The Graduation Initiative Advisory Team, with the support of the Divisions of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, is pleased to announce the second annual Tipping Point Student Success Summit.
The Tipping Point Summit is a day-long professional development conference focused on critical make-or-break moments in students’ university experiences. It provides a pause in our harried university lives, allowing for reflection, absorption of new data and new ideas, and sharing. In that spirit, we seek your proposals to help us better understand where we are as an institution of higher learning, and how your best practices may help us increase student success at Chico State.
During her Convocation, President Hutchinson unveiled the elements of our new Strategic Plan, which includes three Strategic Priorities:
These priorities provide the framework for this year's summit.
What can data tell us about the disparities in achievement and rates of retention and graduation across student groups? What efforts are helping to close those gaps? How can changes in our teaching, advising, and other campus support practices lead to more equitable outcomes for all students?
How does student engagement drive persistence and achievement? How are we ensuring that our students are engaged in their learning; with their faculty, staff, and peers; and with the local and distant communities that are meaningful to them?
How can our systems and processes support students’ capacity for academic success? What does it mean to be a program, office, or department committed to helping students thrive in challenging circumstances? How do we attend to our own resilience as faculty, staff, and administrators?
Gayle E. Hutchinson has served as President of California State University, Chico since July 2016 when she returned to the campus where her career in higher education began. As president, she has worked with the campus community to strengthen shared governance and to promote diverse and inclusive communities of excellence, innovation, accountability, trust, transparency, and respect. President Hutchinson successfully led the University through a strategic planning process, which has resulted in three strategic priorities: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; Civic and Global Engagement; and Resilient and Sustainable Systems. She and her team are now working on implementation of both the Strategic Plan and a new Campus Master Plan.
James T. Minor is a national expert in expanding access to higher education and addressing student achievement gaps. In his role with the CSU, Minor provide s leadership and strategy to advance the CSU's new Graduation Initiative 2025 targets focused on increasing the completion rates of first-time freshmen, transfer, low income and underserved students. In addition, Minor provides leadership and strategy for CSU-wide efforts supporting faculty excellence, inclusivity, and ensures that these efforts align with graduation and student success goals.
President Gayle Hutchinson
Dr. James T. Minor
Attendees will be presented with data from a CSU-wide study on the experience and perspectives of SWD’s access to and participation with healthy opportunities. An example of an inclusion accommodation implemented by a faculty member, the involved student, the Office of Accessible Technology, and the Associated Students Child Development Laboratory will be provided. Attendees will engage in small and large group discussions and be given some strategies to improve equity and inclusion of SWD.
Sarah DeMartini
Josie Blagrave
Sarah Gentle
Kerri Vanderbom
This workshop will guide participants in understanding the integral role of purpose, place, participation and public demonstration of knowledge in learning. Join us to consider how you might reimagine your course(s) to include these ideas. Session participants will be invited to a summer symposium to continue this work into next year.
Nate Millard
Ann Schulte
Campus commitments to the principles of free speech and open inquiry stand alongside our commitment to supporting marginalized students who often bear the brunt of abhorrent but legally protected speech. How do we hold these obligations together in the current divisive political climate? Panelists will offer brief remarks from a variety of perspectives before engaging participants in constructive conversations.
Tracy Butts
Nandi Crosby
Alan Gibson
Nathan Heggins Bryant
Mary Wallmark (moderator)
To eliminate advising “pinball” and help students understand and meet their academic goals, the Chico State 360 initiative is launching a new platform to enable professional advisors, faculty advisors, and support program staff to share advising notes, make referrals, and better align centralized advising with advising in the majors. Learn about the platform and connect with other faculty and staff advisors to explore common challenges and strategize for optimal collaboration.
Kaitlyn Baumgartner
Kate McCarthy
Kelly McGregor
What’s Blackboard? What do I do when my books are sold out? What if no one talks to me? Do I belong here? The first week of college is filled with uncertainty. Learn from first-year students about the barriers and stressors experienced in their first week, and how they might have been better supported in their classrooms. Participants will begin to re-imagine the first week of class to address these concerns. (Bring your syllabus!)
Ellie Ertle
In this highly interactive session, we will explore housing & food insecurity on campus and the connection to mental health and well-being. Come hear hot-off-the-press research on the levels of student housing and food insecurity in our community, post-Camp Fire. Then join us in exploring existing resources for student health & well-being – including how and when to access the CARE Team - so that together we can support students to be healthy, present, and ready to learn.
Emily Foxworthy
Jennifer Wilking
Susan Roll
Jenna Wright
This session will feature a dialogue on building resilient systems by focusing on the core of Chico State: the faculty and staff who serve students and the institution. Focusing on the connections among trauma exposure, challenging expectations, burnout, and workplace sustainability, this discussion will identify specific challenges, existing interventions, and promising directions for holistic workplace well-being.
Alix MacDonald
Karin Lightfoot
Krystle Tonga
Kyle Horst
Meditation can help us enhance focus, heighten awareness, improve creativity, and manage anxiety. It can help students sustain attention, be more engaged in learning, and cultivate “cognitive flexibility.” Come learn (and experience) how various forms of meditation, even as little as 60 seconds, can enhance wellness for both you and our students.
Josh Trout
Kathy Fernandes
In this session, co-facilitators from the University Diversity Committee will offer real-life Chico State case studies that ask participants to grapple with issues and discuss methods for protecting open academic inquiry and students’ abilities to participate fully in their education.
Eddie Vela
Rachel McBride
We begin with an overview of one instructor’s journey from realizing he had an equity gap to the practical changes implemented to address the issue. Then, NSSE and institutional data help to identify behavioral and experiential factors that contribute to academic success among first-year students. The findings will point to potential targets for equity-based interventions. After each of the brief presentations, audience members will participate in group work to identify promising strategies.
Matt Thomas
Peter Owens
Bring a current syllabus to this workshop to dialogue with one another about best practices of creating an inclusive syllabus. Learn about instructional material formats to best engage your students. Leave with a quick action plan for improving your syllabus and instructional materials to be more inclusive for greater student success.
Kathy Fernandes
Jacob Tobia noted that “as a concept, professionalism is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, imperialist and so much more -- and yet people act like professionalism is non-political.” This presentation will focus on what “professional” means and explore how “professionalism” is rooted in power structures and how we can dismantle this coded system of oppression. Our hope is to continue to make our campus more inclusive therefore increasing retention, persistence to graduation and life-long success.
Jenna Wright
Emily Lees
Dr. Debra Larson is the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. She joined CSU, Chico in March 2017 after a nationwide search. Dr. Larson served as dean of the College of Engineering at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo from 2011-2017. Prior to Cal Poly, Dr. Larson served as chair, associate dean, and associate vice provost at Northern Arizona University over a 17-year span. She also worked as a civil engineer in the private sector for more than a decade before her work at Northern Arizona.
Dr. Debra Larson
