AULA Teaching and Learning Center

Teaching & Learning Center

Welcome to the AULA Teaching and Learning Center, located on the 4th floor next to the Library in Room 4070. The Center is a place for students to get academic support in numerous areas: writing, mathematics, statistics, library research, and computer skills. More information on our tutoring services can be found via the links below.

Find more math and writing resources here.

Appointments

Tutoring services are available to all current AULA students, at no charge. Some students may be required to see a tutor based on the outcomes of their writing assessment.

All writing tutoring sessions are held via Zoom or over the phone. Students can meet with writing tutors for 50-minute sessions twice a week.

Make an appointment here

Appointments for Math Tutoring can be made directly with Bob Thomas, the Math Tutor, by emailing him at: [email protected]

If you do not yet have an account, you will need to create one in order to log in. If you would like assistance using the system, please call the Library at 310.578.1080 x.333.

If something comes up and you are unable to attend a scheduled appointment, please cancel. Two no-shows will result in a loss of tutoring privileges for the remainder of the quarter.

Tutoring Schedule

Writing

Math

Make an Appointment

Students can visit our virtual desk using zoom for further assistance.

All tutoring sessions are held via zoom or on the phone. You may schedule a maximum of 2 hours per week.

Please honor your appointment. If you determine that you cannot make it, please cancel within 24 hours of your appointment to ensure other students may use the time.

Services

Writing

Students can bring anything from a draft to a finished paper, kick-start ideas, organize a paper, or grapple with grammar. Writing tutors do not create the work for the student, but discuss method and identify areas where students need to focus and strengthen their skill set. Tutors guide, suggest, and question – they teach rather than do. The doing is the privilege of the student. A successful tutor-student relationship allows the student to realize her or his potential as a writer and feel confident that, independently, she or he can produce quality and inspired academic work.

Get support at any point in the writing process:

• brainstorming
• research
• drafting
• revision
• Proofreading

Work with tutors on many types of writing:

• academic
• persuasive
• creative
• resume/business

Refine your writing from multiple perspectives:

• critical thinking
• thesis statements
• argumentation
• supporting evidence
• organization
• citation
• grammar
• finding your voice
• research
• writer’s block
• avoiding plagiarism

Math

We provide support that makes math accessible and even enjoyable. Questions about statistics, mathematics, or computers are addressed with a comprehensive, step-by-step approach.

Math tutors work with students to help alleviate fears related to math and discover the joy that this field of study can bring, particularly to those who have struggled in the past. Our expert math tutors empower students to tackle any math concepts they encounter with confidence.

Make an appointment here

Workshops

The writing centers of the University run workshops that are available to all current students, click here to see the archive as well as all upcoming workshops.

Meet the Tutors

Andrea Auten

Hello Students! Your work is important to me. Upfront, I want you to know I put time into tutoring. I’ve been a student while raising two sons, and at the same time holding an active acting career. I’ve commuted, studied, memorized lines, and met school deadlines. You have my respect and my attention.

Inspired by my father, a music education professor, I used to line up my dolls and stuffed animals, stand in front of them, and conduct lectures. I was two. My teaching journey began in early elementary school, tutoring classmates then racing home to teach the neighborhood kids. They were less than thrilled. School was difficult for me and I could barely read due to Amblyopia. I was a D student until age 15 when hormones evened out and learning blossomed.

This taught me patience and insight when the learning process frustrates.

Awarded four degrees, I have a great love for academics, research, and the reciprocal relationship between teacher and student, artist and element, writer and reader, and performer and audience. I apply arts teaching and my stage career as a musical performer, dramatic writer, and theatre director to enhance my creative writing instruction. If you’re an idea human, I’m an idea whisperer. I’d love to hear what you’re thinking and help you write it to life. A fiction writer, I’m a member of the Degenerate Writer’s Group. My creative nonfiction work has been seen in Made In LA, Lady/Liberty/Lit, Lunch Ticket, and The Antioch Voice. I hold an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and a teaching certification in creative writing pedagogy from Antioch’s post-MFA program. Also, I am a California, Single Subject, credentialed teacher for Art and Drama education with years of experience in both Ohio and California. Prior to this arts-focused work, I substituted in all subjects.

Your work has value. Emerging, building, or polished and ready for proof edits, I’ll help you get the work done. Even if it seems tangled, bring me your work. I’m ready to help you clear a path and make the goal.

Adrian Cepeda

Greetings and Salutations Antochian Students, As a fellow writer, my goal as a writing consultant echoes Walter Benjamin’s famous saying, “Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.” My job as your tutor in the Antioch Teaching and Learning Center is to take the musical construction you have crafted and be the guide that weaves your creation into life on the page. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in English from the University of Texas in San Antonio and I just received my MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles. I have also taught an Inspiration2Publication poetry course at AULA. In addition, I have had over a hundred poems, essays, and creative non-fiction pieces that have been published in such publications as the new Tia Chucha Press anthology: Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts in Los Angeles, the non-fiction anthology Everything I Need to Know About Love I Learned from Pop Songs, Popmatters, The Lake Poetry, Edgar Allen Poet Journal # 2, Fukushima Poetry Anthology, The Syzygy Poetry Journal, Luna Luna Magazine’s Latino Poetry Project, First Literary Review-East, Love Poetry Lovers, The Fem, Journal of Artistic Creation and Literary Research, Silver Birch Press, Transcendence Magazine, The Yellow Chair Review, Ekphrastic California, Poetry and Art for Social Justice, Subterranean Blue Poetry’s The Children of Orpheus Anthology and Angel City Review.

For those of you who are apprehensive about visiting the Antioch Teaching and Learning Center, remember we writing specialists are here ready to guide, assist and help you. Just follow the advice Hugh Laurie gave which reflects the mindset of some hesitant writers: “It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Now is as good a time as any.”

LaCoya Katoe Gessesse

Greeting Students!

So here’s the story:

As an undergraduate business major (boring), my favorite English professor asked me a single, life-changing question—“Why aren’t you majoring in something you love?” The question was instantly freeing, and the rest is history (cliché).

I knew I loved words on the page and the task of arranging them to engage readers, so I majored in English literature at Lake Forest College, received my MFA in Creative Writing from AULA, and have managed to rack up (idiom) about 10 years working experience as a teaching artist, a teacher, an educational curriculum developer (fancy), an editor for anthologies, etc. (There have been plenty of writing-related jobs, people. Feel free to inquire.)

This is all good news for you because it means that you can bring just about anything my way. I like assisting students with all stages of their writing and consider myself particularly swift at helping you brainstorm and outline before you even begin writing. But no worries, feel free to bring me completed papers, papers-in-progress, outlines, or plain ole technical questions about commas and clauses, and subject-verb agreement (Oh my). Either way, we’ll work together, sentence-by-sentence, to make sure you’re creating something that addresses the requirements of your assignment, as well as something that will make you feel proud of your own words on the page.

Kolleen Carney Hoepfner

Kolleen Carney Hoepfner’s Kolleen Carney Hoepfner earned her MFA in Poetry from AULA in 2013. She is the author of Your Hand Has Fixed the Firmament (Grey Book Press) and A Live Thing, Clinging with Many Teeth (Spooky Girlfriend Press). Her writing can be found in Memoir Mixtapes, Birth.Movies.Death, Lammergeier, Honey+Lime, and elsewhere. Kolleen serves as Editor in Chief of Drunk Monkeys. Her main goal in life is to have Alec Baldwin smile at her. She lives in Burbank, California, with her husband and children.

Bob Thomas

I am one of the Antioch University Math Tutors.  I specialize in working with students on basic math skills, as well as basic computer skills (both PC and Mac).  I also tutor students in the BA Statistics classes.

I have worked with many students who have had bad experiences with math and math teachers in the past.  Through our sessions, my students discover ways to approach math that are empowering and even fun. I love seeing the look on a student’s face when they discover they actually enjoy working through their math exercises.

One reason for my interest in math is based on my passion for juggling.  I have been juggling as a hobby since 1981 and the skill of juggling actual objects in space is very similar to juggling mathematical ideas.

I look forward to working with you as we discover the joy of math.

Lorinda Toledo

Hello! I’m looking forward to meeting you. I strive to create a supportive space in which to provide effective, individualized tools to help you accomplish your immediate and long-term goals. Through our sessions, I aim to help you cultivate empowerment through the writing process so you can thrive in your classes and beyond the campus environment. I provide support to writers across levels and disciplines and at all stages of the process, including tools to overcome writing anxiety.

I have a PhD in English literature with a creative dissertation (fiction) at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where my work was supported by multiple awards. Since 2015, I have taught writing, literature, and composition. My MFA is in fiction and creative nonfiction from Antioch University Los Angeles. I have held multiple editorial appointments at the literary magazines, Witness and Lunch Ticket, and I have a background in print journalism. Raised in Albuquerque, I earned my BA in print journalism and Spanish from the University of New Mexico. I am at work on a novel set in the American Southwest, which blends my interests in culture, gender, and the environment.