Meredith Gets Creative in Adapting Student Adviser Training

While classes for Spring 2020 are being completed online, Meredith’s First Year Experience (FYE) Office is preparing to welcome new students for Fall 2020, including training new Student Advisors (SAs). In addition to offering virtual training sessions, FYE found creative ways to ensure new SAs still got the information they need.

“Usually we have a three hour training in March with all of our new Student Advisors to help them get to know each other and the leaders of the program as well as to begin understanding the role of the SA and information about important upcoming dates,” said FYE Co-Director Chrissie Bumgardner, who coordinates the Student Advising Program.

Since in person training wasn’t possible this year, new advisors were asked to create a Google slide about themselves. Students were asked to include information about their majors, favorite traditions, and other involvement at Meredith, to share fun facts, and to explain what inspired them to become an SA.

“We created a scavenger hunt based on information we learned from the slides and sent it back to them and asked the students to go through the slideshow to get to know each other,” Bumgardner said. “This was our virtual ice breaker.”

Scavenger hunt questions included finding returning SAs in particular majors, or  who studied abroad, is in the 1891 Club, or is a Teaching Fellow, and more.

Another adaptation for this training was replacing the panel discussion featuring returning SAs, these veteran SAs were asked to create a slideshow featuring important advice and information on how to be successful as an SA.

“After the virtual training session, we asked [the trainees] to go through the slideshow and answer a set of questions,” Bumgarder said. “We had to get creative with SA training this year.”