Loyola University unveils Student Success Center

Loyola University New Orleans has opened a state-of-the-art, $1.2 million donor-funded Student Success Center that brings together services previously offered in various parts of the campus.

Strategically located on the second floor of the J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe Library, a major hub on campus, the new center emphasizes Loyola’s roles as a center of academic excellence and a place of welcome for all students.

The first year of college is critical for retention of students, and Loyola officials say the new center will be an important part of that success rate, which has been steadily on the rise over the last two years.

The student success center offers:

• A centralized location in a welcoming environment where students can address their tutoring, mentoring, coaching, self-development and other student success needs.
• A modernized and expanded learning space that has tripled the size and capacity for shared tutoring and study-group spaces.
• New offices for staff members, open tutoring space, computer workstations, meeting and study rooms and new main doors accessible to all students.
• Online coaching for all first-year students through the university’s new partnership with Inside Track. This benchmark practice has already yielded tremendous results.

The new Office of Accessible Education (OAE) marks a shift from the medical model of disability to the social model and allows Loyola to be even more inclusive of all students. More than 550 of Loyola’s 3,800 students are regular visitors to the OAE, and they are among the university’s highest achievers.

In creating the Office of Accessible Education, the university used a design concept that removes barriers and accepts all students as they are.

Testing spaces remodeled

The office offers an improved testing space, including sound-proof testing rooms for individual and small-group testing; video camera monitors in testing rooms that allow staff to administer tests from their offices without need for a proctor; individual testing desks with distraction-reducing screens; and height-adjustable desks for wheelchair accessibility.

The office also has technology such as the top-rated Sonocent Audio Note Taker Program and Kurzweil 3000+firefly Assistive Technology Text-to-Speech Program.

Every Loyola student enjoys the resources of the Student Success Center. Services include subject tutoring, help with writing assignments, mentoring, first-year advising, success coaching, writing style seminar, skills workshops (such as procrastination, mindfulness techniques, music meditation, and cognition strategies for memory).

One-third of Loyola’s first-year students are first-generation college students.