Connecting Students to Resources

Discussing campus resources in class this week brought me right back to being a peer mentor. Everything from helping students with CyMail, AccessPlus, tutors and even CyRide was suddenly fresh in my mind. It is easy to take for granted how much we know about this campus and the services that it has to offer its students. Take it a step further and we make ourselves aware of other resources we weren’t even aware of and now we are tremendous resources to one another and to first year Hixson Scholars.  The challenge for us then becomes how well we can communicate these resources and have students actually take advantage of them.

            It’s easy to show students resources and easier yet to simply talk about them. We can spend hours lecturing about things students should be doing in order to be successful but I think we all know how impactful a lecture is. It can be tremendously more effective to actually demonstrate or have the group participate in an activity around the resources. Visiting the biofeedback center as a group or setting up time to take a student to the physical location.

            If we can think of creative and motivating ways to get students to take full advantage of what Iowa State has to offer its students then we can better serve them. There are dozens of resources on campus and it’s an integral part of our job to expose those resources to Hixson’s.