sessions. Christopher said sometimes as many as 50 students will drop in.
"We intentionally make it a welcoming environment," Christopher said. "They can learn from their peers and, of course, there are snacks. We find that students who live elsewhere will make it a point to come to Maple on Monday nights."