Poster Sessions (12–12:45 p.m.)
Presenters: Bri Newton (WashU Spectrum) and Katie Lacombe (RSVP Center)
This poster session will share information and findings about our collaborative program between the RSVP Center and WashU Spectrum for the past academic year, utilizing the framework of “Art Hives.” We will share research around and the structure of Art Hives, as well as how we practically applied Art Hives in our programming.
We have data to share and will have an experiential opportunity for participants to engage in Art Hive activities. This will be an opportunity for folks across the division to understand this collaboration and also join us in expanding this program to include more of Student Affairs’ and Admissions’ offices and areas.
Presenters: Will Andrews & Justin Linsenmeyer — Residential Life
This session strengthens understanding by elevating the largely invisible work of Housekeeping staff and highlighting their direct role in fostering student belonging within residential spaces. By sharing front-line experiences and everyday touch points, the poster invites participants to reconsider how student support and community building occur beyond formal programs.
The session also creates opportunities for connection and collaboration by encouraging higher education professionals to reflect on how their departments partner with and support front-line staff. Finally, it empowers personal and professional growth by prompting attendees to examine their own practices, language, and assumptions, and to identify actionable steps that promote respect, inclusion, and shared responsibility for student belonging.
Presenters: Jessica Bridges (Residential Life) and Peeti Sithiyopasakul (WashU IT)
This poster session is a hands-on “Digital Mastery Lab” designed to streamline your professional workflow through a peer-to-peer learning model. Moving across a three-panel interactive display, participants will transition from mastering essential PC and Mac shortcuts to practicing live efficiency hacks in Word, Excel, and Outlook on provided devices.
Attendees will gain immediate access to a curated gallery of university AI guidelines, expert social media resources, and hardware wellness best practices. The experience concludes with a collaborative “skill swap” and a live poll, empowering participants to drive the direction of future tech training while walking away with tangible handouts for continued independent practice.
Presenter: Britne Amick — Conference Services
This poster session will teach you about the Conference Services team and the services they provide. You’ll be able to strengthen your connections and find ways to collaborate.
Presenter: Laura Van Berkel — Research & Analytics
Effective sexual violence prevention requires moving beyond passive compliance toward authentic, peer-led engagement. This poster session showcases the strategic partnership between the RSVP Center and Research & Analytics team to evaluate “The Date”—a high-impact performance and student-led discussion model that navigates the “grey areas” of consent and bystander intervention. “The Date” takes place at the beginning of each fall semester and is a required program for all WashU first-year and transfer students.
Presenter: Evelyn Real — Office for International Student Engagement
During this session, I’ll share my personal journey through the home buying process as a first-time homeowner and how WashU’s “Live Near Your Work” program helped make it possible. Join me for a candid, encouraging look at the lessons I learned, the surprises along the way, and how this benefit could help fellow WashU staff and faculty take their own next step toward home ownership.
Breakout Session 1 (1–1:45 p.m.)
This session provides practical strategies for Student Affairs, Admissions, and Financial Aid professionals to integrate AI into their daily tasks, thereby transforming it into a “trusted digital collaborator” to enhance administrative efficiency.
By strengthening our understanding of generative tools, attendees will learn to effectively utilize resources and learn new skills. The presentation prioritizes professional growth and career development by teaching participants to master strategic prompting, while ensuring they don’t lose the human touch needed to connect with students.
Presenter: Anthony Azama — Athletics
Whether intentionally crafted or not, your work develops a reputation that can be the difference in your professional development. In this session, learn the power of a professional brand, techniques to curate yours, and an approach that will set you apart to advance in your career.
Presenter: Zhiling Xu — Center for Career Engagement
When students demonstrate behaviors such as limited participation, downplaying achievements, or hesitation, they are often interpreted as possessing a lack of confidence or motivation. However, many of these students are in fact “quiet achievers”—individuals who demonstrate strong capability but are less inclined to self-advocate in ways expected in certain contexts.
Presenter: Anya Weber — WashU Cares
Across our roles, we often interact with students who are struggling, sad, angry, or even suicidal or in crisis. This session will help you answer questions like:
- How do I tell if someone may be having a mental health emergency or if they’re just “having a moment”?
- How can I assist and support students without trying to be their therapist?
- What are the red flags that a student may be in a true crisis and at risk of harming themselves or others?
- How can I avoid being drained when a student’s needs are more than I’m trained to address?
- How can I empower a student who feels powerless or is facing multiple obstacles to thriving at WashU?
We’ll use engaging scenarios to explore how we can create robust boundaries to protect our own health, while at the same time ensuring students get the compassion and practical resources they deserve.
Presenters: Otto Brown & Alannah Glickman — Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement
The 2026 midterm elections will be full of opportunities for WashU students to make their voices heard about issues of consequence around the country. In this session, Gephardt Institute staff will present best practices for nonpartisan voter engagement in times of political divisiveness, uncertainty and burnout. We will discuss key information on connecting student passions with ballot content and civic action.
Presenters: Susan Kapp, Katie Piedmont, Melinda Compton Carter & Peter Michalski — Admissions
This hands-on workshop will co-mingle Student Affairs and Admissions professionals on a quest to develop a brand-new visit opportunity for prospective students. Teams will work together to pick an aspect of the student experience they want to highlight, develop an agenda for a 2- to 4-hour visit experience, create a name for the program, suggest swag and other hospitality, identify locations, and develop a marketing plan. This program will highlight collaboration and professional growth as teams work to present the undergraduate experience in creative new ways.
Presenters: Ethan Miller & Carynn Smith — Campus Life
Known as “In the Lou programming,” Campus Life hosts a variety of off-campus programs throughout the year for all students to explore St. Louis. Over the last three years, we have found success in gaining student and department partnership interest, retaining participants, and collecting post-event assessment data.
Session participants can expect to gain programming tools that will assist them in driving students to their on and off campus events, useful retention tactics to increase their interest to participation yield, and how to successfully gather and utilize post-event assessment data. Presenters will also discuss key divisional partnerships that have assisted in their success.
Presenters: Domonique Crosby (Residential Life) & Jordan Cooper (Cross-Cultural Connections)
Many higher education professionals relocate for their roles and quickly find that their professional and social lives revolve primarily around campus. While this can create strong institutional connections, it can also limit opportunities to engage with the broader St. Louis community.
This session will explore how staff can intentionally build connections beyond WashU through volunteering, civic engagement, professional networks, arts and cultural communities, and neighborhood involvement. Participants will reflect on their interests, values, and capacity while learning strategies for identifying opportunities that support both personal fulfillment and professional growth.
Breakout Session 2 (2–2:45 p.m.)
Presenter: Sierra McClellon-Hulsey — Cross-Cultural Connections
This interactive session will discuss a series called “Beyond the Plate,” a tried and tested program that brings local restaurant owners to campus to share their entrepreneurial journeys and cultural connections to food with students over a catered meal.
Participants will engage in small-group discussions and guided reflection to explore how this model can be adapted within their own functional areas and leave with actionable ideas and a framework to implement similar initiatives that promote collaboration and holistic student development.
Presenter: Emily Ferrario — Disability Resources
The presentation will define burnout and some of its causes. Participants will then learn positive self-care techniques that can be utilized both during breaks in their work day and outside of work, which should aid in mental well-being. Participants will also get to engage in a short self-care activity during the session.
Presenters: Jen Whitten & Ivory Woodhouse — Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs
Many professionals are not always clear on how to navigate the relationship with their manager. In reality, it is one of the most vital soft skills for career success. Managing up is the proactive process of building a high-trust relationship with your manager to ensure mutual success.
This session will provide a practical framework for anticipating needs, clarifying priorities and expectations, and aligning your work with your manager’s goals. Participants will learn how to create a collaborative partnership that benefits the individual, the manager, and the organization. Attendees will walk away with practical tips and resources to help them manage their relationship with their manager.
Presenters: Nicole Gore, Rachel Braaf & Bre Hardy —Student Conduct & Community Standards
Higher education professionals are often asked to request or interpret student conduct checks as part of selection processes for leadership roles, employment, awards, and other opportunities. However, questions frequently arise: What information is appropriate to consider? How does conduct history relate to the role? How can we ensure fair, consistent, and student-centered decision-making?
This session will provide a practical overview of the conduct check process and focus on how higher education professionals can thoughtfully and effectively use conduct information in ways that align with their specific programmatic goals. Participants will explore what they truly need to know about a student’s conduct history, how to assess relevance to a given opportunity, and how to avoid over- or under-weighting conduct information.
Presenters: Will Andrews & Joyce Markowski — Residential Life
Student housing costs are often misunderstood. This session features a collaborative dialogue with Will Andrews, Executive Director of Residential Life, and Joyce Markowski, Manager of Financial Operations, as participants explore the full cost of student housing and how financial, operational, and student-experience considerations intersect campus‑wide.
Presenter: April McClellan — Center for Career Engagement
Over the past 2 years, the Career Exploration Community in the CCE has been reading about purpose, meaning, curiosity, decision making, comparison and beyond. We’ve discovered incredible value in championing the idea of following curiosity and exploration, rather than rushing students to make decisions about major and career.
In this roundtable, we will share some examples of how curiosity has benefited students and programs, and we will facilitate a conversation about how curiosity, community and contribution can make student’s lives, and our work on campus, feel more meaningful.
Presenter: Valerie Silberman — Recreation
Posture isn’t just about looking professional. It directly impacts energy, pain levels, breathing, mood and long-term health. This presentation includes a live demo, posture myth busting, and connects posture to things like stress, fatigue, performance, voice projection, headaches, neck tension, energy levels and overall health. Participants will be offered realistic and easy tools to make the actions and habits easy to remember, easy to do, and easy to squeeze in to a busy day.
Presenter: Loren Owens — Taylor Family Center
This interactive session introduces a practical framework for turning ideas into well-executed initiatives through strategic planning and clear communication of roles, timelines and deliverables. The session will include a brief overview of common coordination challenges, a structured planning approach, and applied strategies for communicating expectations across teams.
Participants will engage in a short activity to practice defining responsibilities and deliverables for a sample initiative and will leave with an adaptable planning framework, strategies for cross-team communication, and ready-to-use tools to support more effective program implementation.
Presenter: Payton Branson — Residential Life
Recognition is too often saved for the end-of-the-year. Let’s talk about how to continue recognizing your team year-round! This session will share different ways to implement recognition initiatives that fit in with your department’s culture or change it entirely.
The session will include a few activities for attendees to consider their department culture and how simple recognition initiatives can build trust, collaboration, and growth amongst their peers. Participants will consider their personal recognition preferences and how this directly connects to their supervision styles. We will also discuss Sanford’s Challenge and Support Theory.
Breakout Session 3 (3–3:45 p.m.)
Student success is deeply shaped by the relationships, networks, and institutional connections students are able to access, especially First‑Generation and Limited‑Income (FLI) students, who often navigate college with fewer built‑in support pathways. This session explores how intentional, cross‑campus collaboration can strengthen social capital for FLI students and create more equitable structures of support across WashU.
Presenters: Louis Kaskowitz & Jun Kim — Research & Analytics
This session will demonstrate the infrastructure and capabilities of WashU’s SA Tools developed by the Research & Analytics team. Learn what data is collected, how it’s used and best practices for contributing to our shared impact on the student experience.
Presenter: Amanda Pendley — Cross-Cultural Connections
Professional development is often intimidating, with expectations of publications, conference presentations, and award nominations, but it doesn’t have to be this way. By redefining our professional development as something personalized and attainable in our everyday lives, higher education professionals can work towards building their own individual library of knowledge containing a diverse array of perspectives. When looking to expand your knowledge of different cultures and identities, there is not a singular big goal one works to attain; instead we work to integrate learning about new cultures into our everyday lives.
Presenter: Joe Morris — Student Transitions & Engagement
This session’s purpose is to support WashU’s Division of Student Affairs and Admissions professionals in using the NACE Career Readiness Competencies as a shared, flexible framework to foster intentional growth and development of student employees across functional areas.
Presenters: Brittany Miller (Residential Life) & Josh Matthews (Campus Life)
This session will explore how higher education professionals can design more effective, developmentally appropriate learning experiences using the work of Lev Vygotsky, specifically the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), alongside scaffolding practices. It will examine how the ZPD—understood as the space between what learners can do independently and with support—can help practitioners avoid common training challenges such as overwhelming new learners or disengaging more experienced participants.
Presenters: Mari Torres (Dialogue Across Difference), Tori Rogers (Recreation), Andy Wiegert (ArtSci Graduate Studies), Jasmine Brooks (Residential Life) & Casey Cromwell (Athletics)
This discussion will tackle how Student Affairs and Admissions staff are able to come together to support one another in their journeys toward being better staff, colleagues and members of society. We will discuss perspectives for physical wellness, mindfulness in movement, barriers to fitness and tips for maintaining balanced nutrition.
Presenter: Nan Barnes — Center for Career Engagement
In this interactive session, participants will explore how CCE’s academic partnerships engagement principles can be used to engage, equip, and empower their faculty partners in support of student success. The session will also provide opportunities for attendees to learn from one another by sharing their own challenges, strategies, and successes.
Presenter: Alli Román-Robinson — Office of Scholar Programs
In the ever evolving and demanding landscape of higher education, remaining grounded in one’s purpose and values is both an act of resistance and renewal. The presenter will introduce collaging as a reflective and creative practice that offers a meditative space for pausing, retrospection, planning, and building emotional resilience. Rooted in the concept of alchemy—transformation through intentional creation—collaging becomes a practice for higher education professionals to process experiences, reconnect with their values, and stay present and grounded in their work.