What services do you have access to as a University of Utah Student? Well I can guarantee your probably not using them. Join host Estella Weeks and her Student Success Coach Stephanie Santarosa, as they talk about why you need to take full advantage of university resources and how to do so.

Transcript:

Intro: [music] Welcome back to The Daily Utah Chronicle’s opinion podcast. I’m your Host, Estella Weeks, and you’re listening to Point of View.

Estella Weeks: I'm here with my personal Student Success Coach, Stephanie Santarosa.

Stephanie Santarosa: It is so great to talk to you again, Estella, I really enjoy our conversations.

Estella Weeks: I'm so excited that she's here with me today, because we're going to be talking about basically how you need to utilize your student resources more. We're going to really get into all of the resources that the University of Utah offers and why people need to be actively taking advantage of them. But I want to start with my personal experience with specifically Steph's offerings to me. I remember she came into one of my classes freshman year, and she just talked about Student Success Coaching, how it works, how to reach her. We like, signed a little paper with our emails on it, and then we passed it around. I don't know how long after that that I reached out, but I felt a little overwhelmed with some of my classes. I'm a very talkative person, and I need to talk things out to, like, get it out of my head. And so I reached out to Steph, and we set up our first appointment. And I just remember feeling after we had talked, like wave of just relief over me. And it was kind of obviously freshman year is overwhelming in itself, but it was like, right at the height of finals, and I was like, I just need to talk about what my week looks like and what assignments I need to get done. And after we talked, I was like, this is great. Let's meet every month. And so since then, we've pretty much met every month since freshman year. And so I've gained so much out of this experience, and I obviously plan to, you know, continue doing little meetings and stuff every month until I graduate. But yeah, that's kind of my personal experience with specifically student success coaching. If you want to give, like, a more professional way of what you guys do here, and like, what your goals and missions are?

Stephanie Santarosa: Sure sure. I love that you talked about like how we connected your first year and you hope to continue throughout your entire college experience, because that's what we're here for. We're here for students throughout their entire college experience. And what we want to do as Student Success Coaches is really assist students in making the most of their time at the University of Utah. So this program was actually born several years ago because college administrators are realizing that students would take their classes and go home, and they didn't know there were all these resource centers on campus. They didn't know how to find scholarships. They didn't know how to find part-time jobs. They didn't know that they could meet with a career coach. They didn't know they could find internships. And so this program was born to really assist students in taking advantage of all that the university offers. And then also coaching is really about helping students identify what their interests and their goals are, what is it that they want to get out of college? And then, as coaches, we can connect you with resources to do that, we can talk about making a plan and taking action so that you can move forward to where you want to be. So part of the joy of student success coaching is that every student's goals and interests are as different as every student is, and so every time we meet with a student, we can in a one on one setting, we can very much individualize our conversation around who that student is, what makes them tick, what they want to major in, what kind of opportunities will be best for them, and then connect them with what they need in order to make those things happen.

Estella Weeks: So that's been my personal experience, too, with things, is ever since that initial time you came to my class, I have been connected to so many resources that I did not even know had existed. I meet also with a career coach probably about once a month as well. And through my little team that I've built, I've been able to utilize so many resources to me that are like, they're free. And that was a big thing that I wanted to emphasize, was that there's so many types of resources here on campus that as students like you have access to and I feel like nobody talks about it and nobody uses them. And that's why I was like, we need to spread the word, because kind of my segue to my question for you is like, how do you spread the word about student success coaching? Do you feel like it's underutilized? Do you feel like not enough students know about it? How do you think we can connect more students to it?

Stephanie Santarosa: We are always about connecting more and more students to our coaches. So I have a team of 10 coaches that I work with, and our website is a really great way to connect with a coach for the first time. And one of the things we like to say is, if you want to connect with resources, and you don't know like where to start, just go to a coach, and it's our job to help you figure out what resources will matter most to you and get you connected with those. Another reason that that students might connect with us as coaches is maybe needing academic resources, right? They want to pull up their grades, or they want to learn, you know, better note taking skills, or they want to, yeah, just find ways to become better readers or better writers, so any of those things we can meet with students around that too. It's about setting goals, figuring out what you need, what you want, what skills you want to develop, what opportunities you want to find, and then making an action plan with your coach to get there.

Estella Weeks: I wanted to do what to expect on like your first appointment. As you get further along with appointments, they, you know, become a little bit more tailored to you. I struggle sometimes with, like, just feeling really overwhelmed and getting really anxious about it, and I have seen significant improvements ever since, just like, literally meeting that once a month and feeling like I have a game plan for the next month, of like, okay, these were the three things that were on my radar and now that I've talked to Steph about them, she's connected me to where I need to go. This is what I know I need to do and the next month we'll like regroup and replan. And so it goes without saying that I feel like I've seen significant improvements with that in general, when you a student first comes to an appointment, what should they expect before things are kind of tailored to them?

Stephanie Santarosa: Yeah, So all of the coaching team are certified coaches through an organization that specializes in training student success coaches, what to expect in a coaching session is that we'll ask you lots of questions. So we really want to get to know you, so we'll ask you about different aspects of your life. So obviously, you know, like I was saying before, like academics is a big part of a student's life. So we'll ask about how that's going, any career aspirations that you have, or what kind of experiences that you want to have to get ready for the future. How that's going? Are you looking for a campus job or etc? We'll ask about finances like, you know, how are you paying for school, that can be a significant challenge for students. And then another area that we delve into a lot is health and support. Mental health is definitely more and more challenging in these times. And so we will ask about how things are going, what kind of support system you have, what kind of strategies you might be using to stay well, how are you eating? How are you sleeping? Those kinds of things, because you're not a brain on a stick. You know when you're in college, right? Like you're a whole person with a heart and a soul and a mind and a body and all of those things have to work together to help you be at your best, which is our goal for students is to help them be at their best. Anything related to your life as a college student is what we can talk about. So you can expect that we'll ask you lots of questions and try to really get a sense of what your particular situation is. Then we will usually choose one topic that felt like it rose above the others as an important one to talk about for that particular coaching session, because coaching sessions tend to be 30 to 45 minutes. So we want to make sure that you leave with some sort of action step around a really relevant topic for you. And so we'll brainstorm different action steps that you can take to move closer to that goal, or to resolve that barrier to your success, whatever it might be, and then we'll do what we can at the end of the meeting to motivate you, to help you remember why you want to take those steps that are sometimes pretty difficult. You know to remember to do or to fit into your life, right? And we also can serve as accountability partners or sounding boards, but, but the whole idea is that you are in the driver's seat. We help you come up with a plan for what you want, for the life that you are pursuing. And then we're the cheerleaders, we're the coaches, we're on the sidelines as you play the game and and pursue that success.

Estella Weeks: You're really here, like, literally, for our well being. And, yes, yeah. And I feel like having someone like on campus kind of looking out for you, I feel like, is something that is probably so, like, underrated, like no one, you know. 

Stephanie Santarosa:  Yes, we definitely see ourselves as part of the support system for students. So you were talking about feeling like you had a little team, you know, with your Student Success Coach and your Career Coach. I would include in that your academic advisor is another, like, really important. In person, and so we actually are, are working with those two offices and those people in those roles to to find ways to make sure every student knows you've got this support system. There's an advisor for you, there's a Career Coach for you, there's a Student Success Coach for you. You are not alone in this project of college, right? There's so much that goes into a successful college experience, and so, yeah, you don't have to go it alone. You've got people here that are willing and ready to come alongside you and cheer you on. 

Estella Weeks: I don't know what else I could say to advertise Student Success Coaches. What could you say? Maybe, to just give one last punch on why everyone should meet with their Student Success Soach.

Stephanie Santarosa: I myself have a coach. Coaches are people that you can talk to about all those things in a one on one kind of a setting, and there, it's not a power relationship. We don't give you grades. We don't we're just here to really assist you, to listen well, to set some direction, and then to cheer you on and equip you for where you want to go. 

Estella Weeks: I think that there are certain departments that have more like student traffic than others. One that I've seen doesn't have as much as I feel like it should, is the Basic Needs Collective I have done, and I'm gonna link every single student resource that I can find in the transcription below, because even just going to a website and just looking through what they have, there's probably so many things that you might be like paying for, that you may in the future need to pay for, and you probably don't know that your school probably has it for free. So do you feel like there's any kind of underrated like resource centers that students are not taking advantage of enough, besides Student Success Coaches?

Stephanie Santarosa: One that we work really closely with, and I would really love students to be able to benefit from, is the Learning Center. I mean, there is free, free of charge tutoring. You can have multiple tutoring sessions in a semester. You can sign up for learning consultations with the Learning Center. You know, the word free is thrown around a lot, but I like to say like as a college student paying tuition like you're already you are paying for these things, so why not take advantage of these things that are out there? You know, we have a counseling center again, they offer free of charge counseling sessions with professional counselors, right? Who are there to talk about your needs and help you heal from whatever may have gone before in your life. Wonderful people there, right? This campus is just full of resources. So, yeah, it's, it's kind of like a treasure box, and if you need a guide in figuring out how to open the treasure box and which treasures to take out? Come see a Student Success Coach, and that will help you with that.

Estella Weeks: It can be really overwhelming with the amount of resources that we do have, because we are a big school, and we have so many resources. And I think maybe one of the biggest reasons that not all of them are utilized to like their fullest capacity by students is because they probably just don't know about them. And so if you are curious as to literally in your brain right now, this is the back to school episode, everyone's gonna be coming back to campus soon. And so if you're in your brain thinking, oh, I need this, or literally email the Student Success Coaches, like they are the navigators to help you figure out where to go for something that you think you might need. And so that could be a big thing is just like, where to find something. And so if you are curious, do some digging research, but you can also just email and they'll get back to you and help you figure out where you need to go for like that certain service.

Stephanie Santarosa: I'll just say this, no student success coach is going to be put off by if they ask you the question, why did you make the appointment today? And you said I was just curious, or I think I want something more out of my college education, but I don't even know what that is. That's kind of our job to even help you figure that out. So wherever you're at, whether it's like, I already have my academic plan all put together, and I know what I'm majoring in, and I'm have scholarships to pay for it all, like come and talk to us, and maybe we can even open up more opportunities for you. Or maybe you're just boy, I'm not really sure how to pass my physics class, come and talk to us. We can. We can assist with that. Yeah, wherever you're at, there's something for you with a student success coach.

Estella Weeks: And I want to encourage like upperclassmen to go into services too for this type of thing, because I do think it is heavily advertised towards freshmen and sophomores like that's how I started with it as a freshman. And I think thats awesome and great and if you start your experience, you know, having that team, and I want to encourage upperclassmen to join in on these resources too, like you still have, you know, if you're a junior or senior, like you still have two or one more years of school, and it's not too late, you know, you might need a headshot for your LinkedIn profile. There are free headshots that are taken in the business building. And I have some, personally, they are great. There's a business closet there. There are so many things if you need to take I did a zoom interview for an internship, like, a couple months ago. So I went into the Garff building, and they have these interview rooms where it's a room with like, a big curtain across the windows. They're like completely soundproof. There was this big, huge monitor with a great camera, like 4k. There's microphones, there's lighting, there's everything. And I went in and I did my Zoom interview, and it was like great experience. And before, I was just gonna sit in my room and do it on my computer, and it probably wouldn't have looked that great and professional, and this, it was like a full setup, and so that was just one of the so many resources that I have been appointed to. And I want to emphasize like it's gonna help you so much, especially if you feel like you just come to school and then you leave, and that's it, a way to get involved. I've gotten involved in so many things that I wouldn't have if it weren't for Steph. So if you want to share maybe an experience that you've had where you feel like a student has really benefited and like if they didn't have if they didn't reach out about it, you maybe wouldn't have seen them grow as much.

Stephanie Santarosa: That really is like the exciting part of student success coaching is watching students grab onto opportunities and take them away.

Estella Weeks: You have so many you cant [think of one.]

Stephanie Santarosa: I mean, you obviously are an example of a student who has really taken hold of different kinds of recommendations and resources and gone after them, and it's been just a pleasure for me to support you in that like we wouldn't be sitting here if, yeah, we hadn't met in your LEAP class, like freshman year. So just to see the different ways you've grown and the internships you've pursued, and the campus positions and scholarships and even deciding a major. It's been really beautiful to watch you, yeah, own all those things and find your way. And I can just see it on your face that you're thriving in your college experience. And that's what we want for every student. But really, one of the things we like to do is make sure that in a student success coaching appointment, we like to say the students in the driver's seat, you know. So it's really about them wanting more. Maybe they don't like the place where they're in, maybe they're okay with the place where they're in, but they want to see more and to develop their potential. That's a beautiful part of coaching. So I've seen different students, yeah, pursue job opportunities or find scholarships or get get help with particular situations they were going through. I've seen students change their major because they realized it wasn't a good fit for them, and so they decided to go in a different direction. And so who are just have found ways to connect with others, who found different housing, who have just needed someone to to talk to. And I'm having all these faces come to mind, as I say, you know, but I did meet with a lovely student who was in her last semester before graduating, and so talking about the different challenges of finishing up her academic program, even as she was trying to, like she had a business she had started, she was trying to keep that going, and then think about what's next after college, and what kind of employment, and then how does, how do all these her graduation impact her family system? So lots of incredible discussions, but I like to think that the coaching is, it always is an excellent conversation, but we want it to be more than just a good conversation. We want it to want students to leave coaching appointments with like, I've got an action plan, I've got something I'm going to do, because I'm moving towards something that matters to me, and they know why it matters to them, so that it's coming from who they are and not just something I told them to do because I had to in a meeting,

Estella Weeks: Because you're not our parent, you're not our teacher, and I feel like it's nice having somebody that's kind of in a neutral position to just really like, I've I've emergency texted you like, hi, I haven't gotten an email back from this person do I email them again, like I've asked you for advice on so many random things, and it's, you know, just having set like a professional in not a specific field, but just a general field, it's so nice to just have at my disposal. So thank you for all of your time that you've spent talking to me and I've yapped your ear off.

Stephanie Santarosa: It is so so worth it. I'm looking forward to another few years of meeting with you.

Estella Weeks: Don't talk about it. I'm gonna get so sad. Well, Steph, thank you so much for coming on Point of View. I really hope anyone who listens to this takes away a learning lesson. School's gonna start. You're gonna be overwhelmed again. Come talk to Steph. It'll all be okay. Or one of the other amazing success coaches.

Stephanie Santarosa: ssc.utah.edu, that's where you can find us, and we'll be so happy to meet with you.

Estella Weeks: Shameless plug in. Thank you, Steph. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Intro music courtesy of Pixabay

Host/Producer: Estella Weeks — e.weeks@dailyutahchronicle.com

Guest: Stephanie Santarosa