The Counseling Center held its Time Management workshop on Wednesday as part of a four-week series to enhance students’ academic success.

“We have been doing outreach sessions for academic issues for a number of years in the counseling center,” Vikkie Chaviers, MSU licensed counselor, said. “And we tried to come up with a more efficient way of presenting those issues that students would be more inclined to attending those sessions.”

The Counseling Center wanted to give students an opportunity to gain advice and guidance to help them achieve individual academic goals by going over topics that they see often when students come in for help.

“The goal for academic sessions has always been to help people that never were fortunate enough to learn how to study,” Chaviers said. “And if we can get to it before hand it will allow them to have something to fall back on.”

Sessions were designed to inform students on things such as priorities, GPA, stress and career options while also giving tips and solutions to these common issues.

“We decided to break this down into what we call academic modules,” Chaviers said. “The four we picked were the things that each of us as individual counselors see the most of with our clients who are struggling – starting with time management.”

Along with advice on academic success for the students, Chaviers said counselors are also trying to bring awareness to the facility and the benefits they can offer students.

“Another goal for us is to become more visible to the students and professors. There have been seniors who have said that the never knew we were here and that they could have benefited from coming.” Chaviers said.

The Counseling Center informed professors of these sessions encouraging them to tell their students to attend so that their students can gain new habits that will help them overall in their classes.

“I attended because my chemistry teacher said it would be extra credit, but since I’m here I do want to better my time management skills.” Kassandra Alonso, Nursing Sophomore.

“Time management issues is one problem for many students as they make the adjustment to the independence afforded with college life,” Rodney Cate, professor and director of chemistry, physics, and geosciences, said. “I do not have the time to educate them in these life lessons and will try out new opportunities to help them succeed.”

With the first session ending with a full room, Chaviers is confident about future sessions and plans to make more changes to improve them.

“I will definitely take advantage of this advice and work to use it as much as possible, especially with my full class schedule,” Megan Healey, freshman in nursing, said.

All workshops will last for one hour and will be held in Sundance Court Third Floor Meeting Room each Wednesday in September.

“We are repeating them every month and in the spring semester we are going to start over again,” Chaviers said. “Some topics may be different or the same.”