The Old SLAC
In July 1994, I attended a meeting with Dr. Robert Zeigler, our Vice President, Dr. Richard Oliver, Director of Academic Support, and Dr. Alice Cook, Director of Learning Resources (my current supervisor). At the meeting Dr. Zeigler outlined a new program about a department to be started which would be a unified campus tutoring facility and a PC lab for small departments that could not afford to: give up a room, on-going expense, or trained staff to support a computer facility. I was asked if I wanted to be temporarily assigned to start the program. When I accepted the position a few days later, Dr. Oliver became my immediate supervisor even though my salary was still part of the Learning Resource Center. Dr. Oliver's attitude was to help the student, who does not have a PC at home, use a computer on campus when other PC labs were busy. His other charge to me was to hire tutors who would be able to tutor in more than one academic area and work by appointments so any student would be assured that a tutor would be available at a specific time and place. The location of this facility was part of the 6th floor of the Moody Learning Center where the walls of 7 classrooms had been removed. This building was scheduled to be remodeled as part of a bond issue and the 3 departments who used the classrooms were moved to a new facility.
After I moved into the area, I got to hire one part-time employee to supervise the 20 new (in 1994) PCs in a room that were preloaded with a word processing program and a program for the 2 accounting classes taught on campus. We were open for business for a wonderful 15 hours, on 4 days a week. It was 2 weeks of constant phone calls to the Accounting Faculty members before the first student showed up to work on their homework. From that time on, we never looked back wondering if more students would come. Once they found out about the word processing program available and we would help them if they needed it, students have never stopped coming.
In January of 1995 we added Tutoring to the SLAC's function and transferred 10 tutors to our payroll. Our first subjects were Accounting, English As A Second Language, Spanish, Biology, History, Government, and Mathematics. The same semester the computers from the Management Department and Special Services for Disabled Students were transferred to the SLAC for upgrading, maintaining, and assisting students who needed a computer. Now the SLAC had over 40 computers and we thought we were just doing great. All of the tutors were trained on all of the programs on each of the PCs so they would be able to help any student when they were not tutoring.
Other departments heard about us and offered to buy software to load on our PCs if we would allow their students to come in and provide them with assistance. We replied with a resounding "YES!". We started calling these departments our Partner Departments since they were spending their money on computers in our department. Our very first Partners were: Business Administration (Accounting), Management (word processing), Foreign Language (Spanish, German, French, English, and Russian), Basic Skills Enrichment Program (ILS grammar, mathematics, & study skills).
Because our student use in tutoring and computers was increasing 80% to 100% each semester, we were authorized to hire our 2nd full-time employee to supervise our 25 part-time tutors and 3 part-time technical support people (You can see our staff's pictures by going to The SLAC Team). With more tutors, more technical support people, and a full-time person helping me we were awarded more money in our budget to buy more computers, file servers, network cards, and programs to make everything work together. We soon added more Partners who bought more software for students to use on our computers.
During these months, our administration was very supportive and encouraged us to be open more hours, keep paying for training our part-time staff each semester, and think of ways of providing learning support and computer support to any San Antonio College student. Finally in May 1997, we were told that we would have 1 day to have professional movers transfer our operation to our newly remodeled facilities. We started packing on the last day of Final Exams Week, unconnected everything, moved, unpacked, reconnected everything, and were ready for the first day of summer school. We were tired but we were ready. Our new facility had new furniture, new walls, new carpeting, and an increase in space from our old location.
The New SLAC
The new SLAC, as everyone called it for about a year, also had a new Director of Academic Support, Mrs. MaryAnn Dearmond. With her leadership our budgets were increased and we became more visible to our administrators via her updates of activities at the Dean's and Director's Meeting with the Vice President. In the new SLAC there were two 20' by 30' PC classrooms, one 80' by 30' lab, a small classroom for our Partner Basic Skills Enrichment Program, a small classroom for our Partner Student Support Services Project (a Federally funded program), a new state-of-the art Audio & Video Language Lab, seven 10' by 10' tutoring rooms, a file server room, a copier/storage area, staff lounge, and an office for me. Until our move my office served as the file server room, staff lounge, staff meeting area, and dead storage.
In one of the PC classrooms (19 PCs) we have the following programs loaded: Rosetta Stone (languages), MS Internet Explorer & Netscape Navigator (for internet searching), a Chemistry program, a History program, a Management Program, and Microsoft Office 97 for computer literacy courses and the Testing & Assessment Department's testing program. In our second PC classroom (21 PCs) we have: Microsoft Office, Word Perfect, another Management program, 2 Criminal Justice programs, and the Accounting program. In the large Open Lab (70 PCs) all of the programs in the classrooms are duplicated. This was done this because our Partner departments faculty schedules a class period each semester to bring their classes to the SLAC so our staff can teach the students how to use the specific software packages. Some faculty teach computer intense courses and use the classrooms on a weekly basis for the entire semester.
As I write this article I remember when my first part-time employee and I celebrated out first student who came to the old SLAC to use the computers. Now the SLAC has over 22,000 student visits using our PC facilities and over 1,600 tutoring sessions each Fall and each Spring semester. Since our move to the New SLAC, we have added a third full-time employee to take care of our 4 network systems. In the Old SLAC, I had a lunch for my only Partner Department. Now we send out over 110 copies of our newsletter (see SLAC Newsletter for copies of all of our issues) to make sure everyone is informed on what we are doing. All of the Partner Departments now send a representative to our SLAC Council Meeting, held at least once a year, to be informed of our progress, successes, and things we did not do well. They listen, make suggestions, and even follow up on what we have done to improve our service. Somewhere in the whole process I became the permanent Coordinator of the SLAC and no longer affiliated with the Learning Resource Center where I had worked since 1973. I hope this gives you a background about the SLAC. Many part-time tutors, technical support staff, clerical staff, maintenance staff, electrical staff, classroom faculty, directors, deans, a vice- president, and a wife have all contributed to the growth and dynamics of the SLAC. Without their work, help, encouragement, suggestions the SLAC would never had grown or been as successful as it has been. It's going to be fun to watch and see how much more it is going to grow ... what direction it will go to expand its services ... and more importantly, will it continue to serve the student like it did in 1994?
Dave Elder, Assistant Professor
7/98