Academic Support
Learning Assistance
The Tomás Rivera Center offers a variety of programs to meet students' individual learning assistance needs. The Tutoring Center provides tutoring for selected core curriculum courses. Academic Coaches are available for personal appointments. Information-packed Study Skills Workshops teach advanced techniques for studying, such as new ways to prepare for tests and how to remember information more effectively. All services are free to UTSA Students.
Academic Support
The time spent in college is a once in a lifetime experience. So many enriching and truly life-changing opportunities are available. At the core of the college experience are the academics, the classroom experience, the professors, the lectures, the homework, the projects, the reading, the writing, and the list continues. This particular publication is not going to address the academics. However, there are academic support services which are important to be aware of in the planning stages.
Tomás Rivera Center (TRC)
The trained professional staff of the Tomás Rivera Center for Student Success provides academic support and services that help promote student success.
Academic Success
The Tomás Rivera Center sponsors academic success programs for various freshman populations. This includes undeclared and provisional students, as well as scholarship recipients. These programs seek to ease the transition from high school to college by providing academic advising and support.
Supplemental Instruction
Supplemental Instruction is a series of weekly study sessions for difficult courses, guided by students who successfully completed them. Three 50-minute sessions are held each week.
LEARNING COMMUNITIES:
A Learning Community is a group of freshmen with the same major or interests who take 2 or 3 of their core curriculum classes together during their first semester at UTSA. It's a voluntary program that assists first-year students academically and socially. Any freshman or transfer student with less than 30 credit hours can join!
Each Learning Community includes 25 freshmen. These students enroll in connected courses that they take together. For example, a student majoring in Biology may enroll in a Biology Learning Community. The community may have a Freshman Seminar that connects to Freshman Composition and a large Biology I lecture course. Since all of the students in this Learning Community would be Biology majors, the Freshman Seminar would not re-teach the Biology I course, but it would focus on Biology topics and events.
The Colleges' Freshman Advising Center (CFAC)
The CFAC provides academic advising for freshmen who are undeclared within a college, have a declared major, or participate in the University of Texas at Austin Coordinated Admissions Program (CAP). Freshmen interested in preparation for the health professions such as nursing, pre-dental, and pre-medical are also advised by the center's academic advisors. They are supplemented by the services of the Health Professions Office.
Theprofessional academic advisorsof the CFAC appreciate being able to work one-on-one with first-time freshmen throughout the academic year with scheduled appointments. They then have the opportunity to share theirWords of Wisdom, provide guidance on the Common Core Curriculum, and even how to calculate the GPA. In addition to working with Career Services, the CFAC also offers classroom outreach, Midterm Maintenance (a probation recovery program) and Chaparral and Laurel Village advising. The CFAC programming can assist freshmen in reaching their academic, personal, and professional goals.