Mission & Philosophy
Mission
The Academic Center for Excellence at Buffalo State University is committed to cultivating the personal and professional growth of its students and staff. The goal of the Center is to inspire a passion for learning and to provide its staff and students opportunities to succeed academically, socially, and personally. Towards this goal, the Center offers structured activities to motivate students, promote active learning, and build self-confidence. The Center is dedicated to providing a student-centered environment that promotes preparedness for leadership roles within the University, in their chosen careers, and in the community in which they live, by demanding excellence in learning, cultural enrichment, and service. The staff of the Academic Center for Excellence strives to offer each student individually designed assistance.
Philosophy
The long-term goal of Buffalo State Academic Mentors (Tutors) is to enhance student academic success, retention and graduation by applying the best practices of student learning theory and addressing student learning needs. This is largely done by cultivating the tutee’s academic independence.
Tutors are expected to think of their work as tutoring the individual in the learning process and helping the tutee move towards academic independence during each session, rather than just tutoring a subject. The tutor will ask questions that help tutees foster critical thinking, metacognitive development, and academic and personal success.
All of our students are treated with respect. Students who use our services can expect to receive our undivided attention. We do not condescend them, project our personal beliefs upon them, judge them, or intimidate them in any way, socially or intellectually.
The goal of the Center is to encourage our students to become independent - but not isolated - learners. One objective for realizing this goal is to build student’s self-confidence without giving them false expectations. We do not do the student’s work for them.
We encourage mutual openness and honesty in the academic mentoring setting. One goal of academic mentoring is to provide students with the opportunity to verbalize thoughts about their coursework. To facilitate this, we are honest about our limitations, seek help when we need it, direct students toward other campus resources when necessary or needed, and we encourage productive relationships between students and their classroom faculty.