Rashida Patrick, Co-Editor-In-Chief

Each week, the Office of Student Success hosts a series of workshops geared toward helping freshmen have a successful spring semester. Those who attend these workshops are usually students that have been put on academic probation.

Academic Coach Brittnee Mexico said these workshops are similar to a program that the Office of Student Success started.

According to Mexico, the Moving Forward program was required for students who left the fall semester on academic probation, which was a GPA of 1.0-1.99. Students who participated in the Moving Forward program had to move in days early for the spring semester to participate in a series of workshops of a two-day period.

The series of workshops hosted by Student Success started out as an idea when Mexico realized the office would be a great common space to host something similar to the Moving Forward program.

“We never had a central location like this, we were always kind of spread out in the residence halls,” Mexico said. “So once we got this common space I was like ‘why don’t we take these workshops that we cram in one to two days and make these a series over six weeks?’”

Even though the workshops are tailored to students on academic probation, they are open to anyone who might find the information valuable. During the series of the workshops students learn how to set short term and long term goals better, how to student efficiently, and talk about what went wrong last semester.

Freshman Hamza Alladitta, majoring in biology attended the first two workshops and found them to be very helpful.

“I attended the last workshop because it was a great opportunity to get myself organized for the semester and to make sure that I am on track,” Alladitta said.

Alladitta also said that most importantly he learned how he could keep himself organized from the beginning to the very end of the semester.

Aside from these weekly workshops, the Office of Student Success will meet with each student on a one-to-one level to make sure they are handling the second semester better than their first one. According to Mexico, the Office of Student Success plays a huge role in the retention plan.

“We build a relationship first-year so we work with upperclassmen just to keep those relationships, but our main goal is to retain first-year students, we want them to come back their sophomore year,” Mexico said.

Aside from these weekly workshops, the Office of Student Success offers a place for students to hang out and drink hot coffee, or tutoring in subjects such as biology, chemistry, math, psychology, economics, and history.