Student Counseling Center, Tau Beta Pi offer resources to engineering students

October 24, 2018

Engineering is a very stressful and difficult program, so finding ways to alleviate that stress and to combat that difficulty is important. One of the keys to success in college is to know when you need help, whether it be emotional or academic, and get that help as soon as possible. There are so many different groups and organizations on campus to help you make your workload easier to handle.

bio labOne of the newest resources for help is “Heat Transfer”. “Heat Transfer” is a support group offered by the Student Counseling Center designed specifically for engineering students to help them find their way through the stressors of college life and to help them through the intensity of the engineering curriculum. When asked what the goal for the program is, the leader of the support group, Kevin Merideth, says it is to “help our engineering students find ways to effectively deal with the stressors of the program and to create a place where they can talk about what they’re going through and what their challenges are.” He went on to say that the group atmosphere helps students understand that other people are going through the same things they are going through. He spoke about the high number of engineering students utilizing the counseling center and how they were convinced that “because no one else appears to be melting down from the program, then everyone else must absolutely have their stuff together when that is not the case. Everybody’s struggling but nobody is really talking about it.”

This group was created this year which means it is still in its experimental and developmental phase. What this means for student is that they have the option to determine what it turns out to be. To be a part of this, you can attend the meetings every Wednesday from 5:00pm to 6:00pm in the Elton King room in McCain Hall.

Another way to handle the difficultly of the program is to get tutoring. Tau Beta Pi is an engineering honor’s society that offers tutoring, but they focus specifically on freshman and sophomore engineering students. Penelope Dao, the president of Tau Beta Pi, when commenting on the tutors said, “Tau Beta Pi is invite only so you get tutors who are juniors in the top 12.5% of their class and seniors who are in the top 20% of their class so you are really getting the cream of the crop when it comes to book smarts.” They offer tutoring in Calculus 1-4, Physics 1-3, Engineering Mechanics 1&2, Mechanics of Materials, Chemistry 1&2, and Linear Algebra.

When asked about how tutoring sessions are conducted, Matt Shine, the tutoring officer for Tau Beta Pi, said, “People will come in asking for help and usually, they will have specific homework problems they need help with or certain equations they don’t understand, so the tutor who is helping them will walk them through any steps they need take to solve the problem. They will clear up anything the student needs help with.” These tutoring services are every Tuesday and Thursday from 5:00pm to 7:00pm in McCain room 190.

“Heat Transfer” and Tau Beta Pi tutoring are two resources that are highly beneficial to engineers’ well-being and their academics and best of all, they are free. They were created to help you in your journey through college and the people running the programs truly want to see you succeed.

By Jolee Rushing, freshman, Chemical Engineering