Maithreyi Gopalan is an Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy at Penn State. She is also a Social Science Research Institute co-funded faculty member. She earned a doctorate from the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs from Indiana University, Bloomington. She engages in interdisciplinary, policy-relevant, social science research exploring the causes and consequences of racial and socioeconomic disparities in broadly defined student outcomes using experimental and quasi-experimental research methods. She has applied psychological insights to analyze social and educational policy issues affecting child and adolescent development. More recently, in a new line of research, she is exploring the impact of child and adolescent health on subsequent human development. Specifically, she is examining the impact of health policies on children’s development and the short- and long-term consequences of adverse adolescent mental health on subsequent educational attainment and life course trajectories. She hopes to better engage with a healthy disparities lens to this line of research. 

Invited Speaker from The Mentor: Innovative Scholarship on Academic Advising

The presenter will discuss his recent (2020) article in The Mentor, "Revisiting Plato’s Phaedrus: Rhetoric and Storytelling in Academic Advising", its basis in the 2018 book The Power of Story: Narrative Theory and Academic Advising", and will reflect on future directions that humanities-based advising might take.

Would you like better informed advisees and more effective individual advising appointments? These are likely outcomes when conducting a well-planned group pre-advising workshop (Folsom, Yoder & Joslin, 2015). Conducting pre-advising workshops is a form of both intentional and proactive advising theories and is aligned with Lowenstein’s advising-as-teaching model (Lowenstein, 2005). Focusing on foundational knowledge during these sessions allows advisers to better “support student development and exploration within an advising setting” (Kraft-Terry & Kau, 2019). Our pre-advising workshop was created with two goals in mind. First, to teach students how to prepare for their one-on-one advising appointments. Second, to assist professional and faculty advisers by reducing the need to present repetitive information and to provide students with a working knowledge of the tools.

Academic Advisers and Career Services professionals share a common goal– to support and address students’ vocational interests and concerns within an educational framework (Ledwith, 2014). Often, there is much overlap between these two independent offices. However, collaboration among advising and career services varies widely depending on institutional type and structure. With increasing student retention concerns and limited operating budgets, it is imperative that strong collaboration exists across these two units. This session will explore the collaborative efforts between Academic Advising and Career Services on our campus. During the session, we will share examples of our partnership including programming and events. We will also provide opportunities for brainstorming ways to better collaborate with advising and career professionals on your campus. Attendees will leave the session with ideas and suggestions that they can implement on their campuses.

This research-driven presentation invites participants to discover the numerous benefits of intentional outdoor educational experiences and how academic outdoor recreation opportunities may be integrated into any degree program. We will focus on three major benefits of these experiences: student wellness, student engagement, and professional preparation applicable to all disciplines and professions. Participants will hear directly from students about the many ways in which Penn State outdoor recreation experiences enhanced their personal, academic, and professional development. We will share resources so advising professionals throughout the commonwealth may encourage involvement in outdoor educational experiences. Our highly interactive session will have an upbeat “summer camp” vibe to illustrate how meaningful learning objectives may be achieved through pedagogies centered on inclusivity, community, and student development.

Penn State was one of the first academic institutions in the world to create a minor in entrepreneurship housed in its College of Engineering. The program produced its first graduates in 2003. By 2015, more than 535 undergraduate students representing many colleges at the university had received the minor. How did these students do in their careers compared to their peers? This talk will break down the research on the long-term impacts of Entrepreneurial Education.

Invited Speaker from The Mentor: Innovative Scholarship on Academic Advising

This session will focus on approaches to academic advising in programs that offer curricular flexibility, encourage student exploration, and promote interdisciplinarity along with self-directed learning. Using the ship of Theseus paradox as a thought experiment will provide a conceptual framework to explore the challenges and opportunities for students for whom curricular change is the rule and not the exception. Such changes are positive steps in a student’s learning and development, rather than signs of indecision or immaturity. As such, the paradox is useful in helping advisers and mentors think about the student’s curriculum as it evolves and changes over time. The talk will conclude with some design thinking tools and techniques that advisers can use to support student development and success.

Penn State's Office of Student Aid’s Academic College Initiative (ACI) advisers will present and host a discussion on how proactive outreach leads to student financial and academic success. The ACI will review common barriers that students face within their academic career, focusing on four main objectives:

Anyone who has taken a breath has emotional baggage and it goes with us on every journey throughout our life. All aspects of who we are (moments, conflicts, celebrations, biases, etc.) join us in all our relationships, including our careers. We all carry baggage as academic advisers, but how can we manage this? Or better yet, how do we get rid of the negative aspects of this baggage altogether? This session will look at these questions as we reframe our conversation about our mental health and begin to understand how to utilize proper advising techniques to ensure our negative baggage stays at the door as we learn to cope with it effectively. This session will conclude with a sharing of ideas around this topic and how all of us can encourage such efforts.

Invited Speaker from The Mentor: Innovative Scholarship on Academic Advising

This presentation explores the application of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy to academic advising. In Sartre’s worldview, we are born into a meaningless universe, forcing us to create our identity, craft our values, choose our future, and accept the full weight of responsibility for everything we do. This philosophy resonates with many college students for whom their time in college marks a transition into adulthood and independence. Students are confronted with important choices about class selection, major choice, career interests, values, goals, identity, and overall life trajectory. Existentialist advising places the freedom and responsibility of students center stage and creates an advising relationship where students are encouraged to make authentic choices. While existentialist advising shares similar themes with other advising approaches, it offers unique and important insights for advising practice.

Effective use of adviser’s time is not only essential to building a strong and positive rapport between adviser and advisee, but essential to avoiding burnout. How can advisers utilize their time and energy effectively using existing institutional tools and resources that are independent of one another to assist in acclimating to a new higher educational landscape spurred on by a pandemic? The presenter will discuss how existing online tools and resources have been re-imagined and reintegrated into their department’s residential advising model to lessen adviser workload and assist in cultivating self-reliant and productive advisee. The presentation will cover aspects surrounding advising philosophy, principles of student interaction and engagement, and will provide examples of useful tools, resources, and strategies in hopes of empowering advisers to get back to what they do best, advise!

As the LionPATH Development and Maintenance Organization (LDMO) embarks on a project to modernize the LionPATH Class Search, we are seeking adviser feedback. Part of the academic advising process is assisting students with generating a class schedule and the Class Search is a tool often used in that process. Advisers interact with students early in their academic careers during orientation and at this time, the Class Search is often introduced. As students progress, the needs of a search tool may change as they may be more interested in aspects of discovery within Penn State’s robust course offerings. We would like to identify ways in which the Class Search and related Find Classes tools can best support students as they look for classes that help discover personal interests and meet academic requirements.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many academic advising units were forced to leave their physical offices and adapt to working remotely. As the world began to return to the office, our advising unit opted to stay remote permanently. But how do we maintain engagement among staff when we’re all at a distance? This presentation addresses: data supporting the prominence of remote work in higher education and the need to stay engaged at a distance; the methods that are utilized within our unit to practice engagement; and important factors involved in building a culture of engagement. Our goal is to provide an understanding of the different ways that engagement can be fostered in a remote environment, and why this matters in a world that’s shifting away from in-person office settings. To prepare for the session:

Please have your cameras on.

If you have a Penn State login, click the following link and “join” the public Yammer community – “PSU DUS Conference – Remote Engagement for Staff”

Invited Speakers from The Mentor: Innovative Scholarship on Academic Advising

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore primary role advisers’ views of college athletes and the athletic department at their institutions. One hundred and fifty-five academic advisers at NCAA Division I Power 5 institutions answered an open-ended survey question asking for general thoughts about advising student-athletes and working with athletic departments. Our analysis of the data suggests that academic advisers link athletes’ academic performance to the culture and organization of athletic departments. Specifically, advisers believe (a) college athlete academic motivation varies by sport, (b) time demands make athletes prioritize athletics over academic success, (c) athletic departments enable athletes, and (d) athletic departments are siloed from academic advising. These findings suggest that supporting college athletes involves not only combating negative stereotypes, but also building and repairing relationships between academic advisers and athletic departments.

The role of an academic adviser transforms daily. They balance two worlds on campus - (1) serving as student advocates and (2) being the gatekeepers of academic practices and protocols. There are moments that practitioners want to “Sashay Away'' due to the difficult challenges they face in their roles. Advising practitioners want to “Make it Work'', with their advisees but sometimes due to the institutional rules - it might be impossible. Causing the adviser to channel their inner Heidi Klum and say, “And that means you’re out, Auf Wiedersehen.” The struggle is felt globally for academic guides - and with the pandemic #AdvisorBurnout is real and becoming a problem affecting the well-being and retention of our industry. Join the conversation because you “Wanna Be On Top!”

This presentation will look at what data and research tell us about the impact of financial barriers on students and share recommendations from experts on how to overcome these challenges. We will discuss services the Center offers based on this research, as well as some quotes/testimonies from students who interact with the Center. The presentation will provide an opportunity for advisers to share their experiences and concerns and aims to present ways academic advisers can utilize the Financial and Life Skills Center to contribute to student success.

Invited Speaker from The Mentor: Innovative Scholarship on Academic Advising

The assessment movement in higher education has expanded from academic disciplinary programs to extracurricular and co-curricular student learning resulting from the total college experience. Included in this expansion is the assessment of student learning resulting from academic advising. But how do we know the processes and methodologies used in our assessments are the most appropriate and most effective to use? This session, based on the The Mentor 2020 article by Robbins, involves key considerations regarding the validity of assessment process for academic advising in higher education. Participants will leave this session prepared to ask critical questions to determine if their assessment efforts are appropriate and whether they result in useful outcome data on which to base decisions and make changes. Stakeholder learning as a result of participation in the assessment process is also considered.

Larry Pages wakes up from a dream with the idea to download the entire web and in turn creates Google. Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star newspaper because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas” and then drove an animation studio bankrupt before moving to California and beginning Disney. There are so many other ‘famous’ people that did not feel like they were good enough to be successful but needed someone to tell them they have what it takes. Sometimes all it takes is a small reminder of encouragement to get someone through the moment they are struggling in and into a place to be successful. At the end of the day, I just want you to know…You’ve got this!

The demographic of college students is changing with noticeable increases in first-generation college students (FGCS). At Penn State Berks, the student body is representative of these increases with FGCS making up 37% of total Fall 2018 enrollment. Additionally, the pandemic has created a gap in student readiness for college and their willingness to seek out information and new experiences. This shift in student needs necessitates interventions that adequately serve these students and support retention efforts. At Berks, the Lion’s Roar Newsletter serves to support clear, concise, and easily accessible information for the campus community. This workshop will examine the development of the Lion’s Roar Newsletter with an emphasis on how the newsletter is organized over the academic year, the roles of committee members, and the evolution of the newsletter over time.

The higher education profession is competitive and climbing the career ladder can seem like a never-ending battle through “The Adviser Games.” When promotions are few and far between, it's easy for colleagues to battle for the top prize, while losing focus and professional altitude. Practitioners face challenges of trying to understand the future of their trajectory while working through their personal struggles with their superior’s decision. Gain new self-awareness of how to professionally channel emotional energies while navigating your vertical and horizontal career mobility. Join two former contenders as they discuss their struggle to find peace in their advising center after a challenging scramble for acceptance, balance, respect, and transformation.

Science and Prehealth advisers have developed partnerships across disciplines and departments to provide exceptional advising services to students. Most recently we have paired with the Eberly College of Science Office of Diversity and Inclusion and the department of Bioethics. Medicine/healthcare is a multidisciplinary field with many required competencies (cultural competence, service orientation, ethical responsibility, critical thinking, scientific inquiry, etc.). Our partnerships allow us to better prepare students for the expectations of their professional training programs like medical, dental, and physician assistant school.

Invited Speaker from The Mentor: Innovative Scholarship on Academic Advising

In my 2018 paper in The Mentor, Philosopher-Kings and Academic Advisers: Learning from The Republic, I use the literary form of the dialogue as a way to explore the insights Plato has into human nature, knowledge, and society and how they might apply to advising. In particular, I explore the nature of advising (its aims and purpose) and the agents of advising (who advisers should be) based on the philosophy advanced in the text. Through Plato and a fictional interlocutor, I work through these ideas and conclude that advisers should be like philosopher-kings: lovers of wisdom and deeply involved in the decision-making of our professional world. This has important implications for advisers today, especially as technological trends in higher education provide less and less room for human wisdom when guiding students.

Invited Speakers from The Mentor: Innovative Scholarship on Academic Advising

Colleges and universities use academic recovery programs as one strategy to improve student retention. Relying on interview data with mid-level academic advising administrators who coordinate academic recovery programs, this session describes key elements of those programs and challenges advising administrators face in implementing or managing student success. Specifically, academic recovery programs rely on campus collaboration, administering policy, and supplemental programming to help students succeed. This concludes by discussing implications for practice and suggestions for improving academic probation and recovery programs.

Higher education professionals across the world are asking themselves the same question: what is the most effective way to communicate with students? The overload of information in the digital age has increased the issues of effective communication. Our panel will discuss best practices for engaging learners broken down by groups including adult learners, military students, students with disabilities and traditional ages students as well explore research in reference to effective communication.

Panelists:

• Carrie Egnosak, Penn State World Campus Academic Adviser
• Maggie Eimers, Penn State World Campus Academic Adviser
• Maggie Kwok, Penn State World Campus Disability Coordinator
• Andrea Woerman, Penn State World Campus Military Academic Adviser
• Meggan Macdonald, Penn State University Park IST Academic Adviser
• Bill Zimmerman, Lecturer, Bellisario College of Communications

This presentation will explore ways that advisers and student resource offices on campus can work together to provide comprehensive support to Underrepresented students. We will provide strategies for increasing collaboration of these offices as well as provide research that explores the benefits of these partnerships.