As a clinical psychologist who has worked in college counseling centers for many years, I recently switched to academic advising. This session will focus on the commonalities between psychological interventions and academic advising. We will consider how advisors can utilize psychological interventions such as motivational interviewing, rapport building, empowering, focusing on developmental needs, internal conflict resolution, cognitive restructuring and behavioral modifications in academic advising with students on academic probation. Attendees will get a brief overview of relevant psychological concepts and we will discuss how they can be applied to academic advising especially in meeting the needs of students on academic probation. We will also discuss how to maintain the role-boundary between academic advisor and therapist.

Educational systems worldwide encounter falling trends in university enrollments and retention. Data from faculty and student surveys, interviews and classroom observations indicated student unpreparedness to face university challenges. The purpose of this study is documentation of how the smooth transition of students from high school to higher education in Qatar is facilitated, focusing on college skills, through quality interventions. David T. Conley’s studies influenced the framework drawn. Skills identified are classified into domains: Academic, 21st century, Productive dispositions and behaviors, and Transitional knowledge. The project is spread over three academic years, in two Independent Schools. The first year focused on planning and piloting of interventions. At present it is in the second year of implementation, the third year will focus on assessment and empowering schools across Qatar.

The purpose of this presentation is to explore the international student experience within the GCC context. International students have been admitted to Zayed University, on both Abu Dhabi and Dubai campuses in the women’s and men’s programs for over 5 years. This session outlines the growth in international student numbers at Zayed University and identifies this student population in terms of nationalities, motivations and funding. With specific focus on the female students on the Dubai campus, the challenges they face and the benefits they experience are highlighted. Suggestions are offered for possible improvements in the areas of admissions, student orientation, academic advising, social integration and opportunities to raise the international student profile on college campuses.

الدعم النفسي والروحاني بداية لإرشاد أكاديمي متميز في العصر الحاضر يحتاج الدعم الأكاديمي إلى عملية تطوير مستمر، ليس فقط في شرح المعلومات وطريقة تقديمها للطلاب، إنما أيضا في جوانب الدعم الروحاني والعاطفي الذي يعتبره الباحث من أهم مفاتيح الإرشاد الأكاديمي المتميز، فمن خلاله يمكن للمرشد أن يؤهل الطالب لتفاعل مسؤول يعين على اتخاذ قرارات واعية، بعيدا عن القلق والتوتر الذي قد يصحب بعض الطلاب خاصة مع بدايات المراحل التعليمية. وهذه الدراسة التي بين أيدينا تهدف إلى جعل عملية الإرشاد رسالة متجددة غير تقليدية، تدعم المرشدين ببعض الوسائل والخبرات التي تعمل على تطوير الأداء الإرشادي، ويمكن الطلاب من استشراف مستقبلهم التعليمي بناء على القناعات الروحانية والعقلية معا. ويأمل الباحث مع نهاية العرض أن يقتنع المرشدون بضرورة إضافة الدعم النفسي ضمن برامج الإرشاد الأكاديمي، وذلك من خلال استخدام التصور المقترح مع الدراسة بما يرفع كفاءة الأداء الإرشادي

To what extent can the First Year Experience make a difference in students’ retention, progression, and overall success? In this session, data and findings from educational research will be highlighted with regards to the First Year Experience and Vice Presidents will bring their perspectives and reflect on the current practices of higher education in Qatar, in both the public and private sectors. This session emphasizes the importance of the First Year Experience in terms of laying the foundation for student success by assisting new students in making a successful transition to the university and building students’ connections to the university. It also discusses the issues and challenges that may interfere with providing a quality First Year Experience.

Generation Y in the Middle East is very challenging and different from all past generations in any campus in the region. Join me in an open discussion on Generation Y in our and your university. Let’s share experience, thoughts, and brainstorm new ideas in how to motivate, inspire , and get the best from our students. I will also take the opportunity to share with you my resent research in generation classification for the Gulf Region.

Within the context of globalization, high competition and emphasis on sustainability, social and economic development is largely shaped by the quality of manpower and human resources supplied. The quality of the latter is not meant to be referred to as a set of fixed standards that are copied from totally different contexts; however, quality is primarily an incrementally constructed and integrated best practices and continuous improvement system that is created from and shaped by the contextual and environmental framework within which it will be applied. Creativity at the personal level and innovation at the organizational level have become essential weapons for competiveness, improved performance, and sustainability. Creativity is one of the most critical and essential skills that are required for sustainable and innovative nations. However, creativity cannot serve sustainable goals unless it is complemented by high moral and ethical values and beliefs transmitted through leadership, social and emotional learning, faculty role-modeling and transformational corporate communications. Within Qatar, educational institutions are increasingly oriented to serve and support the realization of their highly innovative, diversifying and ambitious National Vision 2030. Moving on from the current situation, this requires high engagement from the part of students and educators and citizens. Accordingly, this research will respond to the following hypotheses:

Today, college students have a high academic and career aspiration. However, mostly they need someone to assist and guide them in career planning, from first year in their college. The combination of academic advising and career planning can lead to the student’s success and satisfaction in their academic and career life. This session will provide an overview of definitions, history, and the roles with responsibilities of academic advising in relation to career advising. The differences and similarities of the Academic Advising and Career Advising will be discussed. The main idea of research is to illustrate how career planning is a crucial part of the academic advising by using case study analysis of two student groups, who specialized in Fall 2013 and Spring 2014, in College of Arts and Sciences at Qatar University.

Community engagement and early university preparation are two important strategies in the area of student recruitment. This presentation will describe innovative efforts by Hamad bin Khalifa University to attract and prepare high potential secondary public school Qatari students for study at its partner universities in Education City

ُلقي هذه الورقة الضوء على أهمية تطبيق التقييم الذاتي في صفوف المدارس القطرية لرفع مستوى انخراط الطلبة في التعلم, حيث سيتم تعريف المشاركين ببعض الأمثلة لاستراتيجيات التقييم الذاتي المتنوعة والمراعية للفروق الفردية للطلبة والتي تم تطبيقها بالفعل مع الطلبة في بعض المدارس بدولة قطر. وسيُطْلِّع العارضون المشاركين على بعض المؤشرات المبدئية التي تُظْهِّر دور التقييم الذاتي في تحفيز الطلبة على التعلم وتعظيم إنجازهم.

Are you interested in learning how a university has modified the role of the Academic Advisor resulting in the development of a unique advising model? In the panel discussion titled “Thinking Outside the Advising Box: Utilizing an Integrated Model of Advising”, the panel of Academic Advisors from the University College at Zayed University seek to inform the advising community of an Academic Advising model used at Zayed University. Academic Advisors from the University College at Zayed University will share information about their multifaceted roles, including serving as full-time faculty teaching First Year Experience courses. The information shared in this panel discussion will focus on advising methods that could be applied on your own campus. Attendees will be encouraged to discuss the advising model utilized at their respective institutions.

Qatar rapid growth has brought an important intercultural environment where lots of cultures are mixed up. Students that come from different background as well as Qataris students are facing challenges to adapt to the environment they are evolving in. This new situation has raised questions: how to manage cultural differences? As an academic advisor, what are the skills I need to develop to successfully manage this new situation? How should the silent language as defined by Edward Hall be taken into consideration when advising? This discussion emphasizes the importance of developing intercultural skills. It will also address the main feature of intercultural learning with the aim to improve academic advising skills.

Presenters will engage attendees in a discussion examining stereotypes and assumptions made regarding career choices for Middle Eastern students. As faculty, we acquire certain assumptions and expectations of our students based on direct or indirect experiences. Some examples may include the notion that female students are more academically motivated than male students, but lack the self-esteem needed to fully pursue certain careers. Male students are commonly socialized to pursue high paying careers in business and finance regardless of their academic strengths. These assumptions may not reflect the total life experiences of our students and may limit them from making significant contributions in their society. A short presentation will look at the ways in which these generalizations mesh with students’ internalized concepts of themselves and their ability to choose and be successful in a future career.

The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) government has made significant investments in the education of its nationals. Women are encouraged to attend tertiary institutions as well as fulfill the societal traditional expectations of married women. The pressure to fulfill these expectations is identified as a potential source of tremendous stress and may lead to higher drop out rates among married women. The findings of an exploratory qualitative study conducted at a university in Abu Dhabi can provide additional insight to the challenges of female married students and offer suggestions as to how one can better advise female married students in this region.

Background One of the current priorities of QU is to motivate First Year Students and increase their satisfaction levels. The Peer Helpers Program (PHP) is being established to lay the foundation for an integrated well-being, career, and academic support services network. Objective To demonstrate how the PHP plans to empower students across various motivational levels. Method The workshop shall use interactive strategies to address its objectives through two parts: the first shall address the PHP’s role and plans and shall gauge participants views on these, and the second shall introduce ethical principles from which a set of ethical codes shall be generated using ideas and recommendations from participants.

Understanding the relationship between career services and academic advising is critical for academic advisors who seek to better assist students as they make decisions that will impact the rest of their lives. As reported in a 2007 NACADA survey, 79% of respondents wanted to know more about how to effectively help students make career decisions. Your campus career professionals can provide both the theoretical and the practical knowledge for improving that skill set and this session will show you why and how. You will gain a better understanding of the similarities and differences between academic advising and career services, acquire a working knowledge of the career decision-making process and learn the added value of employer networking early in that process.

One of the major problems facing higher education administrators today is attrition. Many students enter higher education and leave without earning a degree. This workshop will help participants learn how to develop a campus-wide comprehensive approach to improving retention outcomes. The workshop is suitable for those who are just getting started or those who want to improve a retention plan that is already in place. Participants will review an example of a retention program implemented based on data analysis. A number of guiding questions will allow participants to walk through the steps of creating a retention plan. Participants will also engage in discussions about their own retention initiatives, and challenges. This workshop is suitable for all stakeholders in student success such as faculty, academic advisors, learning support and student affairs.

Struggling to find the best medium of communication to interact with your techno savvy students? The arrival of the ‘Net Generation’ students (Junco, 2010), into colleges and universities, have left advisors with a dilemma of finding out the best ways to communicate with their advisees, especially when, “these students seek out new technologies to enhance their psychosocial development”, and have grown up instant messaging, using mobile applications, and social media (Junco & Mastrodicasa, 2007, p. 37). This presentation seeks to explore the impact of the current technology used in Academic advising at Qatar University, explore perceptions of stakeholders who use them, understand the challenges, discuss ways to resolve them and conclude with other best-practice technology-based platforms that might be used for advising students.

There are many advantages for non-English-speaking students attending universities that utilize English as the medium of instruction (EMI). Yet, student departures from these schools may result in significant challenges for the individual and the institution. Because this is an emerging issue in this region, a basic, unanswered question is the issue of responsibility – of the organization and its staff in identifying issues of retention, and seeking viable solutions. This session explores interactions between EMI and student retention at universities in Turkey. Distributed Leadership is presented as an analytical tool as well as a framework for addressing retention challenges. Participants will discuss these issues via case studies from two Turkish universities that utilize English as the Medium of Instruction.

The key to successful academic advising program is availability of competent, efficient and committed full time academic advisors who are dedicated to contributing to students’ success and development. Continued professional development of academic advisors is crucial to ensuring effective and efficient advising services. This session will provide an overview of the process of developing and implementing comprehensive professional development program for advising professionals. The model is applicable to a wider group of professionals committed to students success and development. The session will discuss the results of implementation of the professional development program at Qatar University in year 2014/15 which will allow for deep discussions on overcoming challenges in designing, implementing, assessing and evaluating professional development programs in general.

Peer and self-assessment can promote learning through social interaction for the development of appropriate, durable and transferable knowledge since we learn best from our peers. Further social interaction allows learners to take leadership of their learning, and gives them the power to adapt learning to their social, cultural and environmental contexts as well as their previous experiences in order to develop durable and meaningful knowledge. In addition to promoting social interaction, peer and self-assessment provides students with the opportunity to bring their own perspectives into the learning journey so that it best suited to their prior experiences and contexts, facilitated by feedback gathered form peers. Through feedback, learners self-regulate their own learning. This session will present activities and techniques used to promote students engagement in their learning through the use of self and peer assessment.

Advising students in a setting where personal identity and culture are so intertwined can be quite challenging. During this presentation, we will discuss how self-identity, cultural influences and family expectations may affect students’ academic performance as well as personal growth and development in college. We will also discuss how we, at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar implemented an action-oriented advising system that meets our high-achieving students’ needs while promoting their overall growth and development.

Do you ever feel that there is a lack of communication between faculty, advisors, and students? Have you ever wondered how you could better support students through their academic career? If you answered yes to either of these questions, this presentation is for you! Over the past year, Zayed University has implemented the GradesFirst advising software across their two campuses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. This presentation will include an introduction to GradesFirst, provide a demonstration on how it works, including the new Analytics tool which allows users to easily pull data and create custom reports, and explain how this type of tool is used to promote student success. Finally, best practices of choosing the software, setting it up, and implementing it will be shared.

“STUDENT EMPLOYMENT: New Perspectives for Academic Advisors” will focus on ways to integrate the student employment program into an academic advising center’s daily work. We will look at the best practices of using student employees at various Qatar University academic advising offices over the past 3 years, including training, positions, tasks, advantages and limitations. The Program will highlight ways that student employment enhances the student learning experience through the rich “Five” cycle: 1. exploring the opportunities; 2. building the required motivation and skills through the Career Excellence workshops; 3. diving into the daily work atmosphere; 4. discovering challenges, strengths and weaknesses and 5. overcoming obstacles and grabbing opportunities to develop into a leader.

A mechanism was developed to support students who are at risk. The mechanism was studies and evaluated. Whatever the cause, the sooner we identify students who are not performing well academically, the sooner we can provide, or direct them to the resources that are available to them. In this paper, we outline the mechanism and its effect on students’ performance. The collected data from various exams shows that students had benefited from the mechanism.

Are students seeking academic advisors first?: Exploring creative ways in outreaching new students and building a Student–Advisor Rapport Routine student visits and simple conversation that might be taken for granted by the advisor can be critical to students. As a professional academic advisor who understands the importance of student-advisor rapport in building trust that leads to effective advising, how often do you meet with new students? Are they comfortable enough to seek you first every time they face a new challenge? The goal of this discussion is to explain our strategy of outreaching new students and hopefully to introduce some new techniques other than the traditional ones and perhaps to explore other techniques used by other institutes which in turn would result in maximizing the number of efficient student-advisor rapports.

There are many cultural factors that impact advising female students in the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) such as parental/guardian influence on the student choosing a major, the significant family responsibilities many students have at home, and a lack of motivation due to the inability to pursue work after graduation to name a few. A diverse panel of academic advisors from Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will promote a dialogue to discuss strategies and best practices for providing positive and effective academic advising experiences for female students in the GCC while keeping cultural influences in mind.

Traditional lecture methods have been demonstrated to limit the students’ attention span and retention rates. To overcome this limitation, active learning has been proposed as an educational philosophy to engage and involve students in their learning experience. Integrating “active” and “interactive” learning activities has been shown to facilitate student learning and improve the learning outcomes. Advances in technology have enabled instructors to effectively incorporate active learning within their courses. The objective of this session is to share the experience of Qatar University College of Pharmacy in implementation of instructional online tools (Socrative, Padlet, Yammer and Quizlet) within and outside classrooms, which involve students learning by thinking and doing. In addition, this session will provide participants with hands on training with using the various interactive online tools used at the College of Pharmacy.

Higher education nowadays consists of many out of classroom activities, including study abroad opportunities, internships and student trips. Administrators in the field frequently mention the benefit of learning about different cultures and gaining multicultural skills through these opportunities. However, many students do not get the adequate training or orientation required to identify this learning outcome in order to have a better effect on their intercultural understanding. This workshop will give the chance for attendees to learn about different topics to include in orientations and training for students pursuing an education abroad program and the ways to integrate intercultural learning in the process. it will also highlight the role of advisers in providing intercultural training for students. "NAFSA’s guide to education abroad for advisers and administrators. 2005" "Effective Multicultural Teams: Theory and Practice - Halverson & Tirmizi , 2008"

The paper identifies the influence of forced advising on probation students’ performance at the College of Business at Qatar University. Is it appreciated or not? Does it have an impact on students’ academic and nonacademic attitudes? The study hypothesis concludes that the more intrusion by advisor, the better the outcome by student. Mixed methods will be used to help enrich the finding, qualitative and quantitative. Conclusion: It will be the first to look at probation students” with GPA hours above 24 and AGPA below 2 on a scale of 4 for the academic year 2013-2014. This study is useful for faculty members, deans, and advisors who work closely with students on probation to help them achieve success.

In Summer 2012, the Foundation Program Unit of Qatar University has started implementing new ways of teaching Math by introducing MML (MyMathLab) as an innovative interactive tool to support standard teaching. Authors focused on the effect of proper use of one of the component of MML the Study Plan on students’ performance. They investigated the results of students in Pre-calculus course during Fall 2012 in Foundation Program and in Business Mathematics during Spring 2013 at Qatar University. The results showed that there was a strong correlation between students’ results in study plan and final course grade results in Pre-Calculus course and how Business Math students benefited in using Study plan in MML to improve their Math skills.

Understanding the social and cultural characteristics of your student pool is essential to developing ways to reach them, build a trust relationship and encourage them to take responsibility for their education. Standardized academic advising has to be replaced with tailored approaches to the different student groups. Through the presentation followed by the audience sharing the cultural and social challenges faced in their institutions and the steps that they took to overcome these challenges, the audience could explore the effectiveness of the different initiatives and their applicability to other institutions.

In the world of academic advising, the foundation of student’s learning, educational experience and success do not rely solely on the competency, knowledge of the academic milieu and counseling skills of academic advisors. As the student population increases and the universities become more diversified in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the development of an effective advising delivery system is integral to support the growing needs of students. This paper gives insights on the actual advising practices and systems implemented in Abu Dhabi University (ADU) over the last three years. Academic advisors serve as the focal point between the different units of the institution and students. Understanding the core principles of academic advising is one of the fundamental requirements for an effective long-lasting relationship between the advisor and the advisee that assures shared responsibility and life-long learning experience. In addition to that, accuracy and consistency are critical components in the systematic advising of the students towards the successful achievement of their goals. This paper details the development, growth and outcomes of the Academic Advising Unit in ADU. It entails the advisement strategies used for various areas like retention, supporting and ensuring student engagement and success as well as recruitment activities. The Advising model used at ADU is also reflected upon which is hybrid involving both faculty and academic advisors and focuses on retention-based advising approach which is proactive and intensive. An in-depth analysis is made on the principles, overall practices and technology used for academic advising here at Abu Dhabi University.

What is Second Language Acquisition Counseling? Why would students need to be counseled if struggling with learning a second language? In this session, we will attempt to address those questions and share with participants a pioneering Qatar University initiative aiming at supporting students with their English language acquisition process. The program utilizes second language learning strategies to help students understand the process of learning a second language and develop their own plan and path towards academic success. Participants will be also invited to share their insights and consider the different aspects of collaboration between the fields of academic advising and SLA counseling.

The academic advising program at Qatar University is a story of how the shift in academic advising from a course registration function to a full service for student learning and development can bring challenges and how these challenges can be turned into opportunities for students. This session will showcase how and why Qatar University won the NACADA Outstanding Academic Advising Certificate of Merit Award for the year 2014. The session will describe how the change in advising model led to a rapid growth and development in the number of staff, the quality of professional development they receive, and the student satisfaction and learning from this growth.

The Peer Assistance Leaders (PALs) Program is based on the belief that highly academic students can play an important role in the academic development of their peers. The Peer Assistance Leader system has been established as an additional support system to students. They also support students at key points in their university life and this support is based on a non - threatening and relaxed system.The poster display has a variety of visual prompts that will be used as a springboard for further elaboration and discussion of this innovative student retention initiative at Zayed University, the United Arab Emirates.

Student engagement to academic advising is an essential factor for its effectiveness. a cross- sectional, analytic study designed based on AAI. Chi-square and T-test were used . Participants: 324 medical and pharmacy students. 16.9% had more than one visit per semester (active participation). Advising status is significantly different from students’ expectations (P value<0.0001). Actively participated students were compared to other students in terms of student’s and advisor’s characteristics, preferred advising method, no difference was seen. In terms of students' awareness of importance and purposes of advising and the students’ awareness of the advisor’s responsibilities two groups were significantly different (p<0.008). The engagement was poor and the most influencing factors are those affect the awareness of student.

Do you struggle reaching out to at-risk students at your institution? Have you tried and tested western models of retention and not seen fruitful results? As advisors, have you wondered what you could do extra to help improve the situation of your students? We at Qatar University in an attempt to find answers to the above questions developed a pilot Intrusive Retention Program to reach out to our At-risk students placed on Probation. This presentation will explain the procedure we developed, its implementation and ongoing assessment based on students cumulative GPA and student learning outcomes. Current challenges and next steps will also be addressed to take this initiative to the next level.

University freshman experience requires attention and guidance to assist students understand and cope with academic life. At Zayed University these students begin in the University College(UC) where educators work together to assist them in a smooth academic transition to majors. The lessons of UC build students' abilities to think critically about global issues, to understand the scientific nature of the world and universe, to access the mysteries of mathematics, to articulate in Arabic and English the varieties of learning, and to grow and mature in their beginning years of University careers. Male and female students use the library differently, and that may impact their studies and consequently their performance, jeopardizing retention. This poster will present faculty, advisors, and librarians collaborative efforts in guiding students towards success and retention.