ALLENDALE, Mich. (WOOD) — Grand Valley State University is expanding its virtual tutoring program, providing free homework help for students across the state.

K-12 Connect launched in March 2020 as part of the university’s new program called GV NextEd, where they focus on education initiatives to help people of all ages.

“President (Philomena) Mantella created what she called ‘Networks of Support’ and there were multiple different areas, and K-12 education was one of those areas,” said Amirah Vosburgh, the project leader for K-12 Connect. “That team did a needs assessment of our community based on relationships that we had, and one of the biggest needs that came up was homework help for students.”

K-12 Connect provides 1-on-1 homework help across virtually any subject, giving parents the opportunity to set one-time appointments or weekly sessions with tutors. The program also helps GVSU students, who can enroll to serve as tutors to complete their course work.

“Some faculty members have decided they want to incorporate this into their class and have their students get this hands-on experience as part of their curriculum for the class they are taking,” Vosburgh told News 8. “The other thing that students need to get into the College of (Education) are a certain number of contact hours with students. So, they are using this (to fulfill that) contact hour requirement.”

Since their launch in 2020, they have helped more than 2,400 students statewide and held more than 17,000 tutoring sessions.

Tutoring sessions will open for the fall semester next week. You can register through GVSU’s website. While all sessions are currently virtual, they hope to offer in-person tutoring in the coming years.