Past events

Past events

2022 Advisor Conference: Riding the Wave of Change

April 27 & 28, 2022 - online

Keynote speaker: Eternity Martis

What does it mean to be a student (and woman) of colour on a Canadian university campus today?

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Eternity Martis is an award-winning Toronto-based journalist. She was a 2017 National Magazine Awards finalist for Best New Writer and the 2018 winner of the Canadian Online Publishing Awards for Best Investigative Article. Her writing has appeared in Vice, Huffington Post, The Walrus, CBC, Hazlitt, The Fader, Salon, and on academic syllabuses around the world.

Her work on race and language has influenced media style guide changes across the country. She is the course developer and instructor of Reporting On Race: The Black Community in the Media at Ryerson University, the first of its kind in Canada, and the 2021 Asper Visiting Professor at UBC. She earned an honours BA and a Certificate in Writing from Western University and an MJ from Ryerson University.

In 2020, she was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women by Women’s Executive Network.

Keynote: Student success in the post-pandemic university

Presented by Devon Hutchinson, Jazz Fitzgerald and Paige Doherty from the Student Success Office; and current students Jennifer Xie, Navya Vikraman Nair, and Veronica Sila Nhio-Son

As we’re witnessing, the pandemic has impacted students’ academic experiences and success, sense of community, belonging and connection to campus, and their overall wellbeing. Equity gaps have widened as the pandemic has exposed multiple inequities and inequalities.

While some student success challenges will resolve as we return to a new normal, others will remain as medium or longer-term impacts on post-secondary education and students’ experience.  There are opportunities for us as a campus community to address these concerns and mitigate their impact. How can we respond?

Join us as we share relevant research highlighting these student success concerns in the context of the post-pandemic university. We’ll pose questions and idea-share on ways we can work together to support Waterloo students. We’ll reflect on the important role academic advisors play in enabling student success and consider future directions and priorities for our collective efforts moving forward. We hope you’ll be part of the conversation!   

Concurrent session recordings

  • Maintaining good and supportive boundaries with students (Presented by Amanda Cook & Meaghan Ross, Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office)
  • Call me by my name: Beyond inclusion, toward action (Presented by Jazz Fitzgerald, Student Success Office)

2021 Advisor Conference: The Challenge of Change

April 15 & 16, 2021 - online

Keynote speaker: Dr. Rashelle Litchmore

Why Diversity and Inclusion are Not Enough: Addressing Systemic Racism to Support Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) Students in Post-secondary Institutions

We all remember the feeling of being new. Whether in high school, or in a post secondary institution, we can sharply recall feelings of nervousness and isolation as we navigated our first few weeks at a new institution. For most of us, this feeling eventually dissipated once we found friends, settled into classes, and found co-curricular activities that we enjoy. However, this feeling of isolation is one that follows most BIPOC students throughout their entire tenure at university. Despite efforts at these institutions to promote “diversity, equity and inclusion”, BIPOC students are still faced with the burden of navigating spaces to which they have been told, both implicitly and explicitly, that they will never belong.

In this talk, Professor Rashelle Litchmore will take you through her own experiences as a first-generation, immigrant, Black student in Canada. She will outline how Canadian institutions need to be restructured to not only support or accommodate BIPOC students through diversity and inclusion activities, but to explicitly address the role of systemic racism in these students’ historical physical exclusion, and present day cultural and social exclusion. Drawing on almost 20 years of experience across student leadership, Student Life, student advising, and now teaching and research in post secondary institutions, Dr. Litchmore calls on academic advisors to examine how their own work may be exclusionary to BIPOC students, and to examine institutional practices that can be addressed or implemented to promote success for these students.

Concurrent session recordings

2020 Advisor Conference: Updating Your (Online) Advising Toolbox

Online

Keynote speaker: Sue Fraser, B.Sc., B.A., MSW, RSW, Employee Career Advisor and Learning Specialist, Centre for Career Action (CCA) and Organizational and Human Development (OHD)

Managing Compassion Fatigue: Staying Well While Helping Others in this New World

During this challenging time, we are supporting students and each other as we navigate the “unknowns” and the changing environment of learning and work. Just as the lives of our students have been disrupted, our work and home lives have been similarly impacted.  We are rising to meet this challenge and it is hard.

In this workshop, you will learn about compassion fatigue and burnout and the risk factors that make employees more vulnerable to experiencing them. Helping students and your UWaterloo colleagues can provide a great deal of satisfaction. However, providing this support can also be stressful and overwhelming especially given the current rapidly changing world. You will get an opportunity to experience practical strategies to better handle work and home stress and to develop a plan which will help you to stay well while helping others. 

Additional resources:

Concurrent session recordings and resources

Visit Advisor Resources for more resources and professional development opportunities.

This event is hosted by the Academic Advising Community of Practice. If you have questions about registration or the conference, please contact success@uwaterloo.ca.

The University of Waterloo acknowledges that much of our work takes place on the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabeg, and Haudenosaunee peoples. Our main campus is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land granted to the Six Nations that includes six miles on each side of the Grand River. Our active work toward reconciliation takes place across our campuses through research, learning, teaching, and community building, and is centralized within the Office of Indigenous Relations.