By
Brett Erickson
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Space limitations squeeze out Math 129, 223, 250 tutoring facilities
During his freshman campaign at the UA last year, Joseph Reed visited the math tutoring lab two or three times a week to work on his homework and get extra help when necessary.
Thanks in part to the free assistance he received there from volunteer instructors, Reed was able to achieve passing grades in both his Math 124 (Calculus I) and Math 129 (Calculus II) classes.
Without the tutoring lab, he said, he might not have passed either class.
"It was a tremendous help because you had other students there who had almost the same homework assignments as you did," Reed said. "It was always packed."
Reed, now an electrical engineering sophomore, did much of his math work there with the many other students who used the two rooms - Math Teaching Lab 123 and 124 in the math appendix building.
But, as Reed and other University of Arizona students found out this week, much of the volunteer tutoring services for undergraduate classes have been scrapped because of limited space on campus.
Drop-in tutoring services for several math courses, including Math 129, Math 223 (Vector Calculus) and Math 250 (Calculus and Differential Equations), are no longer available to students.
The department still offers tutoring for Math 110 (College Algebra) and Math 124 on a drop-in basis from noon to 4 p.m. on Monday through Thursday, and noon to 2 p.m. on Friday.
Canceling the tutoring services was a decision based solely on space availability, said Daniel Madden, the department's associated head for undergraduate education.
"We have the resources to offer the tutoring, what we don't have is the space," he said. "We have a horrible space crunch."
During the last three years, the department has lost office space and thus needed to turn the tutoring rooms into offices this year. Madden said they notified the administration about the problem but were unable to find a replacement facility.
UA Room and Course Scheduling is the entity responsible for finding locations for tutoring activities, but Madden doesn't blame them for not being able to locate a usable room. Some options were available on the north side of campus but would have been an inconvenience for students and volunteer tutors going back and forth from the Math building, which is on the south side of campus at 617 N. Santa Rita Ave.
UA spokeswoman Sharon Kha said the problem with the math tutoring seems to be an isolated one on campus.
"I don't know of another problem in another department," she said.
Kha acknowledged that the demolition of the Memorial Student Union is partly responsible for the limited space available on campus.
"With the student union being under construction, that takes out a lot of meeting spaces," she said.
What could be even more disturbing to students is that a long-term solution might not be readily available. Although early semester room scheduling headaches often arise - and have done so again this year - Kha said the canceling of the math tutoring labs could present additional problems.
"I don't know if there is an answer for this particular problem," she said.
Madden said that although the situation does not look promising right now, the department would love to bring back the tutoring services for all classes.
"If we can get the space, we will reinstate the old method of tutoring," he said.
In the meantime, students like Reed will have to find other places to get their homework done and have their questions answered.
"I am appalled and greatly disappointed, as are hundreds of other math students," Reed said.
"On this issue, I think we kind of got hosed."
