Transforming the Academic Advising Experience

Transforming the Academic Advising Experience will introduce the idea of purpose-driven academic advising while leaning into demands to meet the current career and employability needs of students. Participants will explore current trends in student motivation to attend college and learn about exemplary practices in approaches to academic advising from 2- year and 4- year institutions. In addition, participants will consider academic advising as an integrated activity and utilize this perspective to review their own curricular and co-curricular advising connections. Drawing on Gardner Institute scholarship and work, this session will help participants create plans for action associated with improving advising in the first and second-years of college.

Transforming Curricular Structures

Far too often, the curriculum is unintentionally designed in ways that prevent many students – often first-generation and low-income students – from ever progressing in their discipline and even college. During this 6-hour workshop, participants will engage with colleagues to examine systems, curricular complexity, policies, and practices related to programs of study and design a plan for improved outcomes based on evidence. Particular emphasis will be placed on course and curricular structures that students experience during the first two years (60 semester credits) of college.

Transforming the Gateway Course Experience: Redesigning for Improved Teaching and Learning in the Gateway Course Experience

This track is designed to support faculty and staff who teach or will be teaching gateway courses, which comprise a significant portion of the foundational postsecondary experience for students. Gateway courses, once termed barrier courses, are, by definition, often foundational (lower-division or developmental courses that serve as a pathway to credit-bearing courses); high risk (courses that yield higher rates of D, F, W, or Incomplete grades); and have high enrollments within, as well as across, sections (as defined by the institution) (Koch, 2017). Participants will be guided to apply what they learn in the track, as well as in the related concurrent sessions, to create a personal plan for course (re)design.

Transforming the Second College Year: Designing for Student Success 

The second year of college is often overlooked as a pivotal period in the college success and completion journey. Many educators erroneously believe that once students succeed in the first-year, they have it “all figured out.”  Gardner Institute research shows that this is far from the truth. Drawing on scholarship such as Helping Sophomores Succeed (Jossey-Bass 2010), this track will provide information on assessment strategies, policies, and practices that institutions can intentionally connect the second-year experience with their first-year efforts so students can maintain momentum and thrive during the second year of college and, ultimately, beyond. 

Transforming the First College Year: Designing a First Year for the Students You Serve

This workshop will ask you to examine critically the experiences you are currently offering first-year students. How well is your first year working, for which students, and why? That is the foundation of your current institutional story. Facilitators will invite you to grapple with key questions and assist you in developing concrete ideas to improve the various components of your institution’s first year.

You will be asked to do some advance preparation in writing before this workshop by examining certain questions the facilitators will pose. This will enable you to take maximum advantage of what will transpire in the workshop. You will be provided information and inspiration from the facilitators and other participants. Pedagogies used will be both didactic and discussion based.

This workshop is designed to be meaningful for different types of educators—faculty, administrators, student affairs, and student success practitioners—who come from all levels of prior experience.

Transforming the Transfer Experience
Drawing on scholarship from the Gardner Institute’s recently published book, The Transfer Experience A Handbook for Creating a More Equitable and Successful Postsecondary System and other national sources, track participants will deepen their understanding of ways to create and sustain transfer-sending or transfer-receptive cultures at their own institutions. Positive transfer cultures at institutions are essential to persistence and completion of transfer students. The participants will be guided to apply what they learn during the track to create a set of plans for one or more innovative transfer transformation actions that they will pursue at their own institutions following the event.