2025 Session Details

In this session, attendees will learn about the launch of EAB’s Navigate360 system at the School of Information and its positive impact on academic advising and student support in year one. The presentation will cover key lessons from the implementation phase, focusing on the importance of early training, hands-on trainings, and creating Slack channels for ongoing support. We’ll address challenges like manual data entry and technology limitations while emphasizing how regular feedback from students and staff has been crucial in refining the system. Attendees will hear about wins such as improved team collaboration, more efficient note-taking, and time savings through automated outreach and data tracking. A panel of academic advisors will share their experiences, discussing both successes and obstacles. This session will provide practical takeaways on overcoming challenges, maximizing system capabilities, and shaping the future of student support.

The session will explore various scenarios that academic advisors might face when assisting international students. We will cover topics such as Reduced Course Loads, program extensions, CPT recommendation forms, and OPT recommendation letters. The presenters will provide insights into academic advisors' responsibilities in these contexts and will offer concrete examples to illustrate these aspects of the federal regulations.

Academic advisors or other higher education practitioners are continually working and collaboratingting in the field after many years of being away from higher education research and literature. Many of our academic advising staff also hold advanced degrees in non-education fields. Continuing long-term connections to academic advising research literature or higher education research in general can promote long-standing professional development and continual collaboration between research methods and advising approaches. Hosting collaborative conversations with advising book clubs or research article reads has provided ample opportunity in the Newnan Academic Advising Center for advising staff to discuss, critique, and analyze current advising literature and how it relates to our practices with our student populations. Promoting lively discussion and engaged learning as an academic staff will promote the notion of "advising as teaching" to not only our students but amongst our professional staff. Let's read together!

How many emails are too many? More than 100? That’s what we sent to students throughout the year. To address this excess, our communication team conducted a mapping project, collaborating with representatives from our advising areas: general, pre-professional, and orientation, to build a timeline of all student email interactions.

Once the map was complete, we piloted an intervention, shifting email outreach from our comm team to students’ individual advisors. The pilot provided open, click, and response rate data while eliminating redundant messaging. This presentation outlines our mapping process, highlights our initial interventions, reviews our data, and offers suggestions for scaling this work to your student population.

Collaborate across your unit to create meaningful connections with students and conduct your own mapping initiative to enhance your student email communication.

Academic advisors play a crucial role in shaping students’ academic and professional journeys, yet many students miss out on the opportunity to study abroad due to misconceptions about affordability, academic fit, and career impact. This session will equip academic advisors with strategies to promote study abroad early in a student’s academic career, ensuring it is an intentional and accessible part of their degree plan. Participants will gain insights into how financial aid applies to study abroad programs, helping them address common financial concerns. Additionally, the session will explore best practices for collaboration between academic advisors and study abroad advisors to streamline advising efforts and maximize student participation. Attendees will leave with practical tools and resources to effectively integrate study abroad into their advising conversations, empowering students to take advantage of this transformative experience.

PHAF is a committee for individuals who engage with U-M Students interested in health professions graduate and professional programs. This group aims to work collaboratively as a means to support Pre-Health Advising practices on a decentralized campus. We are looking to help non-pre-health advisors across campus with those early conversations with pre-health students.

During this session we will cover the basics for advising student-athletes. For advisors knowledge, we will go over the NCAA requirements that a student-athlete must meet at the end of the each semester. General background knowledge for all advisors will be helpful so they understand why athletics operates the way that we do in order to keep our student-athletes in the game. The session will then cover how to communicate those requirements to student-athletes in advisors' individual advising sessions with them. Student-athletes are educated on the requirements that they must meet each semester, but to have those reinforced by our partners across campus. Finally, it will cover how the athletic department attempts to collaborate with academic advisors on campus so we can work together to find the best solution for our student-athletes.

Introverts are natural listeners, are analytical and empathetic, and are creative problem solvers. They can also become drained by social interaction and require quiet reflection and solitude to recharge. Does this sound like you? You might be an introvert in academic advising! Being introverted is so much more than being shy. It's the way that individuals respond to and interact with the environment and the people around them.

This session will provide an overview of the science and unique traits of introverts and will highlight how these talents can be 'superpowers' in academic advising. Better understanding our nature and needs as introverted advisors can lead to more impactful engagement and connection with students and colleagues.

You will leave this session with a ready-to-use AI Assistant for your unit. Together, we will walk through all the steps to create and launch an AI Assistant that will point users to existing web URLs where their questions are answered. This bot will not answer questions directly, and its knowledge will be limited to the URLs you provide. Interested staff are encouraged to register for this session at least 2 weeks in advance, and registration will close 1 week before the conference. Registered staff will be assigned light pre-work to complete before the conference, which involves preparing a spreadsheet with your desired URLs. Examples of existing AI Assistants include Psychology’s “Sigmund” and Physics’ “A.I.saac.”

This session introduces college advisors to the Sexual Citizenship course, a transformative program addressing the root causes of gender-based violence on campus. Advisors will gain a clear understanding of the course structure, enrollment process, and its long-term benefits for students.

The course equips students with essential knowledge on sexual citizenship, consent, and the social factors influencing campus culture. Through comprehensive sex education and interdisciplinary discussions, students examine how identity, institutional policies, and social norms shape experiences with gender-based violence. They also explore strategies for cultural change, including student activism and policy reform.

Advisors will learn how participation in this course can positively impact students over 4–7 years, shaping their decision-making, relationships, and engagement in creating a safer campus. By the end of this session, advisors will be prepared to guide students toward this critical learning opportunity.

Advisors often find themselves delivering difficult news to students or offering guidance on challenging situations. This session will explore strategies for navigating conversations with students that involve discomfort or uncertainty. We will also cover how to establish healthy boundaries that help you maintain a balance between professional and personal responsibilities, which can become blurred during tough conversations and situations with students.

This session will explore how academic advisors can transform the orientation experience by flipping traditional advising models, ultimately empowering students to take ownership of their academic journeys. By focusing on student-facing advising materials and communication strategies during orientation, we aim to provide a scaffolded approach that encourages self-authorship and long-term academic success. Through a combination of advisor-led sessions and student-centered resources, we will demonstrate effective methods for promoting autonomy in the development of academic plans. Attendees will engage in discussions around the benefits and challenges of a flipped advising model, identify best practices for fostering student ownership, and assess the effectiveness of current transition protocols for students entering academic programs. By the end of this session, advisors will be equipped with actionable tools and strategies to enhance their support for students during critical transitional phases.

Those of us who rely on student staff members to support a successful advising program recognize the need for strong and consistent training opportunities for those students. Balancing seasoned graduate students with undergraduates who may be stepping into their first job can be time-consuming and stressful. In Michigan Engineering we have been running an in-person, collaborative student staff training for over a decade, but in the past few years have leveled-up with the addition of asynchronous modules and collaboration with key campus partners. (Major changes in 2024 were inspired by the Science Learning Center’s ACUM presentation!) Come learn how to leverage the content around you to create your own student staff training or modify one you already have. This session will include hands-on opportunities to design your own training modules and create action items to implement going forward.

When the LSA Comprehensive Studies Program (CSP) was relocated to three separate campus locations during a year-long office renovation project, we created a working group whose express purpose was to help keep our staff socially connected. Join us to learn more about how you could implement this in your own office. We’ll walk you through our best practices and lessons learned, as well as give you a sampling of some of the activities we offered to our colleagues and a chance to brainstorm your own plans.