Photo courtesy: Undergraduate Student Success Center Academic Coaches
Academic coaches are individuals employed by the university who have been trained in research-based facilitation techniques. Academic coaches work to give the student the tools they need to alter their behavior and improve academic performance.
Through an appointment-based system, students usually meet with an academic coach once a week throughout the course of the semester. In these meetings, coaches provide guidance and assist students in reaching their academic, professional, and personal objectives. The purpose of the coaching is to improve a student’s confidence and sense of self-efficacy while they are a student at Florida A&M University.
Jamie Davis, the director of the Undergraduate Student Success Center manages the personnel working in the Learning Center and Academic Coaches.
“The purpose of Academic coaching is to help students improve from where they are at,” Davis said. “If the student is a freshman, we would be helping them with their transition. If they are an underperforming student, we figure out what they can do in order to do better in school. Our goal is to identify the areas that need improvement, help the students acknowledge it if they don’t, or help them move in the right steps to do better.”
When signing up for an academic coach, students can look into the background and specialties of each coach and pick the coach that best fits their kind and level of need.
“In some cases, the students are doing well, and it is more to keep them on track and motivate them,” Davis said. “We work with all students, different backgrounds and different points in their college careers.”
Imani Evora, an academic coach in the Undergraduate Student Success Center, also shared her experience assisting FAMU students.
“Academic coaching is a place for you to freely ask questions that you would otherwise feel uneducated to ask,” Evans explained. “We also have connections to resources on campus that you would not normally have access to, and you can also learn a lot about yourself because we are here to remind you about how far you’ve come.”
Coneisha Thomas, another coach, said that academic coaching can be supportive.
“We assist students in getting in and out in a timely manner and helping students adjust from high school to college,” Thomas said. “We support you in ways that you can’t independently support yourself, academically as well as emotionally.”
Coaching is available all year long, as well as through the summer term, and is free at cost.