• Dr. Joseph Glover, Associate Director for Student Leadership & Engagement

Student success conversations often center students, but less often examine the conditions shaping the professionals who support them. Drawing on a 2025 quantitative study with student affairs professionals, this session explores how emotional labor and emotional dissonance influence staff well-being, job satisfaction, and retention in student-facing roles. Participants will examine how burnout, disengagement, and turnover can disrupt affirming care, continuity, and the relational support that fosters student belonging, persistence, and success. The session will cover practical, research-informed strategies related to responsive supervision, restorative practice, and systems of care. By the end of the session, attendees will be able to explain how emotional labor affects staff sustainability, describe its connection to student belonging and success, and identify actionable approaches to better support the professionals who make belonging possible.

Student Development / Engagement 

• Jared Stewart-Ginsburg, Assistant Teaching Professor 
• Jordan Lukins, Assistant Teaching Professor

Neurodivergent students, including those with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other learning and thinking differences, bring particular strengths to their coursework but can also experience unique barriers to their learning. These barriers can be especially challenging in the context of online learning. In this roundtable session, we invite instructors, advisors, and advocates to explore strategies promoting the success of neurodivergent undergraduate and graduate students in online courses. We will facilitate a structured conversation on the intersection of Universal Design for Learning and neurodiversity. Participants will discuss common barriers and share approachable design and instructional solutions. By pooling our expertise, we will identify how to build online courses that welcome and honor all brains and help catalyze the success of all students.

Instructional and Curricular Techniques, Student Development / Engagement, Graduate Student Success

• Courtney Cullen, Director of Assessment, Institutional Effectiveness
• Martha Harmening, Director, Community College Collaboration (C3)
• Allison Medlin, Executive Director, Goodnight Scholarships

Allison Medlin, Executive Director, Goodnight Scholarships
Student belonging begins even before students arrive on campus and extends across all environments. Assessment is a tool that evaluates whether NC State is successfully implementing student support programs that help students find their home. This session explores how Enrollment Management and Services (EMAS) programs, including Goodnight Transfer Scholars and C3, utilize assessment for continuous improvement. By adopting data-driven strategies, these programs refine their support systems to foster a deep sense of belonging and ensure students thrive within the Wolfpack.

Assessment, Academic Advising, Student Development / Engagement

• Rosalinda Kowalczewski, Assistant Director, Women’s Center

This session explores how “trending culture”, from Dungeons & Dragons to junk journaling, serves as a powerful engine for community building and academic assessment. While activities like zine-making and watch parties are often viewed as purely social, they provide unique opportunities for students to forge critical connections to diverse areas of knowledge.

We will examine how these creative practices transform the student experience, shifting the focus from passive consumption to active, physical production. Participants will discover how programmers and educators can utilize these “”production spaces”” to observe and measure learning in real-time. By the end of the session, attendees will have a framework for integrating creative subcultures into their own programming to foster belonging and capture meaningful assessment data.

Student Development / Engagement, Instructional and Curricular Techniques, Assessment

• Dr. Rhonda Sutton, Assistant Dean for Professional Development, The Graduate School

Graduate education can be complex, demanding, and at times overwhelming, making effective mentoring essential to student success. Distinct from advising, mentoring is a professional alliance that extends beyond administrative guidance to support graduate students’ long-term personal and professional development. Strong mentoring relationships can serve as a powerful catalyst for persistence, productivity, and overall success, while ineffective mentorship may hinder progress and retention. Mentors play a vital role in helping graduate students develop skills, generate knowledge, cultivate independence, achieve goals, and navigate the nuances of their disciplines and career pathways. To foster these outcomes, mentors must be equipped with intentional strategies and tools that enable them to build supportive, inclusive, and growth-oriented relationships. This session underscores the importance of effective mentorship in graduate education and highlights the need to prepare mentors to cultivate meaningful alliances that empower graduate students to thrive academically, professionally, and personally.

Graduate Student Success

• Jen Cole, Academic Advisor, Department of Communication

The Department of Communication has redesigned how students are advised for enrollment by focusing on how to better holistically support students’ success, empower students to engage their degree path with comprehension and action rather than anxiety, and attend to advisor well-being during peak advising periods. With increasing advisee numbers, student demand for more individual attention and time, and shorter timeframes to advise students for enrollment, the department needed to reframe our approach to enroll 700 undergraduates. The session will delve into an overview of changes the department has made over the past two years (including the use of Panopto, Moodle, and Group Advising), with an analysis of the model’s strengths and continual challenges experienced. We hope to learn how others are navigating the university’s evolving needs and invite anyone who has restructured their enrollment advising process for their Department or College, or for those ready to change it up!

Academic Advising, Assessment, Student Development / Engagement

• Dr. Rebecca Sanchez, QEP Director 
• Melissa Edwards Smith, OEO Director of Education and Campus Engagement

High-Impact Experiences (HIEs) are immersive, sustained opportunities to enhance student learning, retention, and career readiness. Yet barriers like lack of belonging can discourage students from participating – and students who question their belonging in HIEs often experience the greatest gains in persistence and GPA through HIE participation. This session explores NC State’s Quality Enhancement Plan, Packways: Learning by Doing, which frames HIEs as essential vehicles for fostering institutional belonging. Through interactive brainstorming and rubric application, faculty and staff HIE leaders will learn actionable strategies to increase belonging and use critical reflection to help students articulate their professional value and sense of belonging. HIEs can be transformative assets for lifelong student success; when belonging is prioritized, students who may question their place in these opportunities can take advantage of them. Discover how Packways provides a framework to increase student belonging and impact.

Instructional and Curricular Techniques, Student Development / Engagement

• Jordan Luzader, Director, DASA Assessment
• Pack Assessment Ambassadors: Bridget Shuck, Jessica Tolliver, Georgia Moorefield

Effective communication is fundamental for educational institutions to facilitate operations and support students. It is especially critical at universities like NC State with a student population over 40,000 to ensure mass communication reaches all students. Based on NC State data, we know students receive information communicated from the university; however, we know less about the students’ perception of the communication. Specifically, it is unclear how students interpret and interact with the information they receive and what their experiences are finding information independently. Therefore, our work examines how students find and manage information related to college. Focused on student experiences, we met with four focus groups composed of undergraduate students to gather data and used qualitative coding techniques to identify themes. Participants in our session will: Identify key themes from the focus groups; Recall recommendations from undergraduate Pack Assessment Ambassadors to improve communications with students; and Brainstorm opportunities to improve individual or departmental communication efforts with NC State undergraduate students.

Assessment, Student Development / Engagement

• Constant Masere, MD, FAAFA, Campus Health Physician
• Ayawna Dunston, CMA, Psychology candidate, Campus Health Center

We often think of belonging as a social or environmental phenomenon; however, it is also deeply rooted into our physiology. When academic stress rises beyond a manageable level, it can quickly lead to reduced focus and motivation, sleep disruption, and emotional instability. This physiological strain often causes students to withdraw from peers and question their place on campus, even when they are fully capable of succeeding. 

This interactive session will provide faculty and staff in Student Development and Engagement with practical tools to support students under pressure. Participants will learn two effective techniques—Active Deep Breathing and Progressive Muscle Relaxation—that can be taught in under two minutes. Together, we will explore how stress influences belonging across undergraduate, graduate, and international student populations. Attendees will leave with a practical quick guide they can use themselves and share with students during everyday campus interactions.

Student Development / Engagement, Instructional and Curricular Techniques, Academic Advising, Graduate Student Success

• Marcy Bullock, Director, Professional Development, College of Engineering

This session highlights scalable strategies to intentionally cultivate belonging, engagement, and well-being as foundations of graduate student success. Smooth Sailing is a year-long professional development initiative supporting first-year doctoral engineering students as they navigate academic, personal, and professional transitions. Grounded in a holistic model of student success, the program recognizes that persistence is shaped not only by academic ability, but also by connection, confidence, identity development, and access to supportive networks.

Seven intentional sessions normalize the human side of doctoral education—including uncertainty, resilience, and growth—while equipping students with CliftonStrengths insights, peer community-building, and career readiness tools. The program demystifies doctoral milestones, introduces strategies for managing ambiguity and setbacks, and connects students to campus resources to reduce isolation and foster shared understanding.
Survey results from the pilot indicated that participants reported increased understanding of imposter syndrome, time management strategies, navigating the doctoral process, building professional relationships, and recognizing their strengths.

Graduate Student Success, Student Development / Engagement

• Alissa Dodds, Assistant Director of Advising & Student Affairs, Jenkins MBA Program. 
• Alyssa Garner, Academic Advisor, Wilson College of Textiles. 
• Dr. Mary Kate Lanier, Academic Advisor & Lecturer, Department of Agricultural and Human Sciences

At NC State, we encourage students to build their Pack, yet many of the staff supporting them feel they are working in isolation. This session introduces the Advisor Professional Development Committee’s mentorship program, which is in pilot for Spring 2026. We will explore research-backed evidence on how formal mentorship drives satisfaction and fosters a stronger sense of belonging. Join us for an interactive discussion on bridging institutional silos and strategizing ways to ensure every employee—not just every student—finds their Pack at NC State.

Academic Advising

• Dr. Stacy Gant, Senior Director of Digital Learning, DELTA
  

Online graduate students are often drawn to their programs because of flexibility, especially when they are balancing work, family, and other responsibilities. But flexibility can also make it harder to build connection with peers, with instructors, and with the larger academic community. If belonging is central to student success, then online students should not be left out of that conversation. Drawing on a Delphi study of experienced online program coordinators from public universities across the United States, this session explores how a sense of community can be cultivated for online graduate students in intentional, meaningful ways. Findings point to the importance of thinking about belonging as something that must be nurtured in courses and across the program lifecycle. Attendees will leave with practical, research-informed ideas for helping online graduate students connect, learn, and thrive.

Graduate Student Success, Instructional and Curricular Techniques, Student Development / Engagement

• Katie Cartmell, Director, Advising Technology
• Shannon Pugh, Director, University Advising and Exploratory Studies

Advising leaders will review the university’s student survey data, specifically focusing on insights related to students’ sense of belonging. Participants will receive a guided, hands-on look at the dashboards for the Sophomore and Senior Surveys, and learn how the available data can be disaggregated by college and program. Learn how advising leaders have used this information to inform advising models and services, leading to improvements in student experiences and success. Participants will leave with practical strategies for accessing and integrating this valuable data into their own unit’s assessment and improvement processes.

Attendees are encouraged to bring their laptops to engage with the dashboards.

Assessment, Academic Advising

• Dr. Roshaunda Breeden, Assistant Professor of Higher Education Opportunity, Equity, and Justice

Fat students are often left out of conversations about inclusion and student success. Yet campus environments, whether it’s seating in lecture halls, health and wellness initiatives, or social norms, can create real barriers for them. This session shares insights from the Fat on Campus study (Stewart et al., 2024), which examines how fat students experience and navigate higher education. At the heart of this session is a photo exhibit from a photovoice study, where fat students document their everyday campus experiences through images and narratives. These photos make visible what is often ignore, chairs that don’t fit, desks that are too small, and the daily challenges that fat students encounter. But more importantly, they highlight students’ voices, agency, and ideas for change. Together, we will unpack these photos, and by the end of the session, attendees will think through concrete strategies to better support fat students.

Student Development / Engagement 

• Jay Riddell, MAE Graduate Program Career Counselor, College of Engineering

Graduate education often includes an unwritten set of expectations related to networking, professional norms, and career pathways. These expectations are frequently learned informally rather than taught directly, creating barriers for students who may not have prior exposure to academic or professional networks. First-generation and international graduate students often encounter these unwritten expectations in different ways while navigating career exploration, professional relationships, and job search systems.
This session explores how the hidden curriculum of graduate career development shapes students’ access to professional opportunities. Participants will examine common areas where graduate students struggle to navigate professional norms and career systems. The session will also highlight practical strategies faculty, staff, and career development professionals can use to make career expectations more visible, connect students with career resources, and support first-generation and international graduate students in navigating career pathways with greater confidence.

Graduate Student Success, Student Development / Engagement

• Laquanda M. Fields – NCSU Libraries Fellow 
• Gabriel Graña – Digital Media Librarian 
• Alex Valencia – Student Success Librarian

Over the past few years the NC State University Libraries noticed an increase in student engagement for our digital media workshops and events, specifically those centered around community building. This includes: Femme Beat Making, Open Mics, DJ Workshops, State of Sound, Podcasting, Canva collaging and more. In this presentation we will cover what we have learned in hosting these experiential learning opportunities, how these events empower a sense of belonging amongst our Wolfpack community, and what we would like to improve on in the future.

Student Development / Engagement, Instructional and Curricular Techniques

• Dr. Phil Tietjen, Director of Teaching Programs, The Graduate School

Successful graduate student education requires not only succeeding in academics but also building professional development skills and competencies in order to lay the foundation for a successful career after graduation. This session shares the details of a newly created, innovative Microlearning platform designed to help graduate students build crucial professional development competencies in order to enhance their career success after graduation. Participants will have an opportunity to gain first-hand experience with using this new Microlearning platform and offer feedback or suggestions for improvement.

Graduate Student Success, Instructional and Curricular Techniques, Student Development / Engagement

• Gwyneth Howard, Academic Advisor, Poole College of Management
• Alyssa Crosby, Academic Advisor, Poole College of Management

The Poole College of Management Advising Team has a variety of practices that focus on Transfer Student support. Transfer students are a valuable and ever-growing population in our college that we aim to serve with intentional practices. In this presentation, we aim to explore attributes of transfer students and our quality practices to support these students’ transition into NC State and success through graduation. We will cover topics such as transfer shock, academic difficulty, community building, programming, curriculum and advising services.

Academic Advising, Student Development / Engagement

• Gabe Wical, Student Services Manager, College of Engineering

While in-class learning and co-curricular activities are often seen as the primary opportunities for the development of college students, work environments can also serve as a valuable tool for student growth. Student staff responsibilities can easily be relegated to menial, boring tasks but this doesn’t have to be the case.

This presentation will provide examples on how to make the work experiences for our students more personal, meaningful, and developmental. Participants will leave with new ideas shared by the presenter and fellow participants on how to enhance opportunities for their students, utilizing work experiences in positive ways. Participants should come with ideas and examples to share with the group.

Student Development / Engagement 

• Savannah Matherly, Program Director, THRIVE and Women of Welch Villages, University Housing
• Dr. Jameco McKenzie, Director of Multicultural Student Affairs
• Dr. Krispin Barr,  Assistant Teaching Professor and Program Coordinator for the Higher Education Administration Master’s Program

Many of us are currently facing various barriers and competing priorities when it comes to supervising Graduate Assistants (GAs). We may also lack access to training or resources on how to support and supervise GAs. How do you connect theory to practice and connect what GAs are learning in the classroom to their role or career path? In times of budget constraints and vacancies, how do we humanize supervision and center critical care in our approach to working with GAs, especially as they balance work and school? This roundtable aims to provide space for GA supervisors to come together and reflect on the previous year; what challenges and opportunities do you have related to GA supervision? How can graduate programs support you as a supervisor? Our hope is that this roundtable will help cultivate a Community of Practice for GA supervisors for the upcoming academic year, championing GA success and providing a community of care for supervisors.

Graduate Student Success