other advisors face-to-face and hear best practices in these changing times is always helpful for creating new ideas to bring back to our campus.”
Assistant Director of Advising and RPC, Tiffany Schmier, felt that attending the NACADA Region 9 conference in-person was a great way to connect with the out-of-state colleagues, including some who served on committees with her for a few years. Tiffany not only attended, she co-presented a session which helped deepen her commitment to meeting students where they are and shared institutional, local, and national resources available to assist students.
Senior ASC Advisor, Sheetal Survase, expressed, “overall, my conference experience was educational, enjoyable and inspiring! All of the sessions I attended shared themes of advisor resilience and reinvention as well as tactics describing how to continue our commitment to student success, despite the challenges encountered by advising professionals over the past two years. It was great to connect with colleagues from various institutions, learn about their experiences of working during the pandemic and participate in lively discussions to grow our existing approaches to advising."
Academic Advisor, Nick Hainesworth, stated that, “having the opportunity to attend the NACADA Region 9 conference this year reminded me of why I, and so many other advisors, do the work that we do. It was amazing to hear about the experiences of advisors at other institutions, how their practices and philosophies differ from my own, and about the resources different institutions have in place to support both advisors and students. One of the highlights of the conference in my opinion was the student panel session. Hearing about the experiences of two transfer students really put into perspective the varying needs of the students we serve and emphasized the importance of meeting students where they are in order to provide them with the resources they need to help them succeed in college and in their lives. Overall, I had a phenomenal time at the NACADA Region Nine conference and I look forward to the opportunity to attend in the future."
Senior Academic Advisor, Jacquee deJesus, added, “I echo all the sentiments the other advisors have shared and I wanted to provide a little note for anyone interested in presenting at a conference as you go along in your academic and post-college careers: There are all sorts of opportunities out there! Conference sessions don’t have to be just memorized speeches. Participants can learn from panels (having a group conversation with pre-planned prompts or impromptu questions) or poster sessions (conversations with smaller groups or individuals). You can even incorporate pop-culture in your presentations. NACADA had presentations about how the Harry Potter universe or Uncle Iroh from the Avatar: The Last Airbender series relates to academic advising. Maybe you get to connect with someone and find a common interest (or geek out about a previous pop-culture session) and you join forces to put on a session together. You might be nervous to do it, but it could be worth it.”
The opportunity to be a part of the NACADA Region 9 advising community enables the ASC Advising team to be lifelong learners and share their knowledge with campus and community members to serve students at UNLV!
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#RebelsGive is next week!
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Join the ASC in celebrating our students, faculty, and staff for a livestreamed event!
Tuesday, 4/5, at 1 p.m.
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Academic Success Coaching
SSC-A, Room 254
702-895-0975
asccoaching@unlv.edu
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General Subjects Tutoring
LLB, 2nd Floor & Virtual
702-895-3199
tutoring@unlv.edu
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Engineering Tutoring Lab
TBE A309 & Virtual
702-895-2910
engtutoring@unlv.edu
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Supplemental Instruction
702-774-4625
si@unlv.edu
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ComLab
ASC 101, GUA 4131 & 4132,
& Virtual
702-895-3177
comlab@unlv.edu
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Advising
Virtual Drop-in Advising: Fri. 9-4
or call for an Appointment
702-895-3177
ascadvising@unlv.edu
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Awards & Promotions
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Abriana Perez, Supplemental Instruction Leader, received the 2022 Student Service Award from the UNLV Office of Community Engagement due to her work in COVID-19 vaccine clinics and the COVID-19 Relief Donation Drive, a partnership with the Immigrant Home Foundation, Walmart, and Touro University Nevada.
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The ASC's Student-Athlete Academic Services (SAAS) unit received the 2022 Academic Assessment Award for a Department or Program. UNLV's Academic Assessment Committee stated, "The persistent efforts of SAAS to support and assess the student-athletes is commendable. Their dedication to improve the academic experience of student-athletes is outstanding and the results speak from themselves."
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Cheyenne Cuizon, Assistant Director for Academic Transitions and Learning Support, received the 2022 Academic Assessment Award for an individual. UNLV's Academic Assessment Committee stated, "Your persistent efforts with Academic Success Coaching and particularly your assessment efforts of the Hixson-Lied Success Scholars Program are a testament to your dedication to UNLV students and the UNLV community. I could not be more pleased that your colleagues both within your unit and on the Academic Assessment Committee see the value of your contributions."
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Dr. Joe Ervin has been promoted to Associate Professor-in-Residence. "Dr. Joe," as his students call him, is the first academic faculty member promoted in the ASC.
Presentations
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Sheetal Survase, Senior Academic Advisor, presented at the Western Political Science Association Conference 2020 in Portland, Oregon. The conference paper was titled, "Serving on the Frontlines of Higher Education: An Examination of the Coping Behaviors Utilized by Academic Advisors During the Pandemic."
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Jacquee deJesus, Senior Academic Advisor, and Derek Furukawa, University of Hawaii at Mānoa, presented at the NACADA Region 9 conference in Orange, California, in March 2022. Their presentation was titled, "The IROH approach to academic advising: Providing mentorship and guidance."
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Sheetal Survase and Elizabeth Johnson, Senior Academic Advisors, co-presented at the NACADA Region 9 conference in Orange, California, in March 2022. Their workshop was titled, "Coping During COVID-19: Examining Advising Effectiveness in Relation to an Advisor's Work Conditions."
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Special Events
- The ASC, in partnership with the MSI Student Council, University Libraries, the Intersection, and Multicultural Programs for STEM, hosted an Academic Resource Fair as part of Student Achievement Week. Students were able to learn about a wide variety of resources available on campus.
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Kimberly Jennison
Academic Eligibility Specialist
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Describe your path to UNLV.
I actually call myself a “UNLV Lifer.” I got my undergraduate and master’s degrees here. I’m doing my Ph.D. now. Before that, I was in school for about a year at a small school in Pennsylvania and then my parents moved to Vegas. So I was like “Let’s start something new.” I transferred here and then while I was an undergrad, I started working for the athletic department and it kind of snowballed from there.
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Your job title is "Academic Eligibility Specialist." What does your job entail?
Every school with NCAA athletes is going to have academic advisors or counselors for the student-athletes. Here at UNLV, we not only take on the academic counseling and everyday stuff, but we also help them with NCAA numbers and progress towards a degree. We really get the students from when they’re being recruited in the middle of high school all the way through graduation. It’s eligibility in terms of, are you passing your classes, are you taking the right classes, are you meeting all the rules? Really, it's kind of a day-to-day touchpoint for all things academic.
How often do students meet with you?
I have a total open door policy. Freshman have to be with me once a week. I see some people every single day. We try to promote an atmosphere of “I want to come here.” They want to hang out. They do their homework here. It’s very much a mixture of “big sister and guidance counselor.” It's a place to be supported.
You work with a lot of international student-athletes. Describe how you help them navigate their journey at UNLV?
When I started this role, I requested to work with a team with a lot of international students because I liked that idea. My tennis teams and my swim teams have a big international population. Just from being so familiar with it, I’ve kind of de facto been the contact for other sports that need similar support. We come in and our tasks can be as small as evaluating transcripts where the grade scale is completely different and helping them understand. Once they’ve been admitted and gone to the recruiting process, then I kind of jump in and help with all the paperwork for the visa, I-20 and X, Y, and Z - just really familiarizing myself with all the different additional rules they have to follow while here because it is a lot to know. It’s kind of just being that person to ask things like, “what is OPT” and “how do I stay here after school?” We have our international office, which is well-versed in those policies. A lot of times, the students are comfortable with me. They’re in here all the time. So, I’m going to be the person asked all the questions. Obviously, COVID was crazy. I had students who could not get visas. I had a couple of students who did their first full year of college in online Zoom classes from China and I woke up early to make sure I could meet with them. I even had a sticky note on my computer with all the different time zones.
What is one piece of advice that you always give your student-athletes?
The big one that you always hear me talk about is finding balance. There’s a lot of pressure always and I try to talk about how you’re going to have ups and you’re going to have downs. Take those as they are and don’t let them carry over so much. Balance could be working harder at school and balance could be taking a step back. I have students that I’ve literally mandated “no homework days” because they’re doing too much.
Once you've earned your doctorate, how would you implement things you have learned into your current position?
Even right now, there are some valuable carry-overs. I am in a cognition and learning class right now and one of the books we have is called, Why Don’t Students Like School? It talks about how as humans we inherently love to solve problems, but we don’t like to have to find the right answer per se. So, there’s different ways I’ve talked to people through different learning methods. Then, just getting more into the mind of the people that I’m recruiting and the people that I’m advising. The big thing is that education is so different in different countries and different places. I think eventually I’d like to teach, probably a statistics course. But, I would not want to give this up. I enjoy it.
What is something we may be surprised to learn about you?
I think what people may be surprised to learn about me is that I initially went to college to be a coroner. I was going to be a forensic medical professional, which is a complete departure from where I am now. Crime and psychopaths are kind of my side passion. I’ve read a lot of literature on forensics and psychology. I was the kid growing up that had forensic kits instead of dolls and Barbie's. So, that’s always what I thought I was going to end up doing. Then in high school I did statistics and ran books and was the manager for a lot of sports. I sat with my faculty advisor and went home that weekend and kind of had an existential crisis of realizing that I don’t want to give up sports and how much I love it. I came back the next week and switched my major and that’s been how I’ve been trucking along ever since.
Is there anything else you'd like us to know?
I always try to help people understand that the student-athletes are people and a lot of times, when you see football and basketball you see the people on Twitter saying how much they suck and how much they lost this game. That’s only one aspect of these people that have so many aspects to them. On the swim team, I have architecture majors, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers. They’re here because they want to be here and they want to get a degree. I’ve had graduate students and I have someone who just finished and now he’s got accepted to his Ph.D. program. Their sport is a huge part of their life and yet such a small part of them as a person. It’s really nice to get to know the other parts of them.
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Abriana Perez
Senior
Pre-Professional Biological Sciences Major
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Why did you choose to come to UNLV?
I’m originally from Texas but I moved to Nevada during my junior year of high school. I originally planned to go back to school in Texas but it looked better financially to go to school in-state since I got the in-state tuition and along with that, some scholarships were offered to me. I also wanted to stay close to my family since they did move down here as well.
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What ASC services have you used since being at UNLV?
My freshman year, being a first-generation student, I felt really lost coming to UNLV. No one in my family went to college previously. I didn’t really feel like I had anyone to ask and I didn’t have any friends that were attending UNLV either. The ASC was there to really provide me that academic support that I really needed. I’ve taken part in a lot of their services. I’ve gone to a lot of their workshops. I went to tutoring and that’s kind of the reason why I was able to be as successful of a student as I currently am. I really did struggle my first couple of years until I got the help that I needed. They really helped shape me into the student I am today.
What motivated you to be the first in your family to go to college?
I have older siblings who didn’t choose to go to college either. Growing up, I was 1 of 6 children. So I had a really big family and my parents were very young when they started their family. We definitely struggled a lot financially and I think growing up in that environment, I always wanted to do what I could to better myself and give myself greater financial opportunities. My parents also instilled into me at a young age that they want me to have a better life than they did because they didn’t really get the opportunity to go into higher education. My dad wasn’t even able to graduate high school. So, that set me on my path to go to college and be a doctor. They tell me all the time, “we’re very proud of you.”
What is the best piece of advice you have been given so far at UNLV?
I’ve struggled a lot with imposter syndrome and feeling like I either don’t belong or I’m not cut out to pursue medicine. I found myself really comparing myself to so many other students that are also pre-meds and thinking, “oh, they’re doing X, Y, Z and I’m not doing as well. I’m not performing as well. I’m not doing as many things as they are.” It really puts myself in a dark place where I feel like I should pursue something else. After talking with some of my friends and mentors, they really pushed it on me to not compare myself to others. Everyone has their own journey and their own path and it’s important that you stay true to yourself and work on your needs, rather than just comparing yourself to others. It helped me to stop worrying so much about what others are doing. It was like, “Just worry about yourself. What can you do to reach your goals?” Just focus on you. It doesn’t matter how long it takes you or if you fail this amount of times because you’re going to do what you can to accomplish your goal. Learning that really helped me.
You work as a Supplemental Instruction (SI) Leader on campus. If you were to describe SI to a new student, what would you say?
It is a free, peer-led study group. The leader works along with the students to create a bunch of activities to help students grasp the harder concepts in statistically harder courses that have high drop, fail or withdrawal rates. We create activities, practice exams, practice problems to instill good study and practice methods. That way you can really be as successful as you can in those courses. It’s essentially an extra support system.
You just received the UNLV Office of Community Engagement's Student Service Award! Can you describe some of the work you did to earn this award?
For the COVID Vaccine Clinics, I worked along with Rolando Flores who is one of the deans at Touro University Nevada. He brought forward an opportunity to work with Walmart because there were a lot of inconsistencies with the dispersal of vaccines when they first came out. We were seeing that the areas that had higher COVID rates and that were really struggling were areas in east Las Vegas. There are a lot of minorities and they just weren’t getting the access that they needed to vaccines. He worked with Walmart to create vaccine clinics specifically made for those areas. I worked with him to supply all of the volunteers with my organization, Future Latinos in Medicine. We worked over the summer and into the next year, over the course of 8 months, hosting vaccine clinics that provided over 15,000 Nevada residents with vaccines. I volunteered over 200 hours at these vaccine clinics. We were helping them translate because a lot of them are Spanish speaking. We were helping get their information so that they can get these vaccines at no cost. It was a really important moment for me because I do want to go into medicine and because I am Latina. I’m seeing that I can use that part of my identity to help others and serve them through medicine. Being able to speak to them in a language that they felt most comfortable with, you could instantly see that ease within them. It was a really memorable experience.
For the COVID Relief Donation Drive, throughout the pandemic, we noticed that a lot of those people were struggling financially. Because a lot of them were undocumented, they weren’t able to get government assistance. A lot of them were losing their jobs like everyone else, but they didn’t have that cushion of government assistance. I decided to host a donation drive through my organization, Future Latinos in Medicine, and my other organization, UNLV Scientista. We partnered with other organizations that were pre-med based to raise money and supplies, like non-perishables, masks, and hand sanitizer for these families. We were able to raise maybe $800 or $900 and items to support at least 20 families across Las Vegas.
You're now a senior and looking forward to the next steps. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I really hope by then I’ll be in medical school. I’ll either be almost done with medical school or through medical school and into my residency - a residency in pediatrics because that’s really what I want to practice.
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SUMMER MATH BRIDGE APPLICATIONS ARE OPEN |
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Do you know someone who wants to:
- Improve their math skills,
- Place into a higher-level math class &
- Connect with peers and resources?
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FREE for admitted UNLV students!
Exclusively online!
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The Academic Success Center's Math Bridge Program
has 3 summer sessions available.
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Hixson-Lied Success
Scholarship Program:
Applications Due 4/30/22!
This program provides students:
- A scholarship in the amount of $1,250 per semester ($2,500 per year) for up to 8 semesters
- Academic Success Coaching Sessions
- The ability to make a difference through serving peers and giving back to UNLV
- Access to the Hixson-Lied Success Scholars Newsletter, a monthly newsletter created by the scholars
Apply Now!
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ASC Dean's Award Scholarship:
Now Open!
To be eligible to apply:
- Be a continuing UNLV student with less than 60 earned credits
- Be declared in the Exploring major or Major Pathways program
- Have & maintain a minimum UNLV cumulative GPA of 2.0 each semester the scholarship is received
- Enroll in a minimum of 12 credits for each semester the scholarship is received
- Complete application and submit a 500-750 word essay
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Looking for an On-Campus Job?
The ASC is currently recruiting for several student-worker positions. Click on the position for more information.
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Be sure to follow the ASC on Social Media! |
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