Session Details

A student poses the question, “What course should I take if I want to focus on full-stack development, but also incorporate user interface and web development skills?” 

In advising, it can be hard to provide meaningful advice on course content or answer discipline-specific questions like the one above as “non-experts'' advising students on courses within their disciplines. This session will discuss the process of creating and implementing a tool for course organization by subject area to supplement existing structure such as elective groups, specializations, submajors, or tracks. A step-by-step process, including keyword generation, conversations with faculty stakeholders, “course tagging,” and the creation of a course sorting tool for visualizing course tags, will all be presented as a guide for use in your own department to assist students in the selection of courses based on interests. 

LSA piloted a new AI tool for student advising use in the Winter 24 term. This tool uses the UM Maizey platform to provide students with an AI chatbot of advising information. In this session, we'll share why and how we created this tool for students. As an ever-evolving new technology, we will share the lessons we have learned from our first full term of use and how we have evolved the tool. Future directions and ideas for utilizing AI tools will also be discussed. 

Advisors have access to some fantastic technological tools to help us understand our students’ stories. However, have you dreamt of a tool that could show you all of your assigned students, their details and academic status, their progress in classes, and be able to filter that data to find students that need more support? Well, that tool is here, and it is called Advising ECoach! Join our session for a demo of Advising ECoach, a new tool that will be available to advisors on the Ann Arbor campus. We will review the dashboards, tools, and capabilities that will help you keep tabs on your students, including filtering your cohort based on a variety of options and configuring your own “watch list.” Discover how Advising ECoach can serve as your new early alert warning system so you can monitor students’ academic progress, send tailored communications to students, and help students build early momentum toward degree completion. 

Have you ever felt intimidated or uninformed about the ways in which international education impacts the role of academic advisors? If so, this workshop is for you! We will outline opportunities and barriers that both study-away students, as well as degree and non-degree seeking international students face. Additionally, we will lead participants through scenario work, and highlight best practices. Participants will leave our workshop empowered with actionable items to support both study-away and international students. 

1 in 5 college students is a caregiver. This presentation is designed to get a better understanding of the student caregiver identity, presence on campus, common barriers, and resources catered to the student caregiver population. Part 1 of this presentation will include an overview of student caregivers. Part 2 will go over a sample Student Caregiver Resource Guide that can be modified to fit your program's needs. We will also build in time for some breakout room discussions and a Q&A session. Our hope is that you will leave this session with new knowledge on student caregivers and can apply the knowledge and resources to your advising practice. 

Before its anticipated deployment, gain an insider's perspective on the conception of UM-Maizey, the AI Advising tool developed for the Engineering Advising Center (EAC). This session will meticulously guide you through each step of the creation process, with a specific emphasis on utilizing Google Drive files for data sourcing and sharing essential development insights. Acquire valuable tips and tricks that can significantly influence your approach to crafting AI tools for advising purposes, empowering you to confidently embark on the creation of your own UM-Maizey AI advising tool! 

In collaboration with the Office of Academic Innovations (OAI), the Science Learning Center (SLC) developed an adaptable online microaggression training for student-facing student staff via the Canvas platform. By using a scenario-based model, we have created a living training that is context specific to our unit with the ability to “plug and play” replacement scenarios based on the contextual work environment of alternate student staff roles (ex: Peer Advisors), and the evolving university and national needs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We aim to connect with advising units interested in adapting the training for their student staff. After attending this presentation, participants will acknowledge the need for scenario-based student staff training on microaggressions, understand the online microaggression training model developed by the SLC and OAI, and be equipped to take action steps to incorporate this training model into their student staff training programs. 

Academic advisors and staff spend the work day caring about, supporting, and guiding students. But what happens when staff simultaneously take care of elderly parents, children, or partners in addition to nurturing students and colleagues at work? Join us to learn how our affinity group of staff who care for elderly parents formed a deep bond and campus community to offset the stress and loneliness of caretaking while staying present and focused during our day job. 

Many students are fortunate enough to enter college with AP credits that could enable them to graduate early. However, there are challenges that these students face that impact their efforts and can result in delaying their graduation or incurring overall higher costs to degree as they may spend more time being charged upper-level tuition. Most current first-year programs do not have tailored support for these students. Given that one-third of the incoming Engineering Undergraduate class falls within this population, we conducted a focus group to learn more about the challenges these students face, what resources have helped them, and what other supports they may need. In this session, we will be reviewing these findings and participating in a worksheet and brainstorming activity to help us think through how we can identify and support this population regardless of the school or college we serve. 

In the fall of 2023, CEW+ introduced a pilot financial well-being program intended to empower the UM community through a series of self-reflective workshops. The Financial Empowerment Initiative (FEI) was born. The pilot was a collaborative effort guided by a task-force of over 20 cross-campus entities led by UM alum and financial therapist, Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, LMSW. The FEI workshops provide a self-reflective opportunity to bridge a gap often left with more traditional financial literacy programming: Understanding the emotions surrounding money relationships. Reflecting on the underlying psychological, social, and generational roots lying behind individual choices and financial decision-making processes encourages participants to become empowered and take charge of their own financial well-being. The UM corps of academic advisors are valued campus partners who can utilize the FEI series as a referral tool to help students who may benefit from building awareness and achieving confidence in their financial well-being. 

By using P2P at the start of an initiative, participants will learn how to shape together all the elements that will determine the success of their goals/purpose/initiatives. The participants in an abbreviated format will begin by generating a shared purpose (i.e., why the work is important to each participant and the larger community- using the Nine whys approach). All additional elements—principles, participants, structure, and practices—are designed to help achieve the purpose. By shaping these five elements together, participants clarify how they can organize themselves to adapt creatively and scale up for success. 

LSA has implemented a new system for determining student academic standing. Gone are the days of 10+ academic standing options, as are the days of calling these standings "academic probation." LSA students can now be on one of four academic standings. Using a stepped approach, based solely off of cumulative GPA, students and advisors will know the requirements for Good Standing before the term ends. In addition to these new academic standings, the Newnan Advising Student Success Team and Comprehensive Studies Program teams are using defined academic indicators to send additional outreach to students we believe would benefit from additional academic support. In this session, our teams will talk about how we are supporting students on the new academic standing notices, what is required to return to Good Standing, our proactive outreach to students with identified academic indicators, and our plans to expand this work. 

Join Melissa Vert (Director, ONSF) and Janelle Fosler (Fellowships & Grants Coordinator, II) in this symposium session as they challenge the common misconception that competitive scholarships and fellowships are reserved for exceptional, top-tier students. In the Pixar film "Ratatouille", critic-turned-advocate Anton Ego declared, "Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere." Drawing inspiration from Anton, Melissa and Janelle will lead a discussion of the benefits of students applying for scholarships and fellowships, even when not awarded. They will share information on a variety of opportunities and resources on campus and lead a conversation on the best ways to reach and support students from all corners of campus. 

Credit momentum refers to students in the first year taking and completing an average of fifteen credits in their first fall and winter terms. Research conducted at U-M shows that first-year momentum is associated with higher graduation rates; furthermore, to date we have not found statistical evidence of credit momentum having a negative impact. This session is designed to provide advisors with information about the benefits of credit momentum and serve as a space to workshop how to have conversations about momentum with students. We will begin the session by highlighting our research about momentum’s benefits that can inform conversations with students as well as discussing the barriers to momentum. The rest of the time will be spent with advisors working together to practice applying messages that encourage students to take ~15 credits and brainstorming additional strategies to support students’ successful completion of 30 credits in their first year. 

As the landscape of college athletics continues to evolve; from NIL and the transfer portal, to TV contracts and conference realignment, the student-athlete experience has seemingly become even more niche and in the spotlight. In this session, we aim to discuss why this student population is considered “unique” and how we have adapted our support practices in an effort to keep up with the evolution that is college athletics. You will hear about our baseline advising practices featuring individualized support programming and NCAA guardrails that impact their day to day. We will explore the elite student-athlete, undergraduate/graduate transfers, and the student-athletes with professional sport aspirations as well as discuss how we navigate these experiences with our campus partners to support these student-athletes on their academic journey.