Graduate Level Advising and the Community of Care for Advisors - Adventures in Advising

In Ep. 105, Matt Markin chats with Olivia Miller, exploratory studies advisor at Kansas State University. Olivia discusses advising graduate vs undergraduate students, differences in resources and role responsibilities at the graduate level, as well as the outlook on advisor retention and building a community of care for advisors. 

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Hello Adventurers in Advising podcast listeners, it's time for episode 105. This is Matt Markin, and I'm happy to introduce our special guest for today, and that is Olivia Miller. Olivia Miller currently serves as an exploratory studies advisor for undecided students at Kansas State University. Olivia has served as an advisor for eight years, having held positions at University of Nebraska, Lincoln, University of Kansas and University of Missouri, Kansas City, having advised at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. She's an active member and leader in NACADA focusing on areas of member engagement, advisor retention and advisor well being. She is currently serving as the Chair for the Well Being and Advisor Retention Advising Community and is an elected cluster representative for the advising community division, and will begin this role this October. Olivia, most recently, won the 2024 Advising Community Division Service Award. She has held positions on the region six and seven steering committees, has been involved with various NACADA mentoring programs, and engages in scholarly activity focusing on advisor well being and retention. Olivia, welcome to the podcast.

Olivia Miller  
Thank you so much, Matt. It's an honor to be here. 

Matt Markin  
And I'm always great, you know, posting on social media and seeing that you'll post, and hey, I listened to this episode, and knowing that, you know, you've been a long, long time supporter and listener of the podcast, and I think I can say that you've listened to every single episode of the past, which is fantastic. So you already know the first question I'm going to ask you, and that's to tell us about your path in higher ed what's what's your origin story? 

Olivia Miller  
Well, it started 15 years ago, fall of 2009 is when I stepped on campus at Kansas State University. My major was political science. I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do. I just had an idea. I wanted to work internationally, and then I got involved with housing. I had pretty much every role except being an RA as an undergrad and senior year, I was hired as a peer career specialist with the academic and career information center, and that was kind of my first foray into academic advising, although I did not know it at the time, but we were a peer team that helped students kind of explore different majors and careers. I thought nothing of it, because I was already applying and ready to transition into one of K-State's graduate programs in security studies. Because at the time, my dream was to work for the State Department, and I wanted to become Secretary of State one day, and that next academic year was one of the most difficult years that I had had as a student, I quickly learned that being interested in history and reading all the history books is quite different than actually studying history and international relations. And I actually went back to my ACIC supervisor, Michelle, and told her what was going on, and she sat me down, and she said, Olivia, you know, academic advising is a thing. Higher Ed is a thing. And I always thought Higher Ed was all of my housing, very extroverted friends, and that is not me. And so with that, I changed into K-State's College Student Development Program and completed my master's with the academic advising graduate certificate in 2016 and my very first position was at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, where I advised anthropology, geography and Global Studies students for the most part, and was there for four years. Moved closer to home, born and raised in the Kansas City area to KU University of Kansas, where I transitioned to advising business students that I always joke everyone's favorite academic year, 2020, to 2021, the COVID year was not my favorite year, personally or professionally. And then after that year, I transitioned over to the University of Missouri, Kansas City, staying with business students, but moved up to the graduate level, which was an adjustment. I would say, the needs of graduate students, and kind of how they work with academic advisors, is very different with undergraduate students. But then I after kind of three years there, I was realizing I was missing that undergraduate experience, and there was an opportunity back at K-State, at my alma mater, with the brand new Exploratory Studies program, and I was fortunate enough, I'm one of the two new advisors, and kind of bringing it back full circle, kind of like a CIC, I'm now advising exploratory students. So that's me in a nutshell for 15 years. 

Matt Markin  
And that's one of the nice things about that higher ed right? Is like, you know, you're not necessarily pigeon holed or stuck in advising one student population. It's kind of nice to branch out, test the waters and then, you know, kind of like you're saying, having this full circle moment, going back and now, working now with the exploratory students at the undergrad level. And I know definitely I do want to talk to you about kind of the differences between undergrad and grad advising, kind of your experience, because I'm sure there's other listeners of the podcast that might be in a similar situation, or they might now be going, I'm soon going to be advising grad students what, what should I be prepared for? But before we get to that, you kind of have a connection to a few different individuals within Academic Advising. They've been a previous guest podcast wise. And I'm going to kind of turn it over to you, because I think your first or one of your supervisors was Tony Lazarowicz.

Olivia Miller  
So he hired me at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and he is one of the main reasons why I got involved with NACADA as quickly as I did. Six months after I started, I went to my first Annual Conference in Atlanta, not knowing at all what I was getting myself into, and again, as an introverted advisor, that was very overwhelming. I vividly remember being on the escalator at one time, and everyone was crowded at the bottom, and we started backing up. So that's my first NACADA highlight. But again, having worked with Tony, and then I've also been able to work with him within Nakata in the advising community division, has been very beneficial for me, just developing as an advisor in that very first role within developing myself as a NACADA member.

Matt Markin  
And a couple other individuals that people might know, not necessarily from the podcast, even though they've been on the podcast, but they're probably friends in various advising circles, especially within NACADA. But tell us your connections with Casey Gregerson and Craig McGill.

Olivia Miller  
Yeah, so I'll mention Craig McGill first, because I know him as Tony's best friend and best man at his wedding. I first met him when Tony and I we picked him up in Kansas City, and we drove on to the St Louis annual advice annual conference. And I remember he asked, What are you liking about advising? What are your research interests? And I mean, I've been an advisor for a year and a half, and I was like, I don't know. I'm still new, still getting used to this, but I have kind of followed him and his research as he started at K State as a faculty member, and actually, last spring, took his research methods class, which I really enjoyed, because it's an end goal to eventually go for my PhD and focus on research for academic advisors. No surprise, well being in retention, so I've always known him as Craig, and then I now know him also as Dr. McGill in the classroom. And then Casey, I have never actually told her this, but I consider her my NACADA big sister. She I have known her since 2018 she was the leading force for the well being and advisor retention advising community. And when she sent out the first email in 2018 about that advising community being kind of brought to life, I remember, it was a Friday afternoon, and I read it, and I was like, Yes, I want to be involved. And we've been attached at the hip pretty much ever since, and I've been following her footsteps pretty much the entire way too. So the podcast episode you had Tony and Casey on together, I'm biased. That is my favorite epsiode.

Matt Markin  
Well, and then if Casey never knew now, Casey knows, if Casey's listening to this podcast episode, when it's out how much of an impact that positive impact that that she's had on you. So let's chat about the kind of undergrad and grad advising, since you have the experience in both so kind of having worked at various institutions, having worked with both undergraduate and graduate students, how would you describe like, the differences advising like a graduate student versus an undergraduate student?

Olivia Miller  
Yeah, I think the main difference is understanding. And I had a hard time kind of wrapping my head around this. At the graduate level, student isn't necessarily their first or main priority and identity. They're working full time, part time. They have families that they're taking care of. I of. And at least for me, with business students, a lot of going to graduate school was to climb up in their career progression. It wasn't necessarily always because they wanted to continue studying something that they love, whereas, like undergrads brand new coming straight out of high school. This is their first time being out on their own. So various stages of development and life cycle. So I've been in advising sessions with students from 17 to someone who was recently retired and is in his 60s. He's actually one of my students that did he wanted to continue studying just for fun. Another thing that I would say, and this might have just been my own personal experience at the graduate level, there's not as much resources or focus at the community level on campus, that you're very even more so siloed in your department, advising is typically focused at the undergraduate level, as it should, because there's more undergraduate students on different campuses. But for me, I had come from Nebraska, where I was very involved with our advising association, and quickly got involved with KUs, equivalent of that, and then at UMKC, I never did because there was nothing really for me to do as a graduate advisor, and I never really met anyone outside of my own silo. Another thing I would say, at the graduate level, had very few in person appointments, because they're obviously working. So I was on zoom all day, every day, and with that, a lot more emails. The emails significantly more, and that's been a major transition, coming to K-State and being back with undergrads, my inbox is much smaller, which I appreciate. But at the graduate level, they're again working, so they are just hopping on for a quick 30 minutes for a question. If they don't have time for that, they're going to be asking anything and everything via email. So just being mindful of needing to schedule more time for myself for administrative time, so that way I could keep up with that for my students, I'd say those are the two main differences. And I guess just me personally, my caseload at the graduate level, which was much smaller, which allowed me to do a lot more Nakata things, because I do have a habit of saying yes and not saying no, and I've quickly realized as different terms have ended, there's no way at the undergraduate level I could have done all the things that I have done. So it was a nice balance. So again, that was just for me. That was a lot more email advising and really being kind of in your own island with that.

Matt Markin  
And I guess, kind of connected to that, like, in your opinion, do you think, like undergraduate students and and graduate students receive the same types of support and resources, like from from their institutions?

Olivia Miller  
I think the students, yes, do advisors may not necessarily like, for example, at UMKC, we did not have degree audits, which is the world I lived in for the past five years before that, which is okay, we made things work with PDFs, but it's a lot easier to track with A system. And my supervisor always advocated asking the registrar to we would be the guinea pigs, who's willing to volunteer us for that to be the test run for those degree audits, but they did not have enough resources to have someone to build those so students, yes, still had the support, but I think from the advising side with not having the same community. That's why I got heavily involved with the graduate and professional students advising community through NACADA, because then I was hearing from all these other people also advising graduate students that I was not connected to and able to talk with at my own institution. 

Matt Markin  
A question now is coming up, and we'll definitely talk about NACADA and your experience in that, but I kind of want to touch upon like, your experience with the graduate advising community. I'll hear sometimes when I'm at a conference and it's like, why aren't there more graduate sessions, or it seems like a lot of the resources or the communication, it seems more so like for the undergrad advisors or advising professionals, but where's the grad stuff? How do you address things like that? 

Olivia Miller  
And another thing is sometimes students see that advising community and they think it's for graduate and professional students, like an affinity group. And so I've been in conversations with different events through that AC of how to communicate the identity of what this AC is, who do they serve? And Amanda, the current chair, and Caitlin before her, have been great, really, kind of improved. On that. But I would say that advising community, it's small but mighty, and they've been able to collaborate with other groups as well, which I think has helped people who are not connected with graduate students in any way to know that it's there, that there is such a thing as graduate advisors, and two a lot of people think, and rightly so, that at the graduate level, a lot of the advising is still done by faculty members, especially if the programs are research focused. So just that in general, if you haven't gone to grad school and you haven't worked with graduate students kind of out of sight, out of mind, and so I'm glad that it's here in NACADA, because again, I was able to connect with people and have conversations that were going through similar things and how to advocate for themselves on their campuses. So with that, I would say the website, the NACADA website, once it gets back up and rolling, they will be able to better communicate what they are and who they serve, and then again, encouraging graduate advisors to submit proposals to run for leadership positions for that visibility factor as well.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, those are great tips. Now kind of going back to, like, your experience as advisor, both undergrad and grad. I know sometimes, you know, I hear from other advisors at their institutions, and even the one I'm at where sometimes it's like, there's like, a line drawn in the sand. This is undergrad, this is graduate, you know. So we might meet with a student that's like, I'm interested in this. You know, particular graduate program might be like, well, here's the contact person, you know, or, you know, here's the info session that they have. But I don't necessarily know a lot about a certain program, not that to know exactly everything about everything on campus, but you know, if you had, you know, a wish list of things to, you know, have more of that two way communication and more of the handoffs. Kind of, what would that look like for you?

Olivia Miller  
Yeah, I would say, in a dream world, with those campus advising communities having more graduate representation there, and not every campus even has an advising community to start with, but as those continue to develop, not that it would be extra work, but just be mindful that there are advisors at the graduate level as well, too, and simply extending an invitation to those advisors. They may not know that that is a thing that's going on on their campus, the graduate advisors, but if they get invited, they at least know someone wants them there. And then I think that would create an easier dialog with that two way street. Like you said, Matt, you don't have to know all the things about everything, even though I feel obligated to with students, but at least knowing the name of someone, and you may have seen them at a campus event at an advising community get together that again, allows that handoff to be more natural for students to go talk to someone, just like any campus referral that we all do every day, like to financial aid or to Counseling and Psychological Services, same thing with graduate advisors, And I would say too, hopefully within the departments, that is a more natural, easier thing to do that at least for me, a lot of students were coming into business, not having a business background, and a lot of them were returning having been in the workforce for anywhere between two to 10 years. So that's a little different to kind of knowing where a student is at and what are kind of their goals in the next steps, but having that community already built in to make that hand off a little bit easier would be, to me, possibly the easiest, most doable thing, right now.

Matt Markin  
I 100% agree with that. Now let's say you have, there's an advisor that is working with undergrad students, and soon they know they're, they're going to be working with graduate students, or maybe they are just starting, or even vice versa. They're a grad advisor that's now going to maybe change positions at their institution or be at a new institution. Now they're working with undergrad students. So with your experience, any advice you have for that advisor in that situation or that change of how to maybe prep for it?

Olivia Miller  
Yeah, I. I'm trying to think of just my transition from undergrad to grad. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. I had assumptions that it would be very similar. But I think for someone going from undergrad to grad, realize and acknowledge it's not necessarily going to be as developmental as you might want, or hope it to be like you are with undergraduate students again, the graduate students, at least the ones I worked with, they're here to take their classes to get that degree, to move on. So just knowing that right off the bat that you're not necessarily going to develop the same advisor advisee relationships and being okay with that one thing as well, with a lot of graduate advisors, one not everyone goes by that term. There is no universal term, and a lot of people in the graduate space are working with recruitment and admissions all the way through, and are a lot more involved with kind of the entire lifespan of a student. So just being aware of that too, the different types of projects that you'd be working on, especially when it comes to recruiting, I myself did not do much of that at the undergraduate level, except for campus visits every once in a while. But at the graduate level, I was in Slate pretty much every day, checking in on applications, especially with international students. What's the status of your i 20? I 20, your visa interview? Are you coming? And so a lot of communication that way before they even actually got to campus to actually start talking about their classes. And then for me personally, again, my caseload was much smaller, and so I was going from seeing 12 to 15 students every single day at KU to maybe maybe 12 students in a two week span, and having all of a sudden, all of this time to be working on other things that I wasn't used to. So that was another big shift for me that I was expecting, like the beginning of the semester to be crazy hectic and to have during peak advising to be having back to back appointments all day, every day. And it simply was not like that, which was good for my own mental well being, but that's definitely a transition that I was not mentally prepared for. I just thought it was going to be busy, busy, busy all the time. 

Matt Markin  
I didn't even consider the recruitment part of it, because, yeah, as an undergrad advisor, it's like, we have our admissions office. They handle all the admits, and then we start seeing them, maybe at New Student Orientation, and then officially, once you start taking classes here. So yeah, great points on that.

Olivia Miller  
Yeah. Well, and I guess another thing mentioning that about new student orientation or enrollment. I asked about that in my interview, and I didn't realize we are seeing students constantly as they're being admitted. There is no kind of summer New Student Orientation or enrollment like you're definitely used to at the undergraduate level, and so with that, you're just constantly scheduling appointments with students once they are admitted. Um, so there wasn't really a peak advising. It was just kind of a constant, go, go, go, if you will, just a different kind than at the undergraduate level.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, definitely a different kind of kind of busy, yeah, now, kind of shifting gears. I know offline we were mentioning where you had mentioned that, because of your involvement in NACADA, that's kind of why you're still in academic advising. And I was wondering if you could share a little bit about that?

Olivia Miller  
To be perfectly frank, that because of NACADA, especially my group with a well being and advisor retention, I have been retained. I've certainly not at each institution I've been at because there's been a lot of movement in the past four years, but definitely still in the profession, because of the community and the NACADA family, if you will, that different mentors that I have had, either formally through different Nakata mentoring or informally, like my NACADA big sister, Casey, having that group of people, some at my institutions, but especially those at different institutions, just to offer a different perspective or to listen to how things are going from My point of view has really helped me. And just learning from each other and taking different ideas and bringing that to each position that I've been in has been extremely valuable. I don't know what I would be doing if I weren't an academic advisor. I definitely there have been people. Within the wellbeing and advisor retention community that have left higher ed, and I've thought, I mean, of course, with a great resignation happening with covid, what could be out there for me? But I don't know what I'd be doing, because I don't think there's anything else I would be good at compared to advising.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, I feel like I'm in the same boat with you on that, you know, like I've had many friends and colleagues here that have left, and they're not nothing connected to higher ed now, and I always assumed that they would be the ones that would be in higher ed until they retired, right? And I sometimes I'll question myself, like, should I be thinking something outside of higher ed. But I keep coming back to the I keep coming back to this. No, stay in higher ed. So, yeah, I feel like I'm totally think the same same way as you. But let's talk about well being and retention, since we're on that topic. So you're actually, are you cycling off this this year as the the chair of the wellbeing and advisor, retention advising community?

Olivia Miller  
So I will officially move off in October, the wonderful Becky Helms will be coming on as the third chair, and I have decided I'm going to officially step off the steering committee. So it feels like a good chapter, a six year long chapter to step away, I'll still be involved by attending events and things, but that has really been the cornerstone of my career, is being involved with that AC specifically.

Matt Markin  
And you know, I know this podcast has had multiple people on during the last couple years of you know talking about advisor wellness, advisor retention, I guess you know, with your experience as an advisor, your experience within the wellbeing and advisor retention, advisor community, chairing that community, in your opinion, what do you think is like the what's the general outlook to you look like regarding advisor wellness and retention nowadays?

Olivia Miller  
I think it's slowly getting, I don't want to necessarily say better, but acknowledged that our advising community became official in March 2020, either that was the best time or the worst time, if you will, but it started off really as just a sounding board for people to talk about what they were experiencing, and that, I think, has really been the foundation for the community as a whole, as being a support group to talk about what are You experiencing, what are challenges that are keeping you from staying in higher ed? What are some things that we can advocate for ourselves to keep you in your advising position and even with I've kind of done a personal project of tracking the health and wellness conference sessions for the past few years, and a lot of it has started to shift from self care and yoga meditation to community care, which is something that Casey really wanted to focus on, that advising is a helping profession, and we're a very community focused and So taking care of your community rather than just focusing on yourself. Because a lot of us, we don't put ourselves first, to even take the time to do that self care, but if we frame it to community care, we're more likely to engage in that way. So again, that community for anyone, it's one of the larger ones, just because of the nature of the topic. But again, it's really been a place for people to talk about challenges, but also successes, like with advisor recognition, that has been something that we have focused on in our advising community, and different members have started taking that back to their own campuses and implementing either individual goals of writing recommendations for awards or looking into creating their own advisor recognition program on our campus that has never Been around before. So I'm really proud of the past six years, but at the same time for my well being, I need to take a step back and take a breath.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, and speaking of, like, awards, yeah. I mean, that's something, you know, and it's been talking about on this podcast with our stuff ski colleagues on steps the foundation with Jen win and Sherry Souza, but yeah, like our institution, we got a grant for advisor wellness, and one of the things that we did was create an advisor award, or professional advisor award, or and then, because we've had a faculty advisor award for since, like, the 90s, but nothing for, like, staff advisors. And when we end. Up having ended up having two winners, because it was just so close, and one of the winners actually told me, and it blew my mind, and it was I, not only did I appreciate the award, but he said that he finally felt like seen and that he was important to the institution. And I was just positively shocked by that. And I was like, in my mind, like, this is why we have this award.

Olivia Miller  
Yeah, definitely. And I feel like it's something that, again, would be a little bit easier to implement than, of course, advisor pay. That's one of the constant reasons why advisors leave. We can't really move the needle a lot there, but creating recognition systems that's a step forward again. Recognition goes a long way, and it's easy to say, even if it's just a thank you email, but creating kind of that culture of recognition, I think that's something that we could really implement in NACADA, through NACADA to different institutions, I think could make a real impact moving forward.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, and one of the reasons I was asking about the, like, your opinions on advisory wellness, and you were kind of, and you mentioned about the concurrent sessions, is because I also saw that, you know, you had co authored an 80 article with Casey Gregerson and Liz Sutton about self care. And you all did the research and found that since the creation of health and well though, health and well being track in 2016 since 2021 or through 2021 there had been that increase in the number of sessions. And I think you found that there was like 107 live concurrent sessions around those topics. I guess with that at article, what was like the interest was like, Hey, we should probably look and see what, what the past concurrent sessions look like?

Olivia Miller  
I think, I mean, I don't remember, because that's been a while now I I'm a little bit of a history nerd that I like looking at the past. I think there's a lot of value in looking at the past to see how we ended up where we are. And this is where Craig comes in again. I had mentioned it to him, and he's like, Well, you can make that be a paper, you know? And I'm like, No, I didn't. And so we started. I had reached out to Farah to get again from 2016 all the information, just to kind of see, one how many sessions were being had, and then what exactly were the topics. And you could definitely see from 2016 to 2020 a difference in focus compared to 20 and 2021 with covid, and I've kept up with it and also looked at the regional level conferences as well too, that are health and well being focused and again, ever since the pandemic, that's rightly so become a major topic at different conferences. So for me, it was kind of seeing different patterns. What was the focus before covid? At the height of covid, what were we really focused and concerned about? And then, as we're slowly still shifting out of it, what have we learned from that covid experience to make sure we can enhance advisor well being. So that way we're not as concerned about another great resignation if something like covid happened again. 

Matt Markin  
I think kind of this next question kind of really connected to that, and I think it's kind of drawing upon like you as a AC chair at articles you've co authored. Let's say you know, we're talking just recently, just talking about recognition, and maybe not be able to move the needle with with pay so much, and you were mentioning earlier about it's hard for you to say no, basically, kind of saying yes to everything. So let's say you have a advisor that's like, hey, AC, since you're an AC chair, let me ask you your opinion on this. How do I have more of increasing honest communication between, you know, myself and my supervisor regarding well being or regarding burnout or things like that?

Olivia Miller  
Yeah, that's a great question, and something that we've talked about at different events. And it may not be that someone is comfortable talking with their supervisor, and if that's the case, to start talking with a co worker colleague instead. I think it's important to be transparent and honest with how you're feeling. Hopefully you're having regular check ins with your supervisor, but I kind of flip it as well, something that I've constantly have been talking about that's not necessarily the questions and kind of the conversations about well being aren't addressed, like once an advisor is hired. I vividly remember pretty much each of my new positions have been in May, May or April, I have a little bit of training before orientation season, because that's the season that we're in, and we have all these students, and so that's not a topic of priority when someone is brand new, getting trained and onboarded. But with that, with the competencies your training, it's all the informational and the conceptual to be able to do your job, but the relational, again, that is the key of what we do with advising, is building those relationships. So having those conversations early on, I feel would be important for supervisors to do, and just for me as a student coming out of grad school, that wasn't something I ever considered, because I had just finished being a grad assistant and having two practicums across my last year, that there's the understanding grad school, you're kind of just running around doing all the work that you're expected to do, that kind of that handoff from being a graduate student into your first position in higher ed. There's not a time really, to reflect on all the work that you were doing, most often more than 40 hours, depending on which functional area you're in, to now you're being a professional, and you still have kind of those internal expectations that you need to do all this work. That's a long winded answer. I apologize for that, but I would say starting with having those conversations and having them as early as possible, even if you're not feeling burnt out yet, one of the steering committee members, Lizzie, she talks about how someone mentioned, like, once you hit a certain number of years, congratulations, burnout. That's the sign you've made it. Which is unfortunate that that's kind of the way things were. Maybe still are kind of that way now, but again, having those conversations and just simply having a focus on your mental and emotional well being is just as important as your physical well being. It's all connected. We have those conversations with our students, even though, again, students themselves don't necessarily want to talk about going into counseling or therapy, but it's all that holistic well being in order to be the best version of yourself. So to be able to have those conversations is key, and so be able to have a unit where that open and honesty is really the foundation of the unit.

Matt Markin  
Yeah. No, absolutely. And of course, yeah, one having those conversations. But like you were mentioning, maybe it's starting with a co worker, or possibly if someone has a mentor, and that's the next transition I wanted to talk about, is you've done a lot regarding mentoring. You know, being region seven mentoring chair, right? Yeah. Why is mentoring important to you, and you know, and getting and your involvement, why was important to do more, getting more involved with mentoring?

Olivia Miller  
Yeah, for me, being involved with the two mentoring programs that I have, first was the business mentoring program when I was at KU transitioning from liberal arts to business. And then I was also with graduate and professional students their mentoring program, which actually officially ended two years ago, but our little trio, we still meet today, and with both of those mentoring programs, again, just having a sounding board for someone that I had no idea who they were before we were paired up. They're at a completely different institution. They've been in that specific student population longer than me. Really helped me as I was navigating each of those transitions, and then with region seven, the membership engagement coordinator, that was important for me, because with those experiences, again, is why I stayed in academic advising. If I hadn't had that, I don't know what I would have done, as I was considering leaving at the time. And so that was the very first time that that position was created. And so I did a lot of work reviewing all the other mentoring programs. So of course, Gavin, as we all know, region two mentoring champion, but I looked at all the different region programs. I put together a spreadsheet, okay, what are they focusing on in their applications? Kind of, what were the qualifications for a mentor versus a mentee? And developing that program, it was an honor to be able to do that, and by accident, one of the mentees in that. Cohort, her mentor was not communicating with her, and she's like, I don't know what to do. And I said, I'll be your mentor. And that's actually someone here at K State, my friend Danny, which I now call a friend, she also has been a great support for me as I was transitioning back to K State. So it's again, finding these people in different pockets and building that support network, just to have someone that you can talk to when something is going on, because our friends and family, they know what we do, but they don't know and understand it in the same way as other advisors. So strongly encourage anyone to apply for any of the mentoring programs, either at NACADA or there's also different institutions have mentoring like programs as well, just to consider it, just again, to build that support network, I think it can only be a benefit for people.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, for sure. And as we wrap up with this interview, I thought it'd be nice to end with this is from what I understand, you're going to be a keynote speaker, and at the time of this recording, the keynote is upcoming, but by the time this is posted and live and published, it would have already happened. Can you tell us more about this keynote?

Olivia Miller  
Yeah, so this is for the Oklahoma Academic Advising Association, so OAKADA, their state organization, I honored and surprised that they reached out. But I will be discussing a lot of the things that we discussed here in this podcast, well being retention, getting involved with NACADA or your campus organization. Their theme is the power of us. It's their first in person conference in five years. So really harnessing that power of taking care of yourself and taking care of your community, your advising community, in order to take care of our students, which is what we're here to do. So very excited, honored, but also nervous.

Matt Markin  
And is this the first time doing a keynote? Yes. So I guess when you know, when they reached out, and you know what was kind of your process of like, is this, what I something I want to do? Do I commit to it? What was that like?

Olivia Miller  
Well, I knew the person who had reached out, so it was also one of those things where I wanted to say yes, as we've talked about, I have a little bit of a problem saying no. So I did. I felt obligated because they reached out, but at the same time, it was another venue and another way to talk about these topics, especially at a state drive in these people may not be able to go to a Nakata event. And so with that, at least being able to share my story to encourage those connections, even just at the state level, is beneficial for them, but hopefully it'll encourage them to also consider leadership positions on their campus in oakada as well, and then maybe even at the regional or national level within theNACADA too.

Matt Markin  
Well, I'm excited for you. I You're gonna rock it. I know so positive, sending positive vibes your way for your successful keynote and a successful conference overall. But Olivia, this was fantastic. I really enjoyed chatting with you today. I mean, the time flies. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Olivia Miller  
Yes, thank you so much for having me.