On Track for Success: A Panel Discussion with UConn's Student Support Programs

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Greetings everyone and welcome. I see everyone logging in now. Thank you so much.

Welcome to tonight's student success panel. My name is Jennifer Griffin. I'm one of the associate directors of Office of Undergraduate Admissions, and I'll be serving as your moderator for tonight's panel. We are thrilled to see so many family members logging in, I know from across the country and around the world, so thank you for spending some time with us tonight. I do have a few housekeeping items that I just want to run through before I turn it over to our Yukon Rock Stars.

Here who are with us this evening. So couple housekeeping items. We cannot see you. Hopefully you can see us and hear us well, but we cannot see or hear you. But there is a chat available as you can see, Umm, hopefully on your screen. So please feel free to use that to submit your questions. We'll be going through questions tonight and doing our best to answer them for you. Umm, we are recording, so we will send.

A copy of this probably within the next 48 hours. So you will be able to go back and review anything that we're saying tonight or family members couldn't be with you and they'll have that copy for you. And if you have any specific questions about your students, very specific scenarios, please feel free to reach out to our office of Undergraduate admissions directly. Our office is open from Monday through Friday, 8 to 5.

And we'd be happy to walk through those specific student scenarios with you. So thank you so much again. And I am going to try to refrain from doing all the talking and turn it over to our panelists. I'm going to have them introduce themselves and their titles and just to talk a little bit about the departments that they're here representing tonight. So I'm going to start with you, Dave, if you can tell us a little bit about yourself.

And who you're representing tonight?

Great. Thanks Jen and welcome everyone from all over. I see we have folks from literally all over the place. So it's great to see everybody logging on and saying hello in the chat. My name is David, last name is we met and I oversee a program that deals directly with first year students called first year, first year programs, Learning communities, the academic achievement.

Center and Innovation zone, maker space. So our programs deal directly with the transition from high school to college and is quite multifaceted. But I think I'll stop there and explain later all that we do.

So I'm turning it over to Micah, I believe.

Excellent. Thanks David and Micah.

Thanks. Yeah, thanks, David. Thanks, Jen. And yes, hello to everyone. Yeah, it's amazing to see them still coming in all over the country. It's really impressive to see this. My name is Micah Human. My pronouns are he, him, his. I am director of the Academic Center for exploratory students and director of the major experience. So we'll get into all those and what they do and what we provide for all of our students and any student, to be honest, around the world. So we're here to work with everybody and support everybody. Thanks, John.

Excellent. And Kristen?

Yeah, so hello everybody. My name is Kristen Soprano. I am a career coach here in the Center for Career Development and similar to as Dave mentioned, I will go into much more detail on what our department does a little bit later in the conversation. I am also a you kind of love myself, so I have the the through and through Husky pride of of bleeding blue and getting to experience this university as both a student and a professional staff member, which makes my job even more rewarding.

Be able to help students like yours as they navigate their their time here at the university as well.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Kristen. So we're going to dive right into questions because that's what we're here to do tonight, right. So I am going to start with David. I always hear this question often particularly from parents because maybe some of the students are more familiar with the term learning communities, but learning communities may not have been around when if parents were college bound. So can you tell us a little bit about?

What learning communities are and how does a student even apply to a learning community?

Sure. That's a great, great question. And you can for a number of years I've been at UConn for 30 years now and we've been really working hard to figure out ways to help students transition and get to know all that you kind of has to offer and learning communities is a vehicle for students to to live together in.

A community that's based on either their major or entity disciplinary interest. So what that means is students can join and are we'll have lots of opportunities to sign up for a community based on their interests. So whether that be a business major, a nursing major, engineering a whole, almost all schools and colleges, Fine Arts across the board. So if they're interested in those kind of majors, they can sign up to live.

Building.

In a learning community directed by a faculty member, supported by grad students and student leaders and immediately have an opportunity to explore that field. We also have interdisciplinary learning communities and those are in fields like the environment or public health or innovation. And we have almost 22 living learning communities and a number of other communities that are non residential.

So really the idea behind a learning community is giving students really a chance to to build a community around an interest that they have and also for the Yukon to provide some opportunities that may be students don't often know. So for example, we have a human rights learning community and Yukon has a phenomenal human rights institute. So immediately students are institute to invited in or introduced.

To the the faculty experts that are studying human rights around the world. So it's just a great opportunity to jumpstart your academic career now, to sign up. It's for a living learning community. That will be when students sign up for their housing, they'll have a drop down menu, they choose which learning community they'd like to join and they select that learning community. So in short, that's how it all works.

Excellent. Thank you, David. I'm going to now toss over to Micah and Micah, who I consider one of our advisors extraordinaires. So what if your student doesn't know? What if you show up at UConn and you're not sure what you want to major in, what happens?

Yeah, what happens? Well, I'll even take a step further. I mean, I think every student coming into UConn, even if you have your mindset on a major, you should be taking the time to explore. That's what college is about, this opportunity to come in and explore. So if you don't know what you want to do or you're interested in 20 different majors or you keep changing from day-to-day what your major is interested, you come in and you come to the Aces office, right? So we're going to have advisors. We meet with every single student. Like I said, some students come in to choose exploration and they come into aces.

But even if you don't come in that way, you can still come in and meet with an aces advisor. But we have all these resources on the major experience, which is our website that you all can access now. Tme.uconn.edu, I'm sure I can put it up there and just a second for everybody.

And on their students can start exploring our majors today.

Right. So we have tools on there for anyone to use. You don't have to be UConn student right. Maybe you don't like me saying that out loud before they have said they're gonna come to you comma. But we want we really push exploration. We think every student coming in should be exploring all their options because here's my honest opinion and I I question and challenge students this on all the time. I'll ask students when I'm in those first year experience courses and given the presentation and see how many of you know 100% you're in the exact right major for you. Always get a few hands coming up because they know I'm going about to question them. And my next question is well.

Do you know every major on our campus and what they're about?

No one knows that. And my point being not that they're in the wrong major, but they owe it to themselves to take the time to explore all the majors on our campus to make sure it's the right one for them. If they come back to that one, they'll be more sure than ever before that they're in the right major. So really, I push that that. I just think every student coming to UConn should be taking the time to explore. Jen.

But we can't hear you.

Yep.

Now can you hear me? Testing. Sorry, welcome. And we've only been doing this for what, 2 1/2 three years now. Thank you. Micah. I was just going to kind of give a plug to if you haven't had the opportunity to get onto campus for our fall campus visit days. If you have the opportunity to visit us in the spring, Micah does an amazing presentation. How major is your major that I like he just said if even if you know, if you think you know, you still may not know.

So I I send everyone his way because it really is fantastic and it and it debunks a lot of myths too that I think are out there. Next question for Kristen. So can you just talk a little bit about what services the Center for Career Development offers and and also to maybe specifically in that in that first year too maybe an overall picture but I know some of our families here are thinking you know they're thinking.

Rear right away.

Yeah, and I'll just, I'll just give some, you know piggyback your sentiments of praise for Micah there with the how major is my major presentation, it is wonderful and and one that everybody in our office still continues to.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Save about so yes I I will second that advisor extraordinaire title. But yeah so the Center for career development you know to kind of talk about what what David was talking about before in you know how how you're how his area is helping students transition really from high school to college. My department what we really do is start to help the students think about transferring from college to life beyond Yukon. So when you think Center for career development people often think of it's.

It's just drops. That's all we do. But we really do so much more and we yes we help with the you know connecting students to job helping students become job ready as we like to call career ready. And really understanding what that means by helping them understand how their various different experiences and skills translate into the the world beyond UConn essentially or some like to call it the you know the the quote UN quote real world and help them understand a little bit more about the competencies that they're developing here during their.

I'm at UConn.

Will also help a little bit more with the job preparation process. Um grad school application and search process, interviewing, resume writing professional documents, networking, LinkedIn profiles, really anything that you really think that goes along with establishing your own professional brand, right? Understanding what it means to have your own brand and how to market it and sell it and and put it out there the same way you know these big corporations spend so much time.

And and and and their own marketing and and their brand right to really help students understand that. You know, we do that through multiple different avenues in our department whether that be through programming, webinars, classroom presentations. We offer private career coaching appointments with career coaches like myself. We also have a team of 36 student interns who work, who work in our department as well and and about half of those student interns.

Our specially trained on being able to provide peer mentoring services to students as well. So helping with practice interviews, helping with resume critiques, helping with presentations.

Um, we also partner with departments like David and and Micah's as well. You know for for first year programs and learning communities we offer something called the FYE resume writing assignment or FYE career kickoff in which we partner to help students from the early onset really understand about how to start the idea of creating a resume and how to start bringing in some of those high school spirit experiences and and conveying those on campus.

Now, but then also how to start transitioning that to more of a focus on collegiate documents also partnering with Micah and other Aces advisors too, you know on the idea of you know majors to careers and helping them think as they're doing a little bit more of that exploratory major, you know how a major does or doesn't relate to a career and also really understanding the mindset that.

Careers aren't linear and therefore majors don't have to be linear either. So we do a lot of partnership from from that aspect as well.

Thank you, Kristen. I'm actually, I'm really glad that you mentioned um, the partnership between the first year experience courses and career development. I remember myself a few years back being a first year experience instructor and one of those core pieces was to everyone had to do a resume in their first year and that was really important because you know had it not been something that was required you know.

Maybe not all students would even know what to put on that if if they haven't been employed or you know what that might look like. So that was I think just a a really nice piece to say, you know, anyone participating in that first year experience will have a resume in hand. So thank you. So Dave, this is, you know, leading up to right, what does that first year experience look like? You are one of the key people.

On campus that are working with our first year populations, so I know everyone's experience could look very different, but tell us what a typical first year experience, if such a typical thing exists, what that might look like?

Exactly.

Well, Jen, that's kind of an impossible question, but I will. I'll do my best.

Curveball. No more softballs. Curveballs now.

Yes, tough one. Tough one. You know, we're 10 weeks into this semester already.

And you know, my students are out actually getting their resumes critiqued at this moment. Or they're supposed to be anyway, and then they will be creating their own LinkedIn profile. So that's this part of the semester.

You know, the journey really is very much individualized for each student. And I think what we try to do is provide a small class experience for every student. So no matter how you come into the university, whether you choose to be in a learning community that will provide small seminar related experiences or you don't choose one, then you'll have a general FY experience. Or if you're in the honors program, there's an honors opportunity for small.

Experience is so you know at and and this goes for stores and the regional campuses. There are first year experiences provided for students to kind of in real time while they're actually going through the experience. Have a small community so they can build relationships with the instructor. We have peer educators who are we call FYE mentors who help teach the class and then we really focus on helping students build a community of support.

And then on top of that then we, we kind of help students kind of help to navigate the large campus if it stores or help them to kind of figure out how to get their work done or their business done here on campus. So and of course you know interlaced and there are exams and those are challenges. So learning how to approach exams and how to deal with you know five different courses taught very differently, how to navigate time management.

Right.

Yeah.

Um, how to make friends? Uh, the Sky's the limit in terms of trying to help students navigate that first semester. It's a great semester, but it can be challenging. And right now, I think the students are feeling it's a bit of a grind at the moment. There's two weeks to Thanksgiving and a lot of students are hoping to get to Thanksgiving right now, dealing with their midterms and things of that nature. But the courses and the support we provide, I think, are phenomenal. And, and it is all.

Community based. So there's just in time resources like we talked about with career with Asus. So a number of my students are Asus students. So I have a have them directly connected there and so we have over 250 sections across the University of what this is called FYE. And so I think it's something that we've evolved, it's been around for 20 years now, 22 years I guess is when I started it and and I think it.

I think it provides students opportunities to really to explore who they are and how they get the most out of their experience that you can.

Thank you, David. And it also really speaks to, you know, kind of debunking another myth that our students wind up in very large lecture halls all the time. Sure, those large lecture halls do exist. I'm not going to say that they don't at UConn, but typically those types of lectures are always followed with a smaller discussion or, you know, a lab piece on the sciences side and on David's side, on the FYE side, we're talking about 20 student classes.

Um, where first year students can really get to know one another and and and find that support system, you know in that classroom. So it really is a great way to start that first year. So thank you for that. I am going to toss over to Micah now and this is a little bit of a challenging question in terms of as you said everyone should be exploring whether you know or you don't know, but are you at a disadvantage?

If you don't know.

No, not if you're exploring, right. And that's why I'm really keen on the word exploring, not undecided because these aren't students that aren't getting in our sitting around doing nothing, right. Exploring is an active right verb, right. We're actively exploring, right. We're searching for. So alright, I'll be honest too, you know, if you're going to come into aces but you want to go into something like nursing, I'm not going to recommend. I'm going to go straight into the nursing program, which is really challenging to get into. And there's a couple others, there's a couple digital media and design.

Is another one. But overall, the point of it is to not be a disadvantage. And in my point and my perspective is you're actually at an advantage because there are a lot of students that come into a major thinking they know what they want to do, but as a result they don't explore and trust me. I get a lot of students coming in through our office. They're sophomore, junior year, sometimes panicking, realizing they made the bad choice because they don't feel like this is a good fit for them anymore. They're major, they're end, and now they're trying to figure out how to backtrack and get into a major they want, even into.

And there's less options for them, right? So if you're coming in with the mindset of exploring, even if you're choosing coming into a directly to a major, but you're coming in with that mindset to explore, you're gonna actually be ahead. One of the things we work so hard with with all of our partners but is to make sure that our ACES students also feel like they're part of a community and not missing out. That's why we've developed our, you know, our exploratory learning community, which just started this year, which is something we're really proud of. Three sections have all filled up to capacity. That's thanks to David's department working so well with us. It's something that's very easy for us to do.

They make it easy for us to make this experience. We're also partnering with experiential global learning and we're going to be providing a broad experiences for our learning community students as well. Again, trying to give them so they're not at a disadvantage, right. They're really actually at an advantage. And so I really can't stress enough how important it is for students to come in with this mindset to explore. There's so many myths out there Jen that students are and parents and even myself is. I've learned myself over the years. I believe some of these myths too.

You know, some of them where you have to be in a certain major in order to have a job, and I love how Christian said that that no, that's just not the case. I've gone to several career fairs. I've gone and talked to companies in Silicon Valley. I've talked to companies out of Boston. These tech companies that don't care what your major is, they they're not even going to ask you. So my point is, let's find and do a major that you're interested in, one that you're going to get involved with, one that you're going to want to get asked the professors what their research is about. Get involved with their undergraduate research.

This is this is what college is about, is those experiences. As much as I love a lot of professors on our campus, and I'll ask, you're not gonna remember all your classes that you took here, but you're going to remember the experiences you had on campus. You're going to remember going abroad, you're going to remember going to the career fairs, you're gonna remember doing the undergraduate research, right? These are the things you're going to remember and becoming an FYI mentor. This is something that all the students talk about and remember after they participate in that. So it's really, really telling students.

Being exploring is an active right. It's active, it's engaging with your community and and in all honesty, if you're doing that, then you're going to feel you're going to create that sense of community that you need to feel like it is a big school. But when you're exploring, that means you're joining those clubs, you're doing all these things are gonna make you feel like you're engaged in the community.

Lately.

Thank you perfectly said and and you set Kristen up too for that that mention of those career fairs and you know how you start participating in those things. So Kristen thinking about that that type of thing and I just saw the, you know, our big career fair just gone by over and gamble pavilion, you know and know you have hundreds of companies out recruiting UConn students.

But when should a student start to get involved with the Center for Career Development?

Great question.

Yeah, so that's that's a great question and really the easiest answer is as soon as they have a net ID, so as soon as a student has a net ID for the university, they should start engaging with our office as soon as possible.

Which PS parents? If your students have applied, they have a net ID because that's how they access their admissions information. So that means pronto.

Yeah. So we have, we have a ton of resources available online that students can start accessing as soon as they have that net ID. Students are able to start communicating with us again as soon as all that information goes active in the systems as well too. And and we encourage them to get involved with us as early as possible for a couple different reasons. One is goes back to that.

Idea of what Michael was saying about being ready to explore right. And really understand what that means. And you know we talked about before with FYE and I saw a few people answering, you know asking in the chat what is FYE first year experience. Sorry David not to to steal your Thunder there but you know we, we do have first year students who do participate in that FYE writing assignment that we were talking about and sometimes they don't really understand the connection of why they're starting to do that. Like I'm just starting to get acclimated to the university. I'm just starting to.

Figure out what it's like to be on my own. Why are you making me start thinking about what's happening when I leave the university? But the reason for that is because, you know, when we start thinking about the ideas of resumes, it's not something that you are just going to present to an employer down the road when you're ready for an internship or a full time job. What a lot of students don't realize is there are a lot of activities and organizations on campus that they might want to be a part of that require students to submit resumes to be a part of that. Again, these are student.

Organizations and clubs and they require resumes that go along with that. So really the the earlier onset that students start preparing the idea of these professional documents and again marketing their own personal professional brands, the less likely they are to feel a little bit frazzled and the more opportunities that are going to become available to them as they start doing that exploration that Mike has been talking about.

Right.

Without having to worry about ohh, I I guess I'm not ready for this. The second reason we really encourage students to start thinking about things like that as soon as possible is because they can use documents like that as a road map for really what the next four or more years are going to look like while they're here. So you know, we, we always like to say to students, you know, if you come in with a resume and you've got a lot of great experiences. Let's say you were really involved in high school and you had a lot of you had part time jobs, you had academic involvement, you had.

Right.

Um, you know, Club, club involvement, all that good stuff. That's great. At some point that's going to start to come off of your resume and when that information starts to come off your resume and you have those empty empty holes, what are you going to fill them with? And so that's where again, it comes back to our office, but also the partnership we have with Aces and 1st year Learning programs and all the other departments we have on campus to help students understand what's available to them here at UConn and what experiences are they going to get out of those.

They're also gonna help shape their future selves, and those future opportunities are going to be made available to them.

We also realize though, that with that being said, not all students come in at the same place. They all come in with a different level of preparation and experiences. So we do not create. This is often a question that I get from parents quite frequently is, oh, so you can just provide my list, my student, you know, a list of checkboxes that they should run through as far as what to prepare. The short answer is sure, we could, but we don't. And the reason we don't is because everybody comes in at a different point and we like.

Right.

To meet your students where they are not by an agenda that we feel should be set for them. So you know, maybe they come in with an advanced resume and we do see that we see first your students come in with fantastic looking resumes. So maybe they don't need to go through those check boxes of learn how to write a resume. Learn what your competencies are or how to experience that. Maybe we can just jump right to how do you network, how do you build a network? Let's, you know, how do you get in front of employers? You know, maybe we do have a student that comes in that says what's this resume thing and do I really need one? And you know.

When we start from there. So we really like to make sure that we're meeting your student where they are and helping them support their specific needs and goals at that particular moment, rather than just saying this is what this is what you should be doing or what you need to be doing.

So that's kind of, you know that's it's kind of just really start thinking a little bit more about you know working with us, not waiting until last minute, you know also coming back to the idea before of what you were mentioning about career fairs. So our department alone we facilitate six career fairs a year, we usually do.

Two in the fall and then three in the spring semesters. And usually with the idea of internships or jobs. Students feel like there's this magical switch that shuts resume, that shuts applications and opportunities off, and there's not. There's always opportunities available to students, and really the fact of the matter is you never know when those opportunities are going to present themselves. So really, the more engaged you are with us from that earlier onset, the more, again, you're just.

Scared to quickly say ohh shoot this opportunity just came available and I I need to know how to how to ask them informational interview questions or I just need to know like how do I really create a quickly create a LinkedIn profile and how do I use it that way the student just has better ideas on how they can come engage with us.

What I love about those career fair days is the pajamas come off and the business suits come on. And you always know, even if you're not over, where the career fair is. You just need to walk through the student union and see all the students all dressed up and you're like, there must be a career fair today.

Right.

Yeah. And you know, and that's a good point too, that you mentioned. Yes, it's always fantastic to see them coming in and looking sharp in some ways. Sometimes I think students feel that in order to engage with the Center for Career development, because you get that normal notion in your head about that's what it is. Students feel they can't engage with us from an early onset because they don't have a lot of experience to talk about or because they don't have a suit with them.

No.

The campus or that they they need to come in prepared before they can have conversations with us. And that's simply not the case. If a student walks into my office and says, I don't know why I'm here, but I'm here, I say great. The most important thing is that you're here. We can figure it out from there. I get I can ask you a million questions in the book. We can figure out why you're here and then also figure out reasons for you to keep coming back. But they don't need to be prepared. They don't need to have anything ready to go. They can come in those sweats here.

Right, absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah.

Same one too. There's some days I wanna be here in my sweats, so if they wanna come in, it just makes me feel that much better for them.

And and that's why again just I, I love that that resume writing piece for parents that are thinking about you know employment opportunities for their students on campus. There's over 8000 student positions that are here on campus and that's no joke. We have lots of opportunities for and and again those are not just work study positions, they are student labor positions.

That our university relies upon to make us work. Um, so like you were saying, Kristen, just having that opportunity to maybe take off, you know, maybe some of the clubs and organizations that they might be involved in now in the earlier age and start replacing those with some job opportunities that they can find at UConn. Those opportunities certainly exist on campus if a student is seeking them. So thank you for that.

Um, David, question for you. Um, I know you and I have worked a lot on this in the past few years, but we talk a lot about the transition from high school to college and you know, and that time and and what does it mean? How do we support students at UConn in that time? Why is that a special time and and what do we do?

Oh, now you're on mute.

I knew I would. I knew I would do that once.

There we go.

Um, I, you know, first of all, I guess what I would say is we have kind of a really nice package of things that help students get onboarded to Yukon. First of all, there's a robust orientation that occurs each summer.

So students are you know provided all they need to know and orientation to get their courses and get situated and meet their advising Staffs. And then we have a Husky WOW program that students move in on a Friday and there's programs throughout a weekend before they start. And then all of our the programs that I represent kind of kick in and like I sort of alluded to before first year experience that's FYE and the learning.

Communities and our academic Achievement center, which I'll talk a little bit about, are all there really to help personalize the college experience while they're in their first semester. So while it's great to say a lot of things before they get here, sometimes for students it's the reality of going to classes, living in the residence hall, figuring out what clubs and organizations they want to be a part of, all of the kinds of things that make the transition.

Challenge, but a great opportunity for students, a memorable one that I'm sure you know lasts a long time. You know what happened in your first semester. So some of the things that we do in these small classes is we have a student mentor who meets with every single student. So there's one-on-one interaction. There's one-on-one interaction with the instructor there. There is there are plenty of opportunities to for students to kind of ask questions and to get engaged.

With us, and you know, this is a we have a staff of 13 that kind of talks about this kind of stuff all the time, like how to best help students be successful in their first year. There's lots of research out there. There's lots of conversations in the public media about how students are adjusting after COVID, all of the concerns that.

I'm sure you all have. We all, we all had. I've had three. Three kids go through college, two of which went through Yukon. So I'm well aware of what goes on here at UConn, but many universities, so we really do.

Yes, please do.

Wow.

Very nimble about how we approach things and look at things and address things. But I didn't want to spend just a couple seconds on the academic achievement center. About 15,000 students check into the Academic Achievement Center already this semester, not all freshmen, but of many first year students. And it gets introduced to 1st year students through our FYE program and our learning community program. So that center offers strategic academic counseling. So that means.

Everything that a student might have a question about can get addressed. So lots of times we're not quite sure why students are having a hard time in the class and they're not quite, they don't quite understand or it's the first time they've struggled in a class. And so we have staff and students and others to help support students around figuring that out. We also have this thing called Supplemental Instruction. So many students are coming in.

Them, and we have now created, it's a national model where that we follow, where students are hired in some of the foundational courses that chem calculus, physics, those courses that are sort of the gateway to where students want to go. We hire a student who then goes to in that same class and then presents the material another time to students. And they're wildly successful students.

No.

Pile in to listen to it because sometimes the first go around with the professor is one way to hear the material, but they need to hear it again or they need to hear it from a different voice. And so the supplemental instruction, and that's on our website and you can check that out, has been very successful. There are tons of workshops. I just walked into a workshop tonight where there are 50 students sitting there learning about attention management. Like how do you, how do you focus in on what you need to get done and how do you avoid procrastination and things of that nature.

That are just so common for all of us to be honest with you.

Absolutely.

So a lot of what we're really working with students is, you know, to figure out how to ask for help, where to go for help, how to write, ask the right questions. So when you go to get that help and to realize that you can't go it alone at a university, that it's a collaborative experience, it's an experience that is that that graduate students, faculty, we all are asking for help on pieces of what we need to get done. And that's the same thing. So we're trying to help students really become.

You know, college students and truly scholars here, so, um and so I think you know with the academic achievement Center, our first year programs, our learning communities, our partners, our content experts that are in the room here today, but also across the campus.

It really, um, we provide sort of a holistic start. We plant a lot of seeds and a lot of the students really act on those seeds to to be successful.

And David, one piece and you kind of touched a little bit about that just on the seminar that you just walked into tonight. But again, glad that you mentioned. When I think of the academic Achievement Center, one of the things I think about the most too is that time management piece. So for the families that are listening and you know what that high school, college transition looks like when your students day is filled from 7:30 in the morning till 9:00 o'clock at night between high school activities, clubs and sports.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Etcetera. And then they get to a college campus and they might have two classes that day, and that's two hours of their day. And what else does the day look like? That's a huge transition. So it's so important that you all are doing what you're doing.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean the the big, the big issue is, you know how to be independent, how to make all these decisions, uh, that you all of a sudden have to make. And you're right, it's not as structured as it was in high school. So and a lot of stuff is based on studying. It's not necessarily homework all the time. And just adjusting. And one class can be very different from another class, and adjusting to that style of that particular class can be challenging. Adjusting to big, big lectures can be challenging.

So all those things kind of feed into the time management piece as well.

Exactly. Thank you.

So Umm, I know we're we're coming to kind of the end of our but I do have a couple more questions that I do want to get to before we wrap up. And Micah I know you talked to we've we used the word exploratory and exploring often and and and purposefully but what are the opportunities how do we explore if we're if we're a student we're first year student walking on to college campus.

Yeah, that's a great question, a hard question to answer in a short period of time, but I'll do my best.

So the first part is building that relationship with your advisor so we know what you're looking for. I think one of the most helpful ways is to use our narrow down your majors where our major elimination tool because amazing and feel successful just to get we have so many majors on this campus and just to knock some out that you know you're not interested in can help steering our conversation and make it feel productive for the students. So that's that's one thing to do when we're looking at courses it's very easy to take some Gen Eds that are still exploring majors that you're interested in. Some students come in like I just need to get my genetics.

Yeah, I I get a little scared of that sometimes because I'm like, OK, what happens when your hands are done but you haven't taken the time to explore? You're back at square one, but now you don't have any other courses to take. So again, what we can do is we can explore majors and knock out Gen Eds at the same time and take those really important genetic course. Gonna help you give a more breadth of knowledge while you're at University of Connecticut. The other big piece is that involvement piece. I mean, that's why we're sending them to Kristen and sending them to David's different programs that they run because that's the part of exploration, right? It's joining that.

Yeah.

Proud member.

Ohh, I don't care if it's the Taylor Swift Club on campus. Yes, we have one on campus. That's actually pretty large one I heard. So there you go.

I mean it, it's it's not about over working the students, right? I don't want to push that. Students need to be involved 24/7 when they get to college. I want them to do things that they have fun with too, because even joining that Taylor Swift Club or the Ultimate Frisbee Club, you can then take leadership positions in those clubs as you become a junior senior. You can volunteer to run a program to raise money for a charity while you're running in that club. So there's it doesn't have to be this. I don't want to overwork our students while they're in college. It can. It should be fun.

As well, because they'll be hard classes. We know that. The other thing is, I never want a student come and ask me for an easy Gen Ed.

Listen, the reality is, is this place is going to take a lot of time, four years of your life at least, right? And it does cost money. And so how do you get the most out of your experience, right? And that's what we want to push for our students. And I'll be honest, the degree is just the cherry on top of all the experiences you have. That's where the meaning of of college to me is and that's what you con offers. It's all those experiences. There's way too many, you know, there's so many events going on and I tell students.

That's the thing about exploration is it's not a A + b = C It's messy meaning that it's one student found out what they want to do because they went to this club. Another student might have heard this amazing world class speaker come present at UConn and that's how they found out. Another one became a mentor and talked with David or Sarah and mishap and figured that out. Another one went to Center for career development and figured out. So it's it's not that I can just tell a student, oh as long as you do this one thing, you'll be fine. You'll figure it out. No. But it's it's go out and explore. It's go out to all these different activities, all these events.

All these programs, you know, there's so much programming happening on the campus on a daily basis. I don't expect a student to go to all of them, but go to some, I think. I think there's such a fear of making mistakes. There's a fear of asking questions, but that's how you explore.

Absolutely.

You know, I tell my students, are you going to professors office hours? Are you raising your hand and asking questions in class? Because that is your job as a student is to ask questions and it's our job as professionals to answer those questions and that's what we're here to do. So I I can't stress it enough, it's not this one easy way, but it is a way that we as your advisor, especially in aces because I can speak to us more than anybody else is, we will be trying our best to get to know the students on an individual basis, meeting with them one on.

One that's what we do for orientation, and that's what we do during the semesters, is we meet one-on-one with them. And if a student wants to come and see us more often, we encourage that too. But we encourage them to make relationships, courage them to get out and explore. So not an easy question to answer them. I helped at least. Got a start, got a little bit of it.

And I saw some lovely comments. I'm not the only Taylor Swift club wannabe member. If I was in college again, if I could do it all over again, right. So last question of the evening, and I know we're just about at time, but Kristen, Networking, I know it's hard. You know, the pandemic kind of threw some students for a loop too. And, you know, this is a tough skill for folks, so.

What are those opportunities?

Yeah. So we have a lot of different ways that we help connect students to employers or just any other additional kind of, you know, individuals beyond the realm of Yukon, whether that's, you know, industry, whether that's higher Ed, whether that's service, whether that's nonprofit, you know, whatever. You know, we certainly don't focus on just the idea of you're going into business and that's it. We recognize that students come with all different interests and all different, you know, paths and where they're looking to go. So we do connect, students do a multitude of.

Of of of different, you know industries and individuals and a multitude of different ways. One of which is through our Husky Mentor network where we have a specific group of UConn alumni who have opted in to essentially be virtual mentors to students. The way I like to phrase it is if you think of the the saying I wish I knew then what I knew. Now we have these UConn alumni who have volunteered their time to kind of be the the future people going back to talk to the current students, right the.

The then and now kind of aspect and these are individuals who have walked the Yukon student shoe. They have had these same questions. They have had these same exploratory interests. Probably some of them have also sat in, you know, Micah's office and had these same exact questions.

Or participated in the, you know the FY resume writing assignment. So they understand what our students are going through and there's no better person that can mentor and and help a student through and help them build A and help them start building their very first network then these individuals. And so we'll connect students through through that way. We also partner with many different organizations who post jobs and internships and volunteer opportunities and micro internship and job shadowing.

Wow.

Opportunities and and projects through our our job portal handshake. Right now we have over 16,000 full-time jobs posted in handshake and over 7000 internships posted in handshake that students have access and and these aren't just Connecticut based these are.

Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, um, California, Texas. These are student. These are companies who want to recruit UConn students who want to say, yes, let us help you start your your career. We also host, like we were talking about before, the career fairs. We alone host 66 a year. And then there's other schools and colleges on the campus that host their own career fairs as well. To beyond ours, we have a dedicated corporate partner relations team whose sole.

Responsibility is to cultivate relationships and build relationships with businesses, from small businesses to large businesses for profit. Nonprofit. Some UConn alumni owned, some not. We have on campus interviews, so employers will come to campus, conduct interviews for positions from our office so students don't have to worry about I don't have a car, how am I going to get to the city to do this interview or I I just can't squeeze that in between my classes to get off campus. Employers are coming to them. We have employer info sessions where we're bringing employers.

Into table and share information. As a matter of fact, uh, right before hopping on this webinar tonight, I was attending another event that we had just right outside of our office where we had a nonprofit organization, Advanced CT coming in. They partnered directly. They're out of New Haven, but they partner very closely with the governor's office and are really rooted in trying to find ways to help stimulate the Connecticut economy and help think about how do we essentially keep jobs in Connecticut and how do we?

Continue to grow an inclusive and sustainable community. And so they were here, they were here.

On campus, we, we had cheeseburger sliders, we had meatballs and they were sitting there talking with students and just kind of having informal conversations while considering them for job opportunities that they're cut that they're hiring for. So we have a lot of different ways that we will help connect students just beyond the on campus internships and whatnot. We have a lot of tricks up our sleeve. It's just a matter of, you know, trying to get your student to engage and say, Oh yeah, what do you have in there for me?

Yep. And that speed though you have going to an event like that, eating those cheeseburger sliders ties into micas. That what a great way to explore, right?

So on that note, I just want to thank our panelists for being here tonight. And more importantly, I want to thank our families who have tuned in and stayed with us for this. There's so many of you, so many questions. I hope some of you have had the opportunity to have your questions answered. If we were not able to get to your question today, please feel free to reach out to our offices at any of us are willing to assist you.

Really at anytime, all of our information is on our website, uconn.edu, one plug just for admissions applications. All of you are here, I'm assuming because you might, you have a student who might be interested in applying the Yukon. So just keep that December 1st priority consideration, application deadline in mind as we roll into the Thanksgiving holiday. No better time than to get that application submitted.

So thank you all for being here with us tonight and we look forward to receiving your students application. Have a good evening.

Are we in?

I I really. I guess we're done.

Like that. So Jen just took off on us. I feel abandoned, Jen.

I know. I was like, I was like, dude, what do, what do we do now?

Alright, well, have a good evening.

Bye.

You too. Have a good evening, both of you. Take care. Bye.