Union offers a variety of resources and specific assistance to enhance academic-related skills. See below for the different types of additional support.
Student Resources
The Burke Library
As part of the Columbia University Libraries, Union students have many research and library support opportunities.
The Burke Library homepage here links to the following online resources:
- Research Guide for Theological Seminary Studies to guide students through the books and other resources available through the library.
- The Burke Events & Exhibits Calendar with upcoming library workshops to build research skills.
- The Columbia University Libraries offers library-wide workshops and drop-in assistance events.
- Librarians are available for support via Columbia’s Ask A Librarian portal.
Librarians are here to help! Students are encouraged to reach out to Burke Library staff with individual questions – email [email protected] to receive a response within 24 hours, or set up an individual library research consultation.
Plagiarism Review Software
Software now exists within Moodle course pages called Turnitin where students submit papers for review of potential plagiarism or citation errors. This allows stuednts to check their work and revise before submitting to faculty for a grade. View these instructions for how to use this feature for submitting assignments.
View this video on using the software: https://columbia.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=56d15fb7-fe30-46cd-94da-acc50113a632
Technology Tips
ePortfolio feature within Moodle: https://vimeo.com/492178179
Save Word document as PDF: https://vimeo.com/510690116/b2131b1f7e
Audio and video in Moodle: https://vimeo.com/482772085
Closed captioning in Zoom: PDF Instructions
Theological Language Learning
The Trinity Union Fellows Program (TUFP) supports international students by addressing topics central to theological language instruction. Tho goal is to foster collaboration and community, and to invite opportunities for theological language learning across languages and theological focus of study.
Students meet weekly as a cohort to encourage language proficiency and conversational confidence. Students can prepare class presentations, gather in small groups, and converse across language families. In addition to the weekly non-credit class, students meet for one hour each week for individualized support.
Instructor: Dr. Amy Meverden.
TUFP Director: Dr. Jane Huber
Program Objectives:
- To identify theological language learning goals and create a list of anticipated outcomes
- To improve comprehension, grammar, style, organization, and composition
- To work toward discovering an organizational method conducive to assignment completion
- To learn collegial and critical methods for providing peer review
Theological Language Learning - ESOL
The English as a Second Language (ESOL) Trinity Union Fellows Program (TUFP) endeavors to help international students build confidence in everyday English interactions and to develop English communication skills necessary for effective participation in the classroom. This program is tailored to individual needs and offers a wide range of support, such as work on pronunciation, improving listening comprehension, building general and academic vocabulary, speaking on general topics, reading comprehension, paraphrasing and the interpretation of written and oral resources for study.
The course focuses on a variety of strategies and types of discourses pertaining to efficient communication, such as self-correction, asking for clarification, guessing unknown words, explanation of and support for individual perception of ideas, narration, exemplification, comprehending texts’ main ideas and details. Students are paired to work on pronunciation, and vocabulary learning strategies. This ESOL TUFP is directed to the individual needs of each student and offers grammatical and sentence structure related instruction as student needs arise.
Instructor: Polina Belimova, M.A.
TUFP Director: Dr. Jane Huber
Program Objectives:
- To develop speaking fluency
- Pronunciation
- Listening comprehension
- To enhance general and academic vocabulary
- To determine the meaning of words and phrases based on context clues
- Reading comprehension of general academic texts
- Paraphrasing and interpreting oral and written texts
- To learn about their present cultural environment in exploring the area and resources of New York City
Writing Center
Located in the Burke Library with services available to all degree-seeking students. Visit the Moodle page (with login) for services provided and additional resources. Appointments are recommended as walk-ins cannot always be accommodated.
Dr. Amy Meverden is the Writing Center Director.