2023 Session Details

InfoReady is a new university supported tool accessible to departments across all three campuses for units creating submission forms. Utilizing this tool has allowed our departments to bloom and expand our skills in reviewing student submissions and become more efficient in our processes. InfoReady has optimized course petitions, funding requests, and PhD milestone tracking, and more in the LSA Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science and in the Linguistics Department. For the Department of Psychology, InfoReady has streamlined the way the department approves course petitions, thesis proposals, and donor funded awards. Knowledge shared between our two units has helped us discover more features about InfoReady, and find other creative ways to employ this technology. We would like to share what we have learned about the application of this software with our colleagues across all U-M campuses, as InfoReady has helped us bloom and grow in our own roles.

Have you taken a look at Atlas recently? New tools are being added every semester to support the needs of students, faculty, and staff. This session will go through all the features currently available in Atlas. This includes Course Profiles, Schedule Builder, Dashboards & Course Collections, Spotlights, Instructor Profiles, Major Profiles, Magnify, and Teaching Evaluation dashboards. We’ll highlight the features that are most useful in the advising process. We’ll also have time for discussion among the attendees to hear how you have used Atlas and hear about your ideas for future enhancements. 

This panel will have two parts, reflecting the experiences of faculty advisors, students and alums. Part One will center Belonging, how, in the CASC minor this is facilitated for students through community building, in coursework as well as cocurricular programming. Our examples of best practices will include the use of mindfulness, storytelling, and mentorship.

Part Two will address the role of faculty advisors. In CASC, our teaching often precedes advising, grounding our theory of advising in the values of Social Work. Referencing NACADA’s core competencies, this dual role amplifies how rapport is created and built with students. Moreover, much of CASC’s institutional history – notably the curriculum and degree requirements – was developed and implemented by faculty advisors. We also published research on the impacts and outcomes for students and alums, positioning CASC as a multidisciplinary undergraduate innovation within a field that emphasizes professional education at the graduate level. 

Against the backdrop and uncomfortable tension of an ableist world, Student Accessibility & Accommodation Services has found its place and mission within the University of Michigan’s division of Student Life working with and for students with disabilities. Taking its cues from Student Life’s core values of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as well as Compassionate Care, our unit also performs the core work of Student Life, including working for students’ basic needs, community development, including connection and belonging, student advocacy and intercultural development. 

Attendees of this presentation will learn how Services for Students with Disabilities’ services & staff help disabled students in “Becoming”; how University of Michigan’s Adaptive Sports & Fitness programing provides community and helps disabled students and community members in “Belonging”; how Academic Support and Access Partnerships advising and coaching help students in “Blooming”. An accompanying narrative, shared by SAAS staff member and mother of a disabled child, will demonstrate how SAAS affirms disability identities and allows one to consider their own inner biases through the life-changing work of practicing kindness and generosity and creating a trusting space in which to consider Disability. 

The mission-based approach to advising supports diverse students in developing their own personal mission statements that can help them make decisions about curricular and co-curricular opportunities. The presentation will share best practices that have been developed over several years of using mission-based advising. This presentation will explain the positive effects of mission-based advising and how self-authorship can further inform ways of engaging in this work. The purpose of this presentation is to explore how advisors can use learning partnerships and reflective conversations to help students create personal mission statements and leverage those mission statements in guiding students to capitalize on their college experience. 

As academic advisors within dynamic and high expectation work environments, promoting student sense of belonging, development, and encouragement in any way possible is the highest priority of our profession. Simple email communication may be one of the few and most convenient ways of outreach between advisors and students. Within busy schedules, packed advising appointments, and limited time overall, students and advisors come back to email for a direct source of connection. Sometimes considered tedious and transactional, email communication *can* be a direct, relational link for student development, growth, and connection. In our session, we will discuss Micro-Messaging in email communication that can promote belonging and blooming for students. 

Our session will focus on providing insight and an overview into our successful UMSI Academic Advising intern program with special focus on the importance of professional development and mentorship. The first half of our presentation will provide insight into our internship program training, onboarding, and philosophy. The second half will include a panel discussion of mentors/mentees from across the advising team (Intern to Associate Director) to provide insight into how we bloom talent across the mentorship spectrum.

Belonging is a key factor in academic and psychological success in higher education; however,  while institutions and researchers have focused on understanding and supporting belonging for undergraduates, there has been far less exploration and institutional support for graduate student belonging (Pascale, 2018).  As part of the ADVANCE Program at U-M’s efforts to improve unit and campus-level climate, we conduct climate surveys that examine the experiences of U-M constituencies across the Ann Arbor campus, including graduate students. Using results from climate assessments administered to departments across campus, we are building an aggregated dataset that will help explore factors related to sense of belonging for graduate students. Using both quantitative and qualitative analyses, we will share graduate students’ experiences and provide recommendations for enhancing graduate student belonging, with a particular focus on insights to inform advising for graduate students. We plan to look at differences in experiences across demographic groups where possible.  

This session focuses on trans and non-binary people in higher education, sharing information and perspectives about inclusive practices when working with this population in an advisor role. This session will be a mixture of presentation and interactive discussion including topics such as:

• Brief information and an overview about terminology

• Resources on and off campus to support trans and non-binary people

• Listing tangible examples and practices for creating a more inclusive approach within our roles 

• Continued developmental and learning opportunities beyond this session to support building a welcoming environment for trans and non-binary students, staff and faculty. 

What emerges at the intersection of advising and advocacy? This presentation will explore the unique approach the School of Social Work Office of Global Activities (OGA) uses to promote success and belonging for international students in the Masters of Social Work program. Blending international student advising with structural and systemic change within the department to address barriers and potential challenges  for this student population, OGA staff approach advising from a social work and social justice lens.

Presenters will discuss recent international student advising needs that the OGA addressed with a blended advising and advocacy approach. The session will include international students who will speak about their experience. Additionally, OGA staff will discuss how advising skill development overlaps with macro and micro social work professional development, and examine relevant intersections between Social Work competencies and the NACADA academic advising core competencies model.

The Program on Intergroup Relations’(IGR) mission is to advance social justice through education. IGR uses experiential learning to facilitate belonging, becoming, and blooming. Through our session participants will learn about IGR’s academic and co-curricular student opportunities and the ways that we integrate becoming, belonging, and blooming into our everyday professional practice. In addition, staff will have the chance to reflect on their own belonging, becoming, and blooming along with their social justice journey through an experiential learning activity where they will interact with their peers. The goals for participants are to understand the value of reflective practices, affirming inquiry, and challenging/supporting students holistically as good company.

Know Thyself: Self-Reflection to Foster Growth and Development

Frankie Quasarano - Academic Advisor, Comprehensive Studies Program, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

This presentation will focus on fostering self-reflection in academic advising. Metacognition, or digging into the "why" behind our choices, is an integral part of evaluating and assessing the path we tread. Guiding students in crafting reflexivity statements or through reflection exercises can allow them to think more critically, make stronger connections, and refine their goals. If students can connect certain aspects of their lives (background, social identities, values, beliefs, etc.) to what they are pursuing at U-M, they may be able to create more meaning out of this experience. I have started exploring this work with students, and I would love to share my ideas, get feedback, and further refine this work! 

"Are you looking to avoid math?" How Advisors and Students Co-Construct Select Narratives in Math Advising 

Natalie Drobny - LSA Newnan Academic Advisor, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Emma Thomas - LSA Newnan Academic Advisor, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Emma and Natalie are engaging in research regarding math advising sessions at freshman orientation. There are 34 recorded advising sessions in which advisors work to support incoming students determine their math course. Students and advisors co-construct narratives based on math affect (student feelings toward math), math utility (the need to take math when considering majors) and math background (student's prior experiences in math). Importantly, advisors take up and ignore narratives haphazardly, results in distinctly different course recommendation for students. Our goal of this session is to highlight that advising without being grounded in theory can result in unequitable advising practices and to reimagine how to better support student self-authorship in orientation advising sessions. 

ACUM - Opportunities and General Information

Megan Langille - ACUM E-Board Member, Senior Multidisciplinary Design Academic Advisor College of Engineering, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Jennifer Taylor - ACUM E-Board Member, Engineering Advising Center Academic Advisor, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Panel Theme: DEI Action in Advising Practice

The Day 2 panel will be a conversation that helps advisors, and other student service staff, think more deeply about our role in creating inclusive and equitable experiences for our students. There are many directions this conversation might take including:  What meaningful impacts can individual student facing professionals have? How might assessment and data analysis be used to support DEI efforts in advising?  How can we be agents of change at the program, unit or institutional level? 

In January the Advising Council of U-M sent out a call for nominations to all undergraduate and graduate/professional students on the Ann Arbor campus. We received almost 950 responses nominating more than 200 staff and faculty advisors. These student nominations were used to select ACUM and LSA Advising Award winners on the U-M Ann Arbor campus. Join us in congratulating our award winners!