2026 Student Life Professional Development Conference View Other Sessions

This session will explore recent developments in immigration policy and examine their potential long-term impacts on international students. Participants will gain an understanding of proposed regulatory changes, hear specific examples of how these changes may affect students, and discuss strategies for supporting international students as policies continue to evolve.

What if accountability could strengthen, rather than strain, our relationships with students? What could it look like to focus less on completely solving students’ concerns, and focus more on walking alongside students as they navigate them? Within our work, we regularly navigate behaviors that cause harm. This session invites participants to explore approaches that center care, accountability, and continued relationship over punishment or exclusion. We will build a philosophical and practical bridge between Harm Reduction and Restorative Justice, and together consider how this framework applies to the variety of work we do in Student Life. Attendees will leave this session with strategies to foster accountability, provide student-centered support, and promote belonging within their everyday work and campus communities.

In this interactive session, we will discuss their process of collaboratively updating workshop content and processes as a case study for using materials that you have already available to you and making meaningful changes to better reach student needs. Specifically, we will share how we approached managing an office-wide project, highlighting our goal to create a more streamlined approach to our programs that effectively leveraged all of our staff resources and expertise. We will also highlight how we leveraged Adobe Express and UM-GPT as tools to aid in our process. The rest of the session will be a working session where presenters will guide participants through creating a plan for their own program improvement endeavor. You can expect to leave the session with an actionable game plan for how you can refine a program or initiative of your own to better reach student needs. Expect this session to be highly interactive.

Wondering how to navigate the changing landscape of higher education and still support students and their diverse needs? Join the Community Connections and Engagement Department for a dive into revamping their Programming Model in ways that centered the student experience as well as departmental values and mission. In this learning session, Ray and Elizabeth will share how defining the scope of student staff positions in their department has created scaffolding for training, expectations, and partnerships for student staff. Through this and changes to the Programming Model, they have been able to approach inclusive community building by applying the foundations of the model and adapting for each individual residential community. If you are interested in connecting and engaging about adapting your approach to supporting the student experience while centering your department’s mission and values, this session is for you! 

This interactive session will lean into the often-unexplored realm of Trauma Stewardship for  administrators in higher education. Attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of the 16 warning signs of trauma exposure and explore how these signs manifest in themselves and those they supervise. Drawing from real-life scenarios in higher education, the presenter will facilitate deep engagement with trauma stewardship concepts, providing practical strategies to combat the signs and enhance personal well-being. The session aims to empower staff and administrators to navigate the complexities of their roles, particularly in dealing with high-risk situations, while fostering a culture of self-care and support.