Academic Support Programs

Welcome to CLUE

CLUE tutoring is more than a resource you can access when you're struggling in a class; it's a welcoming, inclusive space for students to connect, ask questions about various subjects, prepare for exams, and have support on homework.

Get tutoring  online or in-person, check out our calendar of live discussion sessions and exam reviewslearn about the subjects we cover, meet our tutors, and watch a video about in-person CLUE

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In person Drop-in Tutoring

In person tutoring takes place in Mary Gates Hall commons from 7 pm- 11 pm. Husky cards are required for after hours (after 5pm) access to the building. 

 

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Virtual Drop-in Tutoring

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Virtual Drop-in tutoring is available during CLUE hours Sunday- Thursday from 7 pm- 11 pm. Please check back then. Once you enter the portal and a tutor is ready for you, they will call you and a Zoom link will be provided via a banner notification.

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Discussion Sessions & Exam Reviews

Discussion sessions take place either in person (MGH 2nd floor) or virtually. Virtual exam reviews are offered for on-sequence introductory courses in the following subjects: Biology, Chemistry, Math & Physics.

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Biology Study Groups

Biology Study Gropus take place weekly in person in Mary Gates Hall 248. Study group signups are full for Fall Quarter and will reopen week 1 of Winter Quarter.

Hours, Updates & Cancellations

CLUE will run on an adjusted schedule in observance of Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day. Please see the updated schedule below:

  • Tuesday, November 26 (Virtual Only)
  • Wednesday, November 27 (CLOSED)
  • Thursday, November 28 (CLOSED)
  • Sunday, December 1 (Virtual Only)

 

Community Standards

CLUE provides a space for all students to be included, challenged, and supported in their educational journey. We expect that tutors and students alike enter into this space with respect for one another and treat others with kindness.

Contact Us

Do you have questions? Suggestions on what we can do better? Email us at clue@uw.edu

Feedback

Email us at clue@uw.edu.

Subjects

We can help with the following subjects and courses:

  • All biological-based subjects - BIOL department but also including courses in departments like NURS, GENOME, FISH, ENVIR, etc.

Biology Drop-in tutoring is offered this quarter virtually on Sundays and Mondays and in-person in Mary Gates Hall on Mondays from 9pm, Tuesdays from 9pm, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Tutoring is available from 7 pm- 11 pm. It is a one-on-one tutoring session between you and a tutor.

Meet the Biology Tutors

We can help with the following subjects and courses:

  • General Chemistry: CHEM 110, CHEM 120, CHEM 1X2 series (142, 152, 162), CHEM 1X5 series (145, 155, 165)
  • Organic Chemistry: CHEM 220, CHEM 22X series ( 223,224), CHEM 23X series ( 237, 238, 239), CHEM 24X series( 241, 242), CHEM 33X series (335, 336, 337) 
  • Biochemistry: BIOC 40X series (405, 406), BIOC 44X series (440,441,442), BIOC 45X series (450, 451)
  • Physical Chemistry: CHEM 45X Series ( 452,453)

Drop-in tutoring is offered during CLUE operating hours, 7 pm- 11 pm, Sunday-Thursday. It is a one-on-one tutoring session between you and a tutor. You are expected to bring your own questions and our tutors can help answer them. These sessions are typically 15-30 minutes long.

Exam reviews are offered for on-sequence introductory chemistry and organic chemistry courses each quarter For example, CHEM 237 is the on quarter course in the fall and CHEM 238 is the on quarter course in the winter. During the exam review session, tutors will present practice problems and detailed explanations for the answer. Sessions are typically 1.5 hours long.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s our approach to tutoring Chemistry?

You are expected to bring your own questions regarding your lecture material, course homework, exams, or practice problems. We will first ask you to explain your approach to the problem before we start helping you. This helps us to see what type of mistakes you have made and which concept you are missing. Then, we will ask leading questions and hopefully guide you to a satisfactory answer.

What can you expect tutors to do when they work with you?

  • We can explain/walk you through a hard concept that you have encountered in class. 
  • We can assist you to approach and solve a problem by giving helpful hints and resources.   
  • We make sure students understand the concept behind each problem and know how to apply them when encountering similar problems in the future. 

What should I bring to a tutoring session?

Questions. They can be problems that you have worked on but failed to obtain the correct answer or a hard concept from class that you do not understand.

If I want to come back later in the night, how do I do that?

If you have more questions, feel free to put yourself back on the queue before 10:45 p.m.!

Meet the Chemistry Tutors

We can help with the following languages and courses:

  • Java: CSE 121, 122, 123, 142, and 143
  • Python: CSE 160 and163
  • R: INFO 201
    • The informatics tutor is not available every night. Please check with the front desk to see when there is a tutor on staff who can help with your course.
  • HTML/CSS/Javascript: INFO 340
    • The informatics tutor is not available every night. Please check with the front desk to see when there is a tutor on staff who can help with your course.

Drop-in tutoring for CSE is offered virtually on Sundays and Tuesdays and in-person in Mary Gates Hall on Mondays, Wendesdays, and Thursdays from 7 pm- 11 pm. Check in at the front desk before seeing a tutor in MGH! It is a one-on-one tutoring session between you and a tutor. You are expected to bring your own questions and our tutors can help answer them. These sessions are typically 15-20 minutes long.

 

Meet the Computer Science Tutors

We can help with the following subjects and courses:

  • Precalculus: MATH 120
  • Calculus series: MATH 124, 125, 126
  • Differential Equations and Linear Algebra: MATH 207, and 208. 
  • MATH 209 to math major courses like 300 and 441
    • Only some of our math tutors are math majors. Please check with the front desk to see when there is a tutor on staff who can help with your course.

Drop-in tutoring is offered during CLUE operating hours, 7 pm- 11 pm, Sunday-Thursday. It is a one-on-one tutoring session between you and a tutor. You are expected to bring your own questions and our tutors can help answer them. These sessions are typically 15-30 minutes long.

Exam reviews are offered for the introductory Calculus series (MATH 124, 125 & 126). During the exam review session, tutors will present practice problems and detailed explanations for the answer. Sessions are typically 1.5 hours long.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s our approach to tutoring Math?

We are here to help you understand what’s going on, not give you the answer. Coming to CLUE and expecting us to solve your problem for you is going to be a problem. We want to engage you with the question and get you to work through the problem so that you can answer it on your own afterwards.

What can you expect tutors to do when they work with you?

When a tutor gets to you, they will most likely ask what your question is, if you have attempted the problem, what the relevant material is, if you’ve covered concept xyz, or what your current understanding of the material is. We need to get a feel for where you’re at, before we can start going down our own path.

What should I bring to a tutoring session?

A question and/or an attempted problem along with a desire to learn. We want to help, we really do! But if you’re just not interested in learning what needs to be done and being with us on the steps we need to take, then that really hurts the vibe.

How long are tutoring sessions?

Generally 15-30 minutes. Though they can tend to get a little longer if you ask a particular question that is rather nasty or there’s a concept that you’re really struggling with. If the night is really busy, we will be more strict to keeping to the 30 minutes and leave you to play around with what wisdom we dispense.

If I want to come back later in the night, how do I do that?

Just go back onto the clue queue online site and queue yourself back in, the same way you did so when you first queued up for CLUE tutoring. It does help if you say what your question is in the signup (saying “webassign 1.61” is not as helpful as “I need help with taking the derivative with trig functions”).

How do exam reviews work and what can I expect?

Exam reviews are offered for MATH 124, 125, and 126. These exam reviews are led by 2 tutors from the CLUE math team with problems that they think are worth going over. This doesn’t mean they will appear on a test, just that the problem is interesting in terms of the concepts that it goes over, and it’s those concepts that we would like for you to understand. We don't have access to anything that you're covering in your courses, and so we base the problems we go over on what we see when students come in for Drop-In tutoring and what we see on the Math Department’s Exam Archive.

Typically we hold 3 exam reviews per quarter. 1 for each midterm, and then 1 for the final. The midterm reviews last ~90 minutes, but our tutors are more than happy to stay and ask any burning questions you may have. An email is sent to any student in the relevant course regarding information about the exam review.

Meet the Math Tutors

We can help with the following subjects and courses:

  • PHYS 11X & 12X Introductory Series (114-116, 121-123), and the 200-series
  • PHYS 300+ & 400+ on occasion

Drop-in tutoring is offered during CLUE operating hours, 7 pm- 11 pm, Sunday-Thursday. It is a one-on-one tutoring session between you and a tutor. You are expected to bring your own questions and our tutors can help answer them. These sessions are typically 15-30 minutes long.

Exam reviews are for the on-sequence 11X/12X courses, typically two days before the exam takes place. During the exam review session, tutors will present practice problems and detailed explanations for the answer. Sessions are typically 1.5 hours long.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s our approach to tutoring Physics?

We try to equip our students with general problem-solving skills that are transferable to classes beyond physics. There is obviously an emphasis on physics coursework, but many of our approaches to physics underpin a broad range of problems in STEM.

What can you expect tutors to do when they work with you?

You can expect tutors to ask leading questions, give constructive feedback, and foster independent learning & growth mindsets.

What should I bring to a tutoring session?

Make sure to bring your questions ready to be asked, a functional calculator, and a distraction free state of mind!

How long are tutoring sessions?

On busy nights, we try to keep our sessions under half an hour, but if there aren’t many students in the queue, we tend to spend more time for each student.

If I want to come back later in the night, how do I do that?

Simple! Just get back into the physics queue before 10:45 p.m. (or earlier if the questions on hand are formidable) and someone should be able to see you.

Meet the Physics Tutors

CLUE Writing Center 3-2-1 Policy:

Our goal is to make appointments available to all writers and to nurture their independent learning. For this reason, we have a “3-2-1” policy for writing tutoring appointments:

Writers may have no more than 3 tutoring sessions to work on the same assignment. 

Writers may have no more than 2 drop-in tutoring sessions per day.

Writers may only work on 1 assignment per tutoring session.  After working with a tutor on an assignment, writers need to revise that assignment for 1 hour before returning to the queue to work on the same assignment.

At the CLUE Writing Center, we have one goal in mind: to help you become a better writer. To that end, we believe that writing is a process. Even the most talented writers cannot sit down in a vacuum and produce a polished text on the first try. Whether you need help talking through ideas, honing an outline you've been working on, evaluating a draft mid-composition, or looking through a final draft—we're confident we can help you write more efficiently and effectively.

Frequently Asked Questions

What type of documents do you provide assistance with and what should I bring?

We will look at any piece of writing you bring in, including but is not limited to: papers, short response assignments, theses, cover letters, résumés, personal statements, scholarship applications, graduate school statements of purpose, memos, and lab reports.

To get the most out of your session, we suggest you bring the following:

  • If you are working on a draft, please bring a copy of your draft, either electronic (accessible by e-mail or flash drive) or on paper.
  • If your writing concern is related to a particular assignment, bring the assignment prompt.
  • If your writing concern is related to a specific scholarship or application, please bring the necessary prompts.
  • If you are writing a paper using other sources, you may consider bringing the readings; if not, bring notes, an outline, or even a list of questions to help focus the conference.
  • If you want to discuss feedback you have received from a teacher, bring a copy of the comments.

How do I sign up for a tutoring session?

We are a drop-in center, so it is first come, first served!

In-person: Check in at the front desk after 7pm. Enter the Writing Center through the double doors and scan the QR code inside the suite to get in line.

Virtually: Sign-up begins at 7pm virtually. Go to our main website, select Drop-in Tutoring, and Virtual tutoring to get in line for Writing (or any other area) . When you are next up and a tutor is ready to see you, you will get a notification on the main check-in page letting you know who is calling you and what their zoom link is. Go ahead and click that link and you'll be sent to that tutor's zoom room.

You will have 5 minutes to respond to the tutor virtually calling you. If you do not show up in the tutor's zoom room after 5 minutes, or after being called twice, we will delete your name from the list. This is only fair to the other students waiting to access the Writing Center. 

What is a typical tutor session like?

At the CLUE Writing Center, our aim is always two-fold: to help you with your concerns about the paper at hand and to better familiarize you with universal writing strategies that will help you address similar concerns in future assignments. To achieve these goals, most sessions begin with a tutor asking you a series of questions regarding the assignment, your professor's expectations, and any specific concerns or areas of inquiry you would like to address during the session. In almost every instance, the tutor will ask to see the assignment prompt, so please bring it!

Once the tutor has a strong grasp of your writing assignment and your specific concerns/needs, the tutor will typically spend 20-30 minutes reading (or having you read) all or part of the draft that you have both agreed to focus on. During this time, the tutor may make some instructive notes in the margins (please note that they won't "fix" grammar, punctuation, and style) that they will then discuss with you. This discussion will frequently involve asking you more questions about your ideas and/or getting you to talk through problems arising in the draft. The tutor will model example solutions for some of the concerns you are working to address as well as explain relevant conventions affecting their suggestions. If you have not yet written anything, the tutor will help you brainstorm and organize your ideas.

At the end of each session, you can expect to spend time developing a plan for further writing and revision. You can also expect to take copious notes and/or outline if necessary.

Each session typically lasts 45 minutes, but can be a little shorter or longer depending on your needs. Sessions cannot exceed one hour in length in order to be respectful toward other students.

Meet the Writing Center Tutors

CLUE Frequently Asked Questions

CLUE uses our Queue platform along with Zoom to facilitate online tutoring. You must be logged in with your UW NetID and password to access CLUE.

  1. When CLUE is open, log into CLUE using the Queue virtual check-in system and you will be placed in a queue. 
  2. In the queue, you will be prompted to let us know what class you would like support with, if you want to see a particular tutor, and if you would like to opt-in for text message notifications. 
  3. Then you will see an estimated wait time to meet with a tutor. You will also be able to see what place you are in line. 
  4. When a tutor is ready to meet you, you will get a pop-up notification with a Zoom link. Access that link within five minutes of receiving it and you will be seen by a tutor.
  5. If you accidentally click out of the link, simply check your Notifications page to see the pop-up again.
  6. Please be sure that the name you use in Zoom is the name you enter in the queue check-in. This will help your tutor know they are meeting with the right student.
  7. If you have questions or concerns email us at clue@uw.edu.

If you want to attend in person, just bring your Husky Card and the assignment you are working on! Mary Gates Hall requires Husky Card for access after 5pm.

A personal computer or tablet with internet access and sound is necessary to access virtual CLUE.

  • If you do not have access to a laptop/tablet, please go to UW's Student Technology Loan Program website to request technology. Supplies are limited. 
  • Make sure you have the most current version of Zoom downloaded on your device. Once you log into your Zoom account, please go to zoom.us/download to download the latest version. If you have any issues with Zoom, you can get support from UWIT.

If you have any questions about accessing CLUE, please email us at clue@uw.edu.

Meet Our Tutors

Alicja, CSE, she/her

Alicja, CSE, she/her

Senior, Electrical & Computer Engineering

I've taken

CSE 373/374, EE 241/242/342

Ask me about

Swimming, playing video games, and reading.

Notable academic failure

In my freshman year, I made the mistake of thinking I didn't have to put time outside of class to learn the material. The first couple round of midterms made me realize I made careless mistakes that I would not have made if I spent extra time to really understand all the concepts. After this rough period, I adapted a new study routine that prepares me for all my exams.

Ivy (Lead), Math, she/they

Ivy (Lead), Math, she/they

Sophomore, Biochemistry

Ask me about

Music and tea!

Notable academic failure

I almost failed precalc and only passed because I asked my teacher to force me to do all the optional homework

Harini, Writing, she/her

Harini, Writing, she/her

Junior, Microbiology, CHID

I've taken

JSIS 317, CHID 250,  ENGL 316, CHID 485

Ask me about

I love reading, listening to podcasts, learning new instruments, sudoku, crocheting, and rewatching classic sitcoms!

Notable academic failure

Recently, I've had a difficult time figuring out the right career for myself. I have a lot of interests, and it's been super difficult trying to narrow down only one or two to dedicate my life to, especially since I don't know whether I'll be happy in the future with the paths I choose. Figuring out what to minor or potentially even double-major in has been a very tricky process, but one great piece of advice I've received from my friends and family is to just allow life to happen! College is a time for exploration and discovery, whether it be learning more about who you are as a person or trying out new passions, hobbies, or career fields. Though it's still stressful for me to accept that I can't know exactly where I'll end up in the future, allowing myself to focus on my interests in the present has been a lot more gratifying than falling into a spiral of anxiety. I hope that by giving myself the space to make mistakes and explore this year, I'll have a better idea of where I want to go in the future!

Devin, Physics, he/him

Devin, Physics, he/him

Junior, Physics

Ask me about

Classical & Jazz, Piano, Video Games, Beekeeping

Notable academic failure

I struggled with not knowing how to prepare for physics exams. I would do practice problems and review my notes, but when I would take the exams, I felt underprepared and confused. After getting help from my professor, I learned different ways to get more value out of the same practice problem and how to apply that to tests.

Eliana, Physics, she/her

Eliana, Physics, she/her

Sophomore, Chemical Engineering

I've taken

Currently taking PHYS 224 and 227

Ask me about

running, baking, lacrosse, reading, and video games.

Notable academic failure

My freshman year, I remember walking into one of my physics midterms feeling confident and walking out sure I'd somehow ruined my academic career in one night. Obviously I was being a tad dramatic and after much studying and preparation the rest of quarter went well, but walking out of the exams room and hearing my classmates speak about how well it went for them only made me feel worse. For me, it can become far too easy to get caught up in my failures and missteps and it was a struggle to motivate myself to keep studying when all the effort I put toward my last exam seemed to amount to nothing. However, it is only by persevering through failure that I was able to finish the class strong. In this case, the real failure would have come through giving up.

Austin, Math, he/him

Austin, Math, he/him

Sophomore, Mathmatics

I've taken

MATH563, MATH336, MATH335, MATH334, MATH340, MATH403, MATH402, MATH342, MATH395, MATH394, MATH224, MATH208, MATH207

Ask me about

Math! Weightlifting, the Ravens, Graph Genera, or volleyball!

Notable academic failure

I had a hard time in my first linear algebra course. I had to take it as an independent study during a quarter my schedule was full, entirely online, and then my college's servers got ransomware attacked which led to there being no homework, quizzes, etc.. for my course, only lectures and tests, which made it difficult for me to perform well.

Sasha, Chemistry, she/her

Sasha, Chemistry, she/her

Senior, Biochemistry

I've taken

CHEM 452/453

Notable academic failure

I struggle with procrastination to this day, especially during exam season. Additionally, being an international student comes with its own challenges. So if you can relate and need more help with your classes, feel free to stop by CLUE!

Chenab, Math, he/him

Chenab, Math, he/him

Junior, ACMS Data Science

I've taken

MATH 207, 208, 394, 407

Ask me about

outdoor stuff : hiking, sailing

Notable academic failure

Adapting to the new academic system in the United States as an international student.