Event
The First Annual CSU Student Success Network Conference
- September 25 - October 16, 2020
Overview
The first CSU Student Success Network Conference is a virtual conference designed by and for middle leaders and students in the CSU. Its purpose is to advance equitable student success by providing faculty, staff, administrators, and students with an annual statewide opportunity to share actionable research, evidence, and practices for use or adaptation on our own campuses. The conference builds relationships and knowledge exchange across the CSU. Over the next few months, the CSU Student Success Network will continue to explore ways to address the new issues facing our students, institutions, and system, with a focus on the implications and opportunities for equity. Our Conference team remains committed to providing learning opportunities for sharing your work within the Network and to serving as a resource for the CSU during these times of disruption and transition.< Building a Student-Ready Campus flips the college-readiness conversation in higher education away from focusing on student preparation for college and toward preparing colleges for students. This means shifting away from institutional structures that are based on deficit models and what students lack and toward learning environments that meet students where they are and remove barriers that hinder their engagement and success. For more information see Becoming a Student-Ready College (AAC&U, 2016), by Tia Brown McNair et al.
CSU faculty, staff, administrators, and students are involved in a wide range of efforts to support student learning, engagement, progression, and completion—including eliminating developmental math and rethinking how we provide advising. In the process, many of us are transforming our campuses into more student-ready institutions, but what does this mean in practice for our classrooms, programs, and campuses? Importantly, what impact does being “student-ready” have on students? During this conference, middle leaders from across the CSU will share evidence, perspectives, and experiences in sessions that are designed for active learning and tangible applications. Our conversations with peers will challenge us, inspire us, and provide us with actionable practices to draw from back at our home institution.
QUESTIONS?
Contact UsLearning Outcomes
Equity
- Increase understanding of equity opportunities and challenges.
Knowledge
- Learn about practical, evidence-based examples of student success efforts.
Relationships
- Build relationships with colleagues at your campus and from across the CSU who are involved in campus-level efforts supporting equitable student success; identify connections among student success efforts across the CSU.
more info
Registration for the 2020 conference is now closed. If you would like to be considered for the wait list, please email Larissa Mercado-López.
PROGRAM & SCHEDULE
September 25
This plenary is a co-sponsored session between the CSU Student Success Network and the Cal State Student Association.
Speakers
California State University, Fullerton
The ability to close equity-gaps requires a keen understanding of ourselves and others’ by prioritizing empathy: listening and hearing the complex needs of the communities we serve and responding from empathy and awareness of those needs. The goal of this presentation is to inspire and encourage the development of evidence-based, empathy-infused co-curricular programs that play an instrumental role in supporting campus-wide equity-gap closing efforts. This presentation, titled: Evidence, Equity, and the Role of Empathy in Everyday Practice to Support Student Success, is intended for staff and faculty who are interested in learning how to take an empathic approach to drive effective data-driven equitable program and service design. Our ability to recognize individuals’ lived experience, engage our emotional and social intelligence, and have the capacity to move toward action on the behalf of others is a vital part of equity work. Therefore, participants will learn about three types of empathy: 1) cognitive, 2) affective, and 3) compassionate empathy, and how empathy is a gateway to insight, creativity, trust building, and a deep sense of connection. Through reflective activities, participants will also learn about the skills necessary to demonstrate empathy and explore how they can apply empathy in their respective areas.
Speakers
California State University, Sacramento
In this session, we demonstrate how a paper-based, face-to-face advising system moved quickly online in response to the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders and campus closure. We will walk through how advisors use a combination of an online scheduling and tracking system (EAB), previously paper-based advising forms, CMS, and Zoom to deliver advising services. Through a hands-on demonstration of how we make use of online resources – some we developed in Liberal Studies and some existing on CSU campuses – we hope to empower other programs to adopt technological resources and initiate changes to increase access to advising for students.
Speakers
San Diego State University
The Transfer Student Outreach Alliance (TSOA) focuses on earlier transfer student engagement into critical student support services, Academic advising, honors communities, and a connection to high-impact practices. Through cross-divisional partnerships, TSOA strives to ease the transition of new fall transfer student admits prior to new transfer orientation, and works toward building a culture of excellence for both new and continuing transfer students. Participants will learn practices to maximize cross-divisional partnerships that provide a student-centered approach to transfer student support and engagement, particularly during the first year of transition.
Speakers
Humboldt State University
How can students rewrite the landscape of higher education? In this session, current and former members of the editorial staff that annually produces Toyon Multilingual Journal of Literature and Art, Humboldt State University’s oldest student-run literary publication, present a model of student-run publishing that centers student voice in the project of addressing the inequities that persist in higher education. We share concrete, data-driven examples of how students have successfully taken up this work in the local context of Toyon and offer suggestions for how these practices might be adapted for other public-facing projects. We identify several interpersonal and institutional factors that allow this work to succeed in its equity objectives. We end the session with concluding thoughts on how supporting students in publishing projects can help colleges move towards becoming more equitable, student-ready, and socially just campuses.
This session is relevant to a range of higher education professionals, as it is inclusive of any public-facing rhetorical project that has the potential to involve students in forwarding equity. Examples include journals, zines, informal publishing, university press marketing, departmental and cultural newsletters, and student-run social media storylines. Putting university communications in the hands of students offers many opportunities for learning and professional development and is also full of potential for achieving institutional change.
Participants in this session will have the chance to reflect on opportunities for student-led publishing projects on their own campuses, across units and offices in student and academic affairs. Be prepared to write, reflect, and collaborate!
Speakers
California State University, Los Angeles
Traditionally, parent programs have treated family support members as minor nuisances that needed to be dealt with or kept busy while the real work and knowledge was shared with the students, alone. At Cal State LA, we believe that no CSU student goes to – or more importantly, finishes – college on their own. Parent Academy, our signature family support program, is a continually growing and evolving series that seeks to make family support members active participants in their student’s success, not just casual sideline observers. Through collaboration with multiple campus entities and family support members, Cal State LA is aiming to transform the first year experience.
Speakers
October 16th
San Diego State University
Equally as important as cultivating environments where first-generation students can thrive, is creating a student ready college that focuses on collaborative partnerships. This session will highlight how institutions can begin to create environments of inclusive excellence and success for first-generation college students by developing effective partnerships.
Speakers
California State University, STEM VISTA, California State University, Chancellor’s Office
The CSU STEM VISTA (CSV) program utilizes asset-based, culturally validating models in working across campuses—in colleges, career centers, advising centers and more—to eliminate inequities in graduation rates of historically under-resourced students pursuing STEM degrees. While traditional education models operate under the assumption that only certain types of knowledge are valuable and can lead to academic and career success, CSV seeks to shift away from this perspective towards viewing historically under-resourced students as experts in their own experience and as valuable epistemic resources. This shift is encouraged by CSV’s incorporation and dissemination of Dr. Tara J. Yosso’s community cultural wealth model which focuses on the aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistant capitals that students possess before entering college. Utilizing this asset-based framework of community cultural wealth helps us create spaces in which the “non-traditional” skills/talents/wisdom/knowledge that historically under-resourced students possess are valued as providing legitimate pathways to academic success. In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to equip themselves with the knowledge and tools to embrace various forms of cultural capital, center personhood and relationship at the core of learning, and therein promote student engagement and success. This will be accomplished through deep reflection, discussion, and exploration regarding our roles in expanding the types of cultural capital that are valued by academia.
Speakers
California State University, Fullerton
This session will report on a pilot test of equity-minded pedagogical practices on class-level equity gaps, as measured by differences in grade point averages between students in historically under-represented groups and those who are not. A set of 3 empirically supported pedagogical and curricular practices were deployed by 9 faculty members across 3 colleges, involving over 1000 students. Impacts on equity gaps and overall grade point averages, as compared against matched control groups, were examined. Implications regarding scalability, sustainability, and concerns regarding rigor and workload will also be discussed.
Speakers
California State University, San Marcos
Learn about how FYP implemented an academic recovery, student success program for various academic probation student populations (first-year, second-year, and transfer student populations) through course content focused upon strength-based approaches to resiliency. Leave inspired to create your own academic recovery plan at your own campus to support one of the most “at-promise” student populations.
Speakers
California State University, Chancellor’s Office
Service-learning (SL) has long been recognized as a vehicle for embedding social justice themes and exploration into teaching and learning. The use of technology to increase access to SL and other high-impact practices (HIPs), particularly for students from traditionally underrepresented groups, can support campus efforts to close equity gaps, decrease time to degree and increase completion rates. CalState S4, an online platform, offers a centralized method of seeking placements where all students have equal access to opportunities, provides faculty with a catalog of vetted partners to connect with and the ability to deliver and collect reflection assignments and surveys. Its reporting functionality enables the production and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data on student learning outcomes. Most recently, the S4 development team has been focusing on the use of inclusive and human-centered language to ensure it reflects our values of inclusion, equity, diversity and self-empowerment. This has included the implementation of preferred names for students, as well as vocabularies used to describe a partner’s organization type, areas of focus and populations served. We invite you to join us in this interactive and reflective session to find out more about our work and how it is enhancing community-engaged learning and other HIPs on CSU campuses. Participants will explore the use of language and how technology can be a catalyst for increasing awareness and understanding of inclusivity and equity-based practices.