Wednesday, February 7, 2024

  10:00 – 11:00 am

  Online

S3. Leaving Room for Compassion: Having Difficult Conversations Without Toxic Positivity

Jessie Youngblood and Calon-Nicole Gunter Cox

University of Oklahoma

Developmentally minded advisors hope to cultivate a growth mindset in their advisees. We know that students persist through challenges when they believe in their innate ability to learn. Unfortunately, emphasis on positive thinking becomes toxic when it does not acknowledge a challenge’s difficulties.

When a student presents an overwhelming challenge, we may be tempted to invoke positivity. Platitudes like “Don’t give up!” or “I believe in you!”, no matter how well-meaning they are, can encourage students to deny or avoid unpleasant emotions. However, accepting difficult emotions is crucial to overcoming the obstacles that spark them.

In this session, advisors will learn distinctions between compassion and toxic positivity and practice strategies for reframing our thinking and speech to express empathy for our students without toxic positivity.

  11:00 am – 12:00 pm

  Online

S4. Listen Up: A Voice for Students with Experience in Foster Care

Kasandrea Sereno, Jasmine Moore, and Amy Sosanko

Tulsa Community College, Positive Pathways, and Community College of Allegheny County

Students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and students with learning differences are disproportionately represented as students with experience in foster care (SEFC). Furthermore, SEFC are less likely to be recruited to college and graduate at a rate of 10% or less. In this session, we will examine how marginalized populations are affected by foster care, kinship care, and group home settings. Through each of our presenters, we will discuss how colleges, community partners, and global organizations helped SEFC negotiate barriers to their higher education. Finally, we will encourage attendees to identify campus stakeholders and lay the groundwork for creating SEFC support programs.

  1:30 – 2:30 pm

  Online

S5. Leveraging the Low-Hanging Fruit: Using Data to Improve Student Persistence Through Advising

Julia Carlo

Northeastern State University

Student retention is at the forefront of most institutions’ strategic plans, and advisors and advising administrators are often looked to when enrollment and retention declines.This session examines how one advising department acknowledged this responsibility, leveraging data to re-prioritize outreach strategies to students to whom the advisor-student relationship could be of most benefit. This session showcases how motivated advisors, care-based approaches, and encouragement to attempt different strategies improved semester-to-semester persistence with these students over time. Session attendees will have time to develop questions surrounding their own students and opportunities – data-informed insights – that might show promise for an intervention, and leave with a list of “low-hanging fruit” to explore in more detail once returning to their own institutions.

  2:30 – 3:30 pm

  Online

S6. The Grass is Greener Where You Water It: Effective Transitioning from First-Year/Undeclared Advising

Jay Fuller and Araceli Goodrich

Northeastern State University

The transition from being a first-year, Undeclared student to Declared can be a difficult process involving challenging paperwork, new advisor(s) and a fear of what’s next. Instead of leaving our students to navigate the process on their own, our university academic advising program shifted the way we deliver services to our first-year students by creating a transition effort focused on ensuring our students are informed, as well as seamlessly connected to their major advisor and department, maintaining consistent communication throughout their academic career. This presentation will explain the development of our major declaration transition process, the execution of the process, and the advantages for both advisors and students. This presentation is appropriate for advisors and administrators of first-year advising programs.

Thursday, February 8, 2024

  10:00 – 11:00 am

  Online

S7. A Practical Guide to Neurodiversity

Laura Blackstone

University of Oklahoma

As Academic Advisors, we encounter a wide range of neurodiversity. Neurodivergent individuals may have different communication needs than a neurotypical person. In this presentation, we will discuss terminology related to neurodiversity and explain some important practical concepts, including why accommodating different communication needs is important and what NOT to say to a neurodivergent individual. We will also discuss specific communication strategies to make emails, conversations, and presentations more neurodivergent accessible. Attendees will leave this presentation with more skills and a greater understanding of how to work within a neurodiverse environment.

  11:00 am – 12:00 pm

  Online

S8. Leading change management in turbulent times

Jessie Youngblood

University of Oklahoma

Working in higher education equates to working under conditions of continual change. As academic advisors, we are uniquely positioned where we must navigate this change as employees, but also from the mindset of our students. Whether in a management role or stepping into leadership, learning to manage this change is critical to mitigating variability and increasing engagement and satisfaction. In this presentation, academic advisors and leaders will learn the principles of change management using John Kotter’s eight-step leading-change model and how that methodology can be applied to understanding human motivation within the confines of modern organizational (and educational) structures. Change management is not easy, but it is possible to develop proactive approaches for team unity and morale, as well as student understanding.

  1:30 – 2:30 pm

  Online

S9. Academic Life Coaching at the University of Oklahoma

Charles Baker

University of Oklahoma

Participants will learn the background and genesis of the Academic Life Coaching program at the University of Oklahoma. They will gain a few basic coaching skills and discuss how these techniques empower students. Finally, participants will participate in a coaching activity to experience the process.

  2:30 – 3:30 pm

  Online

S10. Assessing Advising: An Introduction to Evaluating the Impact of Advising

Sarah Connelly

University of Oklahoma

Advisors know the important role they play on campus and in the lives of students, but there are increasing calls for a more systematic evaluation of advising. In this session, we will talk about how to start the conversation around assessing academic advising. This will include a discussion of logic models and their components. The session will conclude with a collaborative brainstorming session where advisors start an academic advising logic model for their university.

Friday, February 9, 2024

  10:00 – 11:00 am

  Online

S11. Advising Orientation – A Smart Start for Health Science Students

Marilyn Goff and Greg Anderson

Tulsa Community College

Smart Start orientations provide prospective Health Science students with a realistic overview of their program’s competitive admission standards and rigorous academic and professional expectations. This innovative program is a college-wide collaboration between Health Science faculty, Advising, Career Services and Academic Success Coaching. It targets students in their first semester of pursuing a Health Sciences program, giving us the opportunity to engage with them early on to give them the best tools to be successful.

Students connect with faculty, supporting staff, and professionals who have worked in their intended field. These supporters help them identify if the path is the right “fit”, lessening discouragement and increasing the chances that students will complete the requirements needed to enter a satisfying career. This presentation offers a group advising orientation model that Academic Advisors can adapt to help prospective health science students.

  11:00 am – 12:00 pm

  Online