Students

The Center for Student Success

It is the purpose of The Center for Student Success to provide students with the services and support necessary to fulfill their educational, personal, and career goals.

The Director of Student Success, three Student Success Coaches, and the Career Services and Advising Director are all available to work with students to find solutions to their academic, personal, counseling and career-related questions.

  • Help with academic coursework, including tutoring, study aids, research databases, print resources (i.e. textbooks, newspapers, etc.) and electronic media
  • Coaching for students to help them work through academic, personal, and career-related challenges
  • Disability and Learning Services, including access to accomodations
  • Counseling services related to mental health and personal concerns
  • Advising and academic success plans
  • Assistance with course scheduling, program changes, graduation requirements, and withdrawing from a program or class
  • Guidance on career decisions, internship selection, job searches, resumes, and interviews
  • Information about Mitchell Tech’s Student Representative Board and other Mitchell Tech clubs and activities
  • Printing, copying and scanning services
  • Computer access, including Internet, email, MyTech and application software
  • Guidance on where to access important campus services, such as financial aid, Business Office, scholarships, etc.
  • Information about off-campus resources, such as housing, healthcare, transportation, financial sources, student discounts, available memberships, childcare and other support services

Student Alert System

Your success is more than just earning passing grades. It’s about thriving in all aspects of your life—academic, personal, social, and career. At Mitchell Tech, we understand that many things can interfere with a student’s progress toward their degree, and that’s why we monitor the success of our students through Mitchell Tech’s Student Alert System.

The Student Alert System offers instructors and staff a way to quickly notify the appropriate personnel when they are concerned about a student. Once an alert has been submitted, the Dean of Student Success will determine the best course of action for following up with the student regarding the concern.

In most cases, the student’s Student Success Coach will be responsible for working with the student to develop a strategy for improvement and for connecting them with the needed resources. This form of notification gives all involved the opportunity to intervene and support students earlier, providing a greater likelihood for degree completion and program success.

What Is A Student Alert?

A student alert is a message sent by instructors and staff members through the Student Alert System to indicate an academic, attendance, social, personal or financial concern about a student. The goal is to connect students to appropriate resources that will help them to overcome any barriers to success.

What are the benefits of Mitchell Tech’s Student Alert System?
  • Provides a centralized location for student concerns through an online student alert form
  • Offers a more effective system of supporting student success
  • Streamlines confidential reporting and communication
  • Are viewed only by the appropriate personnel based on their role at Mitchell Tech and on the type of alert submitted.
When Is A Student Alert Submitted?

While not exhaustive, the following list provides the most common reasons a student alert may be submitted:

  • Poor attendance or tardiness
  • No assignments or late assignments submitted
  • Missed tests or quizzes
  • Poor scores or performance on tests, quizzes or assignments
  • Low mid-term progress report or evaluation
  • Failing a course
  • Stopped attending courses (without dropping or withdrawing)
  • Low levels of class participation
  • Academic or personal difficulties interfering with classroom success
  • Observable changes in behavior or appearance
Kellie Nielsen

Student Success Coach & Counselor

Contact
Danita Lucas

Director of Student Success

Contact
Jessica Deinert

Student Success Coach & Counselor

Contact
Whitney Bruinsma

Student Success Coach & Career Services Coordinator

Contact
Daryl Bird

Student Success Coach

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Mateya Berg

Student Success Coach & Section 504 / Disabilities Coordinator

Contact

Tutoring at Mitchell Tech

Mitchell Technical College offers free face-to-face and virtual peer tutoring to students enrolled in general education courses and select content-specific courses.

Peer tutors can help students increase understanding of course material through practice and review of difficult concepts, assist with exam preparation, and proofread writing assignments.

Students can make an appointment with a tutor on the Center for Student Success page in MyTech by clicking on “Tutoring”.

To learn more about tutoring services please contact:

Jessica Deinert

Student Success Coach & Counselor

Contact

Copyright & Plagiarism

Copyright

Copyright laws were passed by Congress to encourage creativity by ensuring that authors and creators receive credit and financial compensation for their work – so that if you make or write something, others cannot just give it away.

Some facts about copyright law:

  • Only the person who creates a work has the right to reproduce (copy), display, perform, or distribute it.
  • Anyone else needs written permission from the creator to do so.
  • Works are automatically protected at the point of creation if:
    • the work is original, and
    • it is recorded in readable or tangible form (for example, in writing, in an audio format, on a web page, etc.).
  • You DO NOT need to register the work or include a copyright symbol for it to have copyright protection


To keep people from having to contact the author or creator every single time they want to use something, Congress approved some exceptions to allow limited use of copyrighted works without permission. The fair use doctrine is one of those exceptions. It permits limited use for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research, within strict guidelines.

Fair use guidelines are posted in the Campus Center Copy Room. But as a general rule, to qualify as fair use:

  • You cannot make copies that deprive the author of a sale. That’s why the Mitchell Tech Staff doesn’t copy books or textbooks.
  • You can only copy a small portion of the work, and it cannot be the most substantial or important part. There was a case where someone used only 300 words of a 20,000-word presidential speech, but they were sued and lost because it was the most important 300 words of the speech.
  • You are limited in the amount of copies you can make, and you can’t make them repeatedly.
  • If you have time to get permission from the author, you are required to do so.

For more information on copyright law and fair use exceptions, visit the Web site of the U.S. Copyright Office and some of their frequently asked questions.

The best policy? Always get permission!

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is taking other people’s work or ideas and presenting them as your own, without giving them credit. This is a violation of Mitchell Technical College’s academic integrity policy.

Plagiarism penalties are enforced by schools and can result in a zero on an assignment, a failed class, suspension, or even expulsion.

To avoid plagiarizing:

  • Start your research early so that you’re not tempted to copy others’ work.
  • Read the website, article, or book. Then set it down and put it away so you can’t see the words. Take a minute to rewrite the ideas in your own words. This is called paraphrasing.
  • If you change only a few words from the original statement, it’s still plagiarism. You must rewrite the idea completely.
  • When quoting someone word for word, enclose the statement in quotation marks and list the person’s name.
  • Finally, ALWAYS list the source of the information (the person who wrote it), even if you rewrite it in your own words.

The best policy? Always use and cite others’ words and ideas carefully. Better yet, be an original – use your own words!

Research Resources

Copyright laws were passed by Congress to encourage creativity by ensuring that authors and creators receive credit and financial compensation for their work – so that if you make or write something, others cannot just give it away.

Some facts about copyright law:

Mitchell Tech offers a wide variety of internet research databases offer a wide variety of online resources such as ProQuest, Gale Virtual Reference Library, EBSCO and more. These resources are especially useful for research and writing, but you can find magazine articles, newspaper articles and much more.

Mitchell Tech students can apply for a library card and check out materials from the Mitchell Public Library. A library card from the Mitchell Public Library also grants access to the Dakota Wesleyan University library.

Libraries: