Brown and White Vol. 129 no. 7

              The Brown and White Vol. 129 No. 7
Friday, September 25, 2015 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Four o’clock exams are around
the corner, and the Center for
Academic Success is offering mul-tiple
services to help students
reach their highest potential.
Students have the option to
choose the tutoring scenario that
works best for their personal
study preferences and schedules.
Julie L. Seifert, administrative
coordinator, believes this makes
the center a unique resource that
students should utilize through-out
the semester.
Kate Robinson, the center’s
new director, believes students
should try learning in tutoring
sessions. Robinson wants stu-dents
to know that tutoring ser-vices
will help them develop a
Lehigh’s voluntary resolution
agreement with the Office for Civil
Rights is set to be completed by the
end of the 2016-17 academic year.
Karen Salvemini, Lehigh’s equal
opportunity compliance coordinator,
is involved in the implementation
and monitoring of the university’s
requirements of the agreement. Many
of the requirements will continue for
at least another year, Salvemini said.
One requirement is the administra-tion
of a climate survey to the entire
campus. Instead of using an external
vendor, Lehigh was approached by a
group of faculty members who con-duct
research pertaining to content
that would appear in the survey.
Developed by four faculty mem-bers
— Dominic Packer, Gordon
Moskowitz, Christopher Burke and
Chris Liang — the climate survey
will be distributed to the Lehigh com-munity
once approved by the Office
for Civil Rights.
Relationship with the Office for
Civil Rights
The university is still required to
report data to the Office for Civil
Rights through the 2016-17 academ-ic
year as a result of last year’s
investigation into an alleged “racially
hostile environment,” according to a
previous Brown and White article.
According to the agreement, by July
1 each year, the university will pro-
Lehigh-OCR agreement: Taking the next steps
better understanding of material
and will help develop their per-sonal
study skills.
“The tutoring services are about
more than just grades,” Robinson
said. “Students go into tutoring
with the expectation of getting
the right answer, but what we
do is help them come to the right
answer on their own.”
If students are anxious about
their coursework, they can par-ticipate
in the study skills assis-tance
program. The program
focuses on teaching students to
handle test anxiety, take effec-tive
notes and adequately pre-pare
for exams.
With this resource, students
are able to work one-on-one with
graduate students who help them
figure out how they should be
preparing for exams.
The center offers workshops for
different student groups and has
been visiting Greek chapters to
discuss the effectiveness of the
program.
The center also has various
handouts regarding time man-agement,
test anxiety and goal
Center for Academic Success offers flexible tutoring
By KATIE MORRIS
B&W Staff
Alexis King/B&W Staff
Sam Kratky, ’19, Annie Pearson,
’19, Courtney Henig, ’19, and
Liv Kelly, ’19, study in Williams
Hall on Monday. Many students
are using Lehigh’s academic
resources to prepare for
upcoming midterms.
vide the Office for Civil Rights with
requested data under several catego-ries
the data referenced in item No.
10 for the most recently completed
university year.
This data includes harassment
training dates, training attendees,
how the university intends to imple-ment
the concerns raised in the cli-mate
survey and more. The agree-ment
in its entirety can be found
online.
“The University understands that
OCR will not close the monitoring of
this Agreement until it determines
that the University has fulfilled the
terms of this Agreement and is in
compliance with the regulations
implementing Title VI, at 34 C.F.R.
§ 100.3, which was at issue in this
complaint,” the agreement reads.
In March 2015, several administra-tors,
including Salvemini, had a call
with the Office for Civil Rights to talk
about the climate survey require-ments,
harassment training and how
these dates line up with an academic
year.
As such, many of the deadlines
were pushed to this fall to give the
university time to implement them
at the beginning of the semester. The
climate survey was pushed to this
academic year so it was not forced to
be administered over the summer,
when fewer students are on campus.
“The big things that we’re focusing
on right now are the online harass-ment
training, having that wrapped
up by Sept. 30, and the climate sur-vey,”
Salvemini said.
Salvemini said Lehigh’s work with
the Office for Civil Rights has been
collaborative and the relationship
may continue if the office would want
to continue working with the univer-sity
or gather information.
“Any legal obligation that we would
have would end once we’ve completed
all of our obligations under the volun-tary
resolution agreement, so there’d
be no requirement that OCR and
Lehigh continue their relationship,”
Salvemini said.
Harassment Training
In an attempt to encourage more
students to complete the required
harassment survey, Salvemini
worked with United Educators to
put the training on Lehigh’s Course
Site instead of having to log in on a
separate site.
At present, there is no imposed
penalty for not complete the training.
But as the training will become an
annual staple to Lehigh’s inclusivity
initiative, Salvemini said a course
registration delay is being considered
for the future.
By SAMANTHA TOMASZEWSKI
News Editor
See ACADEMICS Page 3
See OCR Page 4
Lehigh’s relationship with
the Office for Civil Rights
continues with the distribu-tion
of a climate survey and
harrassment training
Correction
The Brown and White creat-ed
a graphic for the Sept. 15,
2015 issue based on a Lehigh
University Snapchat filter.
The artwork was not prop-erly
credited. The artist’s
name is Carolyn Janik, ’17.
Gaby Morera/Made with Canva