Mentoring

At Ambrose, our faculty and staff take the time to get to know you-what you both need and want in your college educational experience, and how the university can support and propel you toward success. Through our Student Success Center, we offer a number of different services free of charge to undergraduate students, from advising to tutorial assistance and supplemental instruction.

So many choices

With more than 70 majors to choose from, deciding what path you want to take might not happen overnight. And that's okay. At Ambrose, it's not uncommon for a student to enter the university as an "undecided" student who wants to "try-on" a number of different subjects to see what fits. For others, they know right away what they want to do, and begin taking core classes immediately. Either way, all students are assigned a faculty or staff mentor who is committed to helping you succeed academically, and adjust to the university environment.

Learning together

• New Student Seminar is an elective, one-credit course taken by most new first-year students, which provides information about academic requirements, campus resources, policies and procedures, time management, study skills and career exploration. Relationship building with classmates and the student mentors is a key element in this course.
• Peer tutors are available for most 100- and 200-level courses and for writing assignments across the curriculum. Emphasis is placed on one-to-one and small group tutoring. Tutors are also available to assist students with basic skills such as reading, study strategies and time management.
• Some courses offer tutorial sessions outside the regularly scheduled class period.
• Ambrose Learning Communities for Excellence, or ACE clusters as we like to call them, offer terrific advantages to first-year students by allowing them to take a cluster of courses suited to their needs, and to do so with a group of fellow students who share their interests.

Who'd have thought? Art and chemistry?

Art Professor Kristin Quinn and Chemistry Professor Andy Axup offered their "Marvelous Molecules and Magnificent Masterpieces" learning community a few years ago, which explored the interactions between the science of the studio and the art of chemical composition, and how the demands of the art community drive the need for new chemistry, which chemical advances challenge artistic creativity. During the semester, students learned such techniques as how to make Egyptian paint and how to blow and form glass. They even paid a visit to the Scott County Landfill to see where hazardous paint materials end up. "I wish you could have seen them when we said we were taking a field trip to the dump," Axup says. "They wouldn't admit it, but they doubted us."