Arkansas State University's tutoring program achieved incredible results between 2020 and 2024. They tripled student visits (now at 17K per year), doubled financial efficiency, and turned faculty into key advocates of their program.

This success wasn't luck or a downstream effect of enrollment. This was due to a deliberate, multi-year effort to build an excellent academic support ecosystem. Led by former Learning Support Services (LSS) Director Kelli Listenbee and her successor Kyle Walker—who rose from tutor to GA to Director—A-State improved its operations in four key areas:

1. Building strong faculty relationships through consistent communication
2. Streamlining technology to get reliable data and improve operations
3. Improving financial efficiency by reducing underutilized drop-in hours
4. Actively participating in early intervention programs

This article breaks down each of these successes, sharing the specific tactics, data, and lessons.

Building Strong Faculty Relationships

The A-State team views faculty as their "front line" and most critical partner in student success. "They are the best ones to sell what our center does," says Kyle. "Better than anyone else on campus."

Instead of waiting for faculty to come to them, they built a system of proactive, data-driven communication that improved faculty buy-in. This resulted in more student and tutor referrals over time.

Be a Data-Providing Partner

To build trust at the course level, Kelli sent faculty data on student participation from their specific classes—even if they didn't ask for it. This simple act of sharing information kept the learning center top-of-mind and positioned them as a collaborative partner invested in the outcomes of that specific course. Don’t hesitate to send this data out of the blue, in an organized email format. Most faculty really appreciate it.

Kyle expands upon this with frequent in-person faculty meetings. He identifies key faculty partners—often those who oversee multiple courses or are highly engaged—and meets with them individually.

"About once every two months, I'll reach out to faculty who we're actively working with ... and just schedule a time to chat," Kyle explains. On average, he has about 10 meetings like this per semester. In them, he shares what his tutors are seeing, asks what the faculty and their students need, and strategizes on how they can work together more effectively. This approach turns key allies into powerful advocates. This also may help the center gain access to materials relevant to the course.

This approach is similar to one taken by University of Georgia's Sarah Jeffery. She develops what she calls "Faculty Liaisons" who spread the word for them, and builds these relationships through in-person meetings and coffee chats.

Communicating With The Rest of Campus

While faculty care most about student learning and grades in their courses, deans and administrators have a different perspective. Kelli shared the following insights around communicating with these parties:

• Faculty & Course Level: Focus on usage data and grades. Show them that students from their class are attending and that it's having an impact. At many schools, faculty are given a boost in promotion and compensation for demonstrated collaboration with on-campus services like yours, so don’t hesitate to reach out.
• Chairs & Deans: Focus on usage data. They want to see year-over-year growth and how many students within their college or department are being served.
• Senior Administrators (Provost, Academic Affairs): Focus on financial efficiency. "We always talked about money at the administrator level," Kelli notes. She would report how many tutoring hours were delivered for every dollar spent, demonstrating the program's value and fiscal responsibility.

This targeted communication strategy ensured that every campus partner saw the value of the learning centers in terms that mattered most to them, building broad and resilient support.

Improving Data Quality Through Technology

Before 2020, Kelli and the team were experiencing a “data nightmare” that made it difficult to grow. Multiple centers used Google Docs for tracking, creating huge gaps in their data.

"Tutors were responsible for entering information," Kelli recalls. "But a lot of it was just like, oh, well, we forget to go back. We got busy with this other group. Oh, well, we saw 10 students, but they didn't check in."

These data issues had the following consequences:

• Inability to demonstrate efficiency and productivity of tutors
  ‍Kelli mentioned they couldn't show which tutors were busier than others or how efficiently they were using their time. This made it hard to justify tutor pay and scheduling.

• Difficulty planning and improving operations.
  ‍Without reliable data on which subjects were most in-demand or which times were busiest, it was challenging to optimize the tutoring schedule and allocate resources effectively.

• Lack of credibility when communicating with campus leadership.
  ‍The incomplete and unreliable data made it hard for Kelli to present a compelling case for the program's impact and value when talking to deans, the provost, etc. The data was too "anecdotal" to be convincing.

The university's IT department built a homegrown system called TARP (Tutor Assessment and Retention Program), but data problems persisted. Further, this become one more of the many tools used to run their programs:

• TARP for check-ins
• Starfish for tutor schedules and appointments
• GoBoard and Zoom for online tutoring
• Paper calendars for drop-in schedules

Launching Penji

During the Summer of 2020, Kelli and A-State decided to bring Penji on to solve these issues.

"It was essentially like, oh, we can go from using three or four softwares to using one software, and it's a good time to do that," Kelli recalls. The unified platform would handle scheduling, check-ins, session management, and integrate video calls - everything they needed in one place.

Getting buy-in was surprisingly easy. Directors across the eight participating centers immediately saw the value of consolidating from four systems to one. Note that, even if you are at a smaller school with just one tutoring unit, Penji is used by units like advising, disability resources, or student affairs, so this flexibility can still help gain support for the investment.

The results were immediate and measurable:

• Data reliability: The drop-in check-in and check-out system was well organized and easy for students to reliably use. Further, Penji enabled a large-scale shift to appointments which are inherently cleaner on data.
• Simplified operations: A-State now "runs pretty much everything through Penji"
• Real-time updates: "Tutors can edit their schedules... and the change is live on the app," Kyle explains. No more outdated paper schedules floating around campus.
• Seamless integration: The Banner integration meant course information stayed current automatically, and the Zoom integration means links are embedded directly in appointments and don’t have to be separately managed.

"I don't remember any huge snags in our integration process," Kelli reflects. "It was easy and clean and good."

While these gains were important, perhaps the biggest unlock of all was enabling a shift away from drop-in to appointments, driving big financial gains.

Improving Financial Efficiency Per Hour Tutored

The biggest operational challenge with the old drop-in model was wasted resources. "I remember when I was tutoring," Kyle shares, "I was maybe tutoring 55% of the time I was there... I was barely working for half the time I was getting paid for." Kelli even recalls one tutor who was paid for an entire semester without seeing a single student because the data was too messy to catch the issue in real-time.

With rising minimum wages and budget cuts, this was unsustainable.

Enabled by Penji's appointment scheduling features, A-State shifted primarily to a pay-as-you-go appointment model. Tutors were paid for the time they were actively working with students. This was a big operational change, described further below, but the financial results were immediate:

Snapshot of Fall prior to Penji and the Fall following Penji:

By shifting models, A-State achieved a 127% increase in efficiency, effectively getting more than double the tutoring for every dollar spent.

A few notes:

1. A-State did see a drop in total hours served in their first term after this shift, but this was temporary, as they were back to all time highs in following years. This initial drop was accompanied by an even bigger drop in costs, hence the overall efficiency gain, which has paid dividends ever since. and allowed them to invest this “free cash” in other areas.
2. This abrupt switch from drop-in to appointments is one way to do it, but centers can take a more gradual hybrid approach, where they offer drop-in at known busy times. This can be a great middle ground.

Changing from Drop-In to Appointments

Drop-in tutoring is convenient and consistent, but it requires regular payroll that is paid even if no students show up. This is a common source of financial inefficiency for tutoring programs. On the other hand, Penji allows you to run appointment scheduling where tutors control their own schedule (with certain guidelines you set), giving them autonomy and flexibility, but also providing a much different work experience than the traditional drop-in center.

This huge transition for the program wasn’t easy - Kelli actually described it as a “tutor revolt”! But it was worthwhile, for A-State.

"It was a vibe check more than anything," Kelli says. Tutors missed the casual, social camaraderie of the old drop-in center. "Before they would get to hang out with their friends... now it's a job."

Kelli addressed these issues by patiently communicating the benefits of the new system. While they lost some of the passive social time, tutors gained:

• Schedule Flexibility & Autonomy: They could set their own hours and didn't need a manager's permission to make changes.
• Predictability: They knew exactly who they were meeting and when, allowing them to prepare and avoid being overwhelmed by unexpected crowds.
• Focus: The new model attracted tutors who were intrinsically motivated to help their peers, rather than those just looking for a low-key campus job.

Over time, the culture completely reset. Today, the tutoring role is a popular and respected position on campus, and Kyle has a steady stream of faculty referrals and interested students for hiring.

Using Early Alert for Growth

The most successful learning centers seem to embrace and actively carve out their role in campus early alert workflows. While A-State's campus-wide early alert system has recently changed, Kelli’s previous workflow provides a great template for effective outreach.

When an academic alert was raised by faculty, her team of graduate students would reply via email and rely on the following elements:

1. Personalize: Use the student's name and reference the specific course from the alert.
2. Use Growth Mindset Language: Frame the situation positively. For example: "We have seen that with the right study plan, you can be successful in this course." This communicates belief in the student's ability to improve.
3. Provide Clear Options: Outline the various centers and resources that could be applicable in this particular situation - don’t list generic things that feel like boilerplate “not a fit” options, which discredits you as a real person emailing them.
4. End with a Question: Always conclude with a direct question (e.g., "Would you be available to meet with a tutor next week?"). This prompts the student to reply rather than just passively reading the email. You can also include links in your email, but this final question makes it clear you are a real person reaching out.

20-25% of students who received this outreach would follow up and engage with academic support.

As a final note, Kelli stressed that you must be an advocate for this process. "Our outreach could only be as good as [faculty's] prompting for outreach," she says. Building the faculty relationships mentioned in step one is essential to ensuring a steady stream of alerts for the students who need help the most. Encourage them to utilize these systems in your conversations, as this is a great team effort that can impact the DFW rate of the class significantly.

Key Takeaways

For directors facing similar challenges, A-State's experience offers a good lesson: sustainable growth comes from fixing the fundamentals. Get reliable data, build faculty partnerships, optimize your finances, and actively reach struggling students. The changes aren't easy, but as Arkansas State proved, they work.