ATD hosts the third annual SSA Celebrates Advising and Coaching week

By Jesse Sunski | May 22, 2023

In recognition of NACADA’s Global Advising Week, celebrated annually the first week of May, the Advisor Training and Development (ATD) team hosted the third annual SSA Celebrates Advising and Coaching week, May 1-5. The week included several virtual training opportunities and an in-person appreciation event.

The ATD team collaborated with Christopher Craig, from the Knights Major Exploration and Transition Center, and Dr. Jennifer Farran and Taylor Held, from the Office of Professional Development in the College of Business, to deliver a new program, “Difficult Conversations in Advising: Disarm, Deliver, Defuse.” This program explored strategies for communicating with students and their support systems that may be experiencing academic obstacles or other challenges.

Dr. Rocío Tonos and Eileen Sanchez of Academic Advancement Programs facilitated the SSA Certificate course “Preparing First-Generation, Low-Income and Underrepresented Students for Graduate School.” AAP shared resources available for students considering the pursuit of a graduate degree and offered strategies and recommendations to help students achieve their graduate school goals.

To support the expansion of myKnight STAR reporting access to all advisors in Advisor – Advanced Access role and other relevant roles, the ATD team offered the “myKnight STAR Reports Training” to explore the Reports feature, while also providing some external resources to help organize and share the data.

The Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) hosted three sessions on Digital Accessibility, including the “Introduction to Digital Accessibility,” “Document Accessibility,” and “PDF Accessibility” programs. The programs explored the new expectations around digital content creation for all employees and strategies for creating compliant webpages, documents, videos, and more.

Lastly, the “SSA Appreciation Social” was an opportunity to take a pause and chill out with a refreshing Jeremiah’s Italian Ice before the start of the summer orientation season. The event acknowledged the important contributions of the advising and coaching community in support of our students while also recognizing the partners involved in the creation and delivery of our training and professional development programming.

Across the four programs hosted by the ATD team and the three OIE accessibility courses, there was a total attendance of 142, with 98 unique participants. Thank you to everyone that joined us to celebrate advising and coaching here at UCF!