Money as Medicine in Advisor Wellness? - Adventures in Advising

The wellness of academic advisors has become an increasingly hot topic. Last year, many advisors utilized a grant initiative to help their teams implement innovative ideas to address advisor burnout, mental health, and sustainability.

Join guests Jennifer Nguyen and Cheri Souza from the Stupski Foundation on the progress advisors have made, challenges they still face, and how you can implement these ideas within your advising team without formal funding.

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Hey and welcome back to the Adventures in Advising podcast. As always, my name is Matt Markin, and on today's episode, it centers around advisor wellness and advisor retention, and more specifically, an organization that has been helping advising teams at multiple institutions through an advisor wellness grant initiative. And I thought it would be informative to listeners, to talk about how this idea came about, how a grant can help with advisor wellness, learn about what kinds of innovative ideas have come from the grant. And even, can you possibly implement ways to help with you or your team's wellness without a grant? So to talk about all of this, we have a returning guest and a first time guest with us today. So let's welcome first time guest to the podcast. Jennifer Nguyen, the director of post secondary success at the Stupski Foundation. Jennifer, welcome. 

Jennifer Nguyen  
Thanks for having me. Matt. 

Matt Markin  
Yeah, great for you to be here. And let's also welcome back returning guests, Cheri Souza, the Hawaii post secondary Success Program Officer, also at the Stupski Foundation. Welcome back, Cheri. 

Cheri Souza  
Hello Matt. Thanks for having me.

Matt Markin  
So Cheri, I know you've been on a couple times, but with Jen, this is your first time. So Jen, I like to start out and throw the first question to you, if you want to talk about your path in higher ed and make it to the steps key foundation. 

Jennifer Nguyen  
Well, thanks so much again, Matt, for having me. As you mentioned. My name is Jen. I'm the director of post secondary success at the Stupski Foundation. And my origin story starts with both of my parents, who were in college in Vietnam when they had to flee to the United States. So I am a first generation college student who was born and raised in Houston, Texas. I ended up going to school on the East Coast, and I remember having a really challenging time in college, not necessarily academically, but socially and but ended up really, really enjoying my time once I found my people there. With that being said when I graduated, I really wanted to pay it forward and to make sure that when students were making decisions about college, they had great guidance and were making decisions about a very transformative experience, about going to college. So in the Bay Area, I ended up becoming a college counselor, where I helped students get into the post secondary institutions and their choice. But what I was noticing was that they were going to college, but they would come back a year later, stating, like, I want to go back to community college. I left my four year institution or not quite sure if this was a fit for me. So after working as a college counselor, I ended up at California State University East Bay as an academic support director, so the tutoring side of things, complementing the advising side of things, really enjoyed my time doing that kind of retention and support work, but really thought about, how can I have a bigger impact just noticing all of these macro economic issues that I was noticing that was impacting my day to day operations at The tutoring center, and then happened to end up in this incredible role as a director of post secondary success, where I get to work with folks like Cheri on my team, and my colleagues in really trying to spend down the wealth of joy step ski in the Bay Area and in Hawaii to ensure that students have the ability to go to a post secondary institution or career of their choice.

Matt Markin  
Yeah. And you mentioned Stupski. So can you talk a little bit about, I know Cheri, you answered this last year, but for those that may have missed that episode or want more of a refresher, can Jen, can you talk about the Stupski Foundation?

Jennifer Nguyen  
Sure, the steps key foundation is a part of an ecosystem of foundations. There's so many different foundations across the country and in the Bay Area in Hawaii, we're a private family foundation. Basically what we do is we give out money to institutions and to community based organizations in different issue areas. The one that Cheri and I are part of is the post secondary success initiative. What a foundation is, is if you met one foundation and one person at a foundation, you basically just met one foundation and one person at that foundation, because we're all very different. But the steps key foundation specifically is a spend down foundation. It was founded by Joyce Stupski and Larry Stupski who was a former Chief Operations Officer of Charles Schwab here in San Francisco. And really they had a vision of wanting to make sure that they could spend their wealth and support organizations and institutions in the Bay Area and Hawaii, the places that they called home. And in this last part of the foundations chapter, we are spend down, which means that we're going to be spending all of our assets down over the next couple of years. And one of the things that we really wanted to invest in was the people of the Bay Area in Hawaii, specifically academic advisors. So that's a little bit about what we do at the Stupski foundation and what makes our foundation unique.

Matt Markin  
So this year and last year, you offered a grant to those within NACADA region nine centered around advisor, wellness and retention. Can you talk about how this idea came about?

Cheri Souza  
Sure. So I was a academic advisor in a previous life. I spent about 15 years with the University of Hawaii system, and, you know, in my work, in talking to folks, and then in my transition to philanthropy, really heard a lot of folks saying that, you know, there's a lot of burnout. Advisors are on the front lines during the pandemic. Of course, even prior to then, advisors take, you know, a lot in as they're working with students, as they're helping them determine their academic goals. You know, a student may come in to talk about their grades, but then you start asking, you know, what happened this semester? Why? You know why? All of a sudden, we're noticing things aren't going as great as they were last semester. And then a lot more comes out. So academic advisors, you know, have been on the front lines for quite some time. A lot of the work that we do in steps, key, has been centered upon improving advising. And we realized that there may have been a disconnect, a little bit of a disconnect, in that oftentimes when folks apply for grants, it's administration applying for grants. They have great projects, and then we'll do the check ins, and we'll talk to administrators. We'll also talk to folks on the ground. And sometimes we heard that, you know, sometimes academic advisors weren't really involved in the grant making or the writing process, and so they were left to implement these great ideas. But often, because they weren't a part of that process, they could have, they may have had ideas to do things a little bit differently for taking that into consideration. You know, talking with Jen, just as we're coming out of the pandemic, just hearing all of the issues of burnout, you know, mental health, just wondering, what more could we do to invest in advisors? You know, we spoke with you as region nine chair at the time to find out how we could better support academic advisors and their institutions. And one of the things that came up was supporting academic advisor wellness. And so we thought, okay, what is the best way to support academic advisor wellness? And we thought, you know, why don't we go to the advisors themselves? Have them source these great ideas. Have them submit proposals. Have them submit concept notes and come up with ideas really, that would fit their institution and fit their needs. Because, you know, as Jen mentioned, you met one foundation. You've met one foundation. Same goes with academic advising and institutions. You meet one institution, they're going to be quite different from the ones 20 miles down the road. So we really wanted to get academic advisors sourcing their own ideas for wellness, and that's kind of what this came out of. We also wanted to focus it in region nine. Region nine has a special place in my heart. Region nine includes California, Bay Area as well as Hawaii, and we felt that region nine has done a lot of great work in terms of being a leader in terms of diversity, inclusion, and so really wanted to give all of the states within region nine, all of the territories and states in region nine, the opportunity to apply for this so that's kind of how this initiative came about within region nine.

Matt Markin  
Yeah. And you mentioned, you know, advisor, burnout, wellness, can you share maybe some of the reasons advisors dealing with at their institutions, whether that's individuals you've talked to or through what was submitted?

Jennifer Nguyen  
That's a really great question. And one thing I wanted to build off of what Cheri just mentioned is that advisors have been on the front lines for a very, very long time, even before the pandemic, and there's a lot of burden placed on advisors when it comes to helping usher these student success outcomes that institutions are looking for. So even before the pandemic, you know, I was noticing at my campus the amount of work that advisors were doing on on behalf of the campus. But that being said. I mean, there's a whole host of large structural challenges that have transpired over the last couple of years that your audience is very, very well aware of, that have really impacted advisors. You know, first there was a global pandemic that really impacted students advisors in the campuses. Then, along with that, there was remote learning and remote work, which created a level of isolation for both students and staff members. But I think what I'm noticing and talking to our grantees was it wasn't necessarily the pandemic, per se, that was a huge part of it, but it was the return that became really, really stressful for folks where it might have been unclear, sort of the strategy that the campus had in place, why people were coming back to work, who was coming back to work versus who wasn't. And I think that led to some larger issues that a lot of our campuses, not just the ones in this cohort, but other ones that I've talked to about trust between campus leadership as well as the people who are doing the work. I think that discord has created some level of burnout as well. And I'll also say the last thing that I think your audience is very well of is this idea of initiative fatigue. Over the last couple of years, there have been a number of student success initiatives, not just in California and Hawaii, but across the country, to increase retention and graduation rates. And a lot of times, it's people from the very, very top, not just necessarily campus leaders, but chancellors, funders, politicians who are really trying to dictate the terms of student success and the outcomes of trying to push the graduation rates forward. And often these decisions happen without the consent of the people on the ground who are doing the work. And so I've noticed over the last couple of years, and I certainly felt this when I was an employee at CSU East Bay. A and at other institutions, you know that there was a lot of stuff being told that I had to do without a lot of me having a say in how it was done. And I've noticed that that's starting to trickle down in the ways in which people are seeing their work, which might not have a lot of liberty and freedom anymore, creativity, which is what brought people into the advising profession in the first place was to be with students, to feel created, to feel liberating. And unfortunately, due to all these circumstances, as well as many, many more, dealing with compensation and pay and what we value in our society, I think it's just a conflation of those issues that's causing people to feel, you know, not just burnt out, but under appreciated in the field, and perhaps even leaving the field at large, even though they truly and deeply love the work. 

Matt Markin  
And especially that last part. I mean, I've talked in past episodes where, when this pandemic happened just a few months later, I had colleagues that I thought would never leave. I thought they were lifers in higher ed and they went and in different directions, and some of them actually left without having anything in place in terms of job wise. And that really kind of opened my eyes to, wow, there's some, you know, if anything underlying issues that that are going on, and kind of like you're talking about, there's a long list of things that it could could be related to. And you know now that it's been a year, almost a year since the first cohort have received their grants, have How have things gone for advising teams who've received the grant. Can you share a little bit about that?

Cheri Souza  
Sure, a lot of the teams have shared that their grants are going well. We did have some teams with struggles, but happy to report that a year in, everyone's on track. Everyone's been implementing so we've heard that there's a lot of power in casual community building events. So things, you know, simple as catered parties, outings, happy hours that really allow folks to be in community with each other. Again. You know, Jen had mentioned that we lost a lot of that, right? Was things went virtual. People were working hybrid just being in community with each other, you missed opportunity to have those casual water cooler conversations. So these casual community building events really played a role in bringing people back to campus and getting folks together, also hearing a lot of increased leadership skills. You know, a lot of folks, as they're implementing this have had to step into leadership roles, maybe unintended. You know, when they initially wrote the grant, but a lot of them have had been having conversations with administration administration about how they can institutionalize the practices, as well as really bringing recognition and, you know, celebrating the advising profession. So those conversations have been having. We're hearing that advisors are feeling more a part of the community through different advisor voice there, they've been able to really mobilize advisor voice and share their collective power. You know, we've had organizations start with advisor led commissions or advisor driven decision making processes and really giving advisors a chance to have their voice heard. Unfortunately, you know, some of the campuses were saying that in the past years, their voice, they kind of lost their voice. They lost their chance to contribute to communication, chance to contribute to decision making practices across campus, but through some of these initiatives, they were really able to regain that power and that voice. So those are some of the things that really were going well. Of course, there were some challenges. You know, attendance has been a challenge, probably much like students, getting advisors to one place at the same time sometimes cause some issues. But, you know, campuses have been really creative. Some of the challenges around attendance, though, is really advisors are doing so much work. I think Jen alluded to that earlier, advisors have, you know, sometimes unfortunate, huge caseloads in addition to other things that they're doing. So how do you create space, you know, create the culture where advisors feel that it's okay to step away for a little bit and take the time for themselves. One of the other campuses, what they did around attendance was they started including advisor families, because they said, You know what show up as your true self, bring your family to these events. And they found that attendance did increase, you know, as they were able to bring people in their lives with them, because a lot of times, you know, advisors aren't able to participate, maybe in a happy hour because they have childcare responsibilities at home, or maybe they're taking care of their parents. But by enabling them to bring those people with them, that created a whole another level of ohana, or family. You know, as we call it in Hawaii.

Jennifer Nguyen  
You know, the list of things that Cheri just named out is comprehensive, and it's really incredible what campuses have been able to do with these grants. And it's really easy to cast these things aside and say, Oh, it's just a fun event, it's just a retreat, it's just a breakfast. But what I think matters the most to the two of us is not the what, but the how. Right. What I found was two things happened, you know, over the last year, one is Cheri, and I gave these grants away with the understanding that the advisors had can treat complete control over the funds. They could dictate if they wanted to use it for a little bit of staffing, for stipends, for events, but the emphasis. This was that they had total control over the funds, and occasionally Cheri and I would just pose some questions of a why, for what they would do, for initiative, but we wanted to be supportive. And it's this idea of money as medicine, because oftentimes on campuses, money is handed over to folks, but there's so many strings attached that feels sometimes like a little bit of a punishment of a lot more work for a little bit of money. But we wanted to change that narrative in a small way with these funds. You know, I think the second thing that's really important, and Sherry was outlining this so well, was the how it's the idea that advisors were coming up with these events, and not necessarily administrators or campus leaders. But I think that matters a lot is who dictates what happens and who has the choices and the authority to be able to say that we're going to put on a retreat. So I think, you know, the list is easy to say, Oh, they just did a bunch of stuff, but what we see is, actually there's a lot of planning and a lot of community building and a lot of collective decision making power leading up to these events that I think is extremely transformative, and systems change oriented?

Cheri Souza  
One more thing, yeah, go for it. I think you know, hearing what Jen saying, a lot of it too, was advisors asking themselves in the advising community, how do we heal and how do we move on? And really, for each community, what does healing look like? And a lot of times it was just being in community with each other and being able to have those open and honest conversations that sometimes you know, as you're in the day to day grind, you're not able to stop and pause and have that reflection space. And so by creating these really fun events, you know, it let people build, rebuild those relationships, rebuild that trust, so that they're then able to have those harder conversations down the line. 

Matt Markin  
And you were talking about like, you know, these events and the planning that goes into it. Now, one of the things too, with with this grant was that they they also had to have an administrator advocate. Do you think that has also helped with advisors, being able to do a lot of this planning and kind of being this middle person between the advising team and higher administrators?

Jennifer Nguyen  
Absolutely. I'd love to hear Cheri's perspective about this, having been an academic advisor at her campus. But what I'm finding is the administrative advocate can answer questions like, when we receive the funds, where does the money go, and how can we use it in effective and efficient manner? For a lot of the advisors that we work with, this is their first time receiving a private family grant, a philanthropic grant, and the delivery mechanism of the funds is so complicated that having an administrative advocate is really, really key just to begin that process. But then also it's a way to be able to get other advocates, not just that administrative advocate, but other people in the campus ecosystem to have buy in on these initiatives. So it's little things, like people would have retreats and a breakfast, or maybe they produce a video or a social media post, and the administrative advocate would invite other folx who are part of the administration to these events as a strategy to get further deployment of events through other sources of funds in the future. So I think it's those little things of just having those connections and that guidance internally, of how you can effectively both use the funds that you have now, but then also simultaneously advocate for other sources of funds in the future to sustain those initiatives. 

Matt Markin  
And you were also mentioning, I think Cheri mentioned the like, the events, like bringing family to some of the events. But is there anything else you want to mention in terms of any other innovative ideas that may have come out of from these advising teams of what they've been implementing? 

Jennifer Nguyen  
I'm happy to mention a few. I would be curious to know Cheri has some favorites as well. I would say, I know it's a small thing, but at least two campuses decided that they wanted to create physical space that was exclusively for advisors. And it seems like a small thing, but the idea that you have complete control over a space where you could be with other advisors, there's no other students or no other personnel around and to create that psychologically safe physical space, I think, has been key and important. Now there have been a number of questions like, How can you equitably provide access to that space? Who is an advisor on campus, and how do we define that term for people to be able to activate those space? Those are different questions. But overall, this idea of a physical space has resonated a lot with me, personally. The other thing that folks have done, which I believe your campus Matt, has done as well is they've created different criteria for advisor of the Year awards. A lot of times, an advisor of the year or a staff member of the Year Award comes off as a very competitive almost like clout chasing kind of process, and it can create discord in a community. But we've had so many innovative folks decide to revisit the criteria for advisor of the year, and think about criteria such as, like, how can we progress collaborative qualities? How can we actually sort of assess for somebody who is a great team member and who lifts other people up in the process? So I think that has been really, really wonderful, and I'm really big. Cheri just mentioned this on advisor led commission. Decisions and committees, but again, it's not the what, but the how, because people can create committees, but that could actually be pretty bad for your mental health, because you're stuck in committee sometimes. But what I found with our grantees is that they've been very intentional about upskilling themselves with facilitation practices and making sure that their outputs and outcomes for that particular commission or committee. So that doesn't feel like just another thing that you have to add to your plate, but it actually feels like a transformative place where people can talk about advising issues, but can also talk about how they can move forward. So I think those are the things that have come to mind, although Cheri, I'm just curious to know if there's anything that resonates with you that hasn't already been stated.

Cheri Souza  
I think the one that I would add, and I really love this one, was the micro externships. So one of our campus created micro externships, and so it allowed they were able to get permission for their academic advisors to take some time to actually spend time in another office. So we had advisors, say, spending time in the financial aid office and really learning what happens in the financial aid process, because a lot of times, as academic advisors, you do a lot of referring. And you know, by really being able to spend time, an actual good chunk of time in that office to learn what's happening there, I think you have more empathy for the other office. And then you also know, you know what students are experiencing as they go to those other offices. So I think that's, you know, one that really stood out because it's just continuous professional development, and it really helps advisors increase their knowledge, but then it really benefits students directly as well. 

Jennifer Nguyen  
And I just want to jump in with another really small thing here. I like that people are using the funds for catered dinners and lunches. And I know it seems again, small and fluffy in many cases, but the idea that you don't have to coordinate a potluck, that you don't have to coordinate making your own food or facilitating your own retreat, which creates more stress, is actually a really big thing for me, because then people can be in the moment and they can enjoy it with one another, without worrying about the logistics. And I think one of my secret sort of like campaigns right now is trying to figure out how to get campuses to see the idea of paying for meals for staff members when it's aligned with procurement practices and aligned with reimbursement practices when aligns but actually to make sure that we get more opportunities for staff members to not have to spend money out of their own pocket to be able to take care of themselves and to be in community with other people. That's kind of one of the grand experiments that we have here is showing that meals, even though people tend to see negatively, like these idea of meals on campuses for staff members, if we can make it work and it's aligned with policy, it actually does provide some level of really transformative behaviors around interacting in the spaces that are wellness spaces.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, just add with with the food, with catering, and maybe this happens at other institutions, maybe just with ours, like when we were using the grant. But how important just having food there and having it be a meal that, like you're saying, they could just go easily get you don't have to stress about it. Don't have to worry about is everyone going to bring what they're supposed to bring for the potluck. But when we had, or our first event we had, we had a speaker, it was kind of our kickoff event. And then we had a catered breakfast. And we had told advisors that it was going to be a catered breakfast. We have an idea of what types of food were going to be there, but we had a couple advisors come up to us afterwards to say, like, we actually ate breakfast before coming to work, because we actually didn't think it was going to be this full catered event and it was going to just be, you know, pastries and some orange juice. And they actually really appreciated the fact that we were able to spend some of that money on food. So that was something that our team kind of re looked at for other events to make sure. Yeah, let's if we could have catered breakfast, lunch, whatever it might be. Let's do it, especially if advisors are feeling very positive afterwards attending the event. 

Jennifer Nguyen  
Matt, what's great about your example is it shows how ridiculousness the controversy around staff food is because, if you imagine, like, we don't ask our students to pay for the pizza that we give out at outreach events. And we definitely, I don't think any Board of Regents at a state level has to do their own potluck when they get together, right? Maybe they do. And more power to those folks. But you know, the people in the middle need to have the same privileges that we give to our students to some extent, as well as to the people at the top. And a small thing like that, for some reason, is a big deal on campuses, and we want to make sure that it doesn't feel like it's a big deal, because those small things actually add up to making sure that someone feels like they belong on the campus.

Matt Markin  
And you know, both of you talked about a lot of these ideas and things have been implemented by the institutions. But of course, someone might be listening to thinking, Okay, well, how do we know like it, like it, what was intended to happen actually happened. You know, do they see improvements? So have you heard from some of the advising teams that have found any type of evidence? Or through surveys that these ideas that they've implemented have helped with the improvement of their advisor wellness?

Cheri Souza  
A couple of our advising teams actually did pre and post surveys. I think that's what you get. You know, when you're in higher education, there's so much emphasis put on assessment, and the assessment is great because it's then allowing the advising teams to go to their institutions to try and ask for funding, or ask, you know, for the institutionalization of these wellness initiatives, but one, one institution in particular, UNLV, did a pre and post survey with their participants and found an increase they measured, or they had surveyed folks on seven metrics of wellness. So it was occupational, spiritual, intellectual, physical, emotional, environmental and social. And after folks had participated in their activities, they found an increase in all seven metrics, with the greatest increase in social wellness. And I think that social wellness piece, it goes back to, you know what we're saying, just building that community, allowing them to have food, you know, allowing folks to really just break bread and be in community with each other, to build relationships and build trust, has really help them across campuses. We've heard that advisors are feeling more connected and more engaged with their campus and their advising peers. We're hearing that there's a lot more conversations happening about the climate of academic advising. Advisors, again, are feeling more connected with each other, and even their advising families. And advisors are really being encouraged to just show up as their authentic selves. And I think all of these small things are really contributing to the overall academic you know, the wellness of academic advisors, as well as advisor sustainability. You know, in the beginning the podcast you had mentioned that you you heard a lot of friends or, you know, these colleagues that you knew ended up leaving during the pandemic, and that's one of the things we worry about. You know, academic advisors play such a huge role in the student journey, and a lot of folks were leaving. And so by creating these spaces, by really creating these wellness initiatives, by creating community, we're really hoping that one of the outcomes is creating sustainability within the advising profession and making this normalized, like making advising teams, administrative teams, campus leadership realize that investing in people is so important, ensuring that they feel heard, ensuring that they feel safe, ensuring that they feel like they have an opportunity to really contribute to the overall status of their profession, to the institution, to the work that they're doing, is so important. And sometimes, you know, some of the initiatives don't cost a whole lot of money, right? By just giving folks a nice place to speak, to speak, being able to give them the opportunity to contribute to ideas that are happening on campus by really uplifting the work they do. Of course, it's great, you know, if you can accompany that with a breakfast or something, but a lot of times it's really just paying attention to the people. And ultimately, we're hoping that through these initiatives, you know, the campuses, the institutions, are going to realize that there's a lot that can happen when you support the wellness of advisors. One of the awesome things that we're hearing is this academic advising wellness initiatives are really kind of leading the way in a lot of campuses in terms of overall campus wellness and community wellness. And so really hoping that as we move forward, you know, to the end of year one we're looking at and we check in with more folks really hearing about the outcomes of their grants, and then looking forward to the second cohort that we have going as well.

Matt Markin  
You know, someone listening to this might say, you know, this all sounds great, but I'm not in region nine or, you know, I I don't know how I could do this without having funds, having a grant. So let's say someone's in a position or advising teams in a position to where they want to improve their advisor wellness. Do you have any suggestions for them, especially if they are not in a position where they could get a grant, or, you know, I guess going along with that, are there any of these ideas mentioned that you think could could be implemented without funding? And sure, you kind of were alluding to some of that, but I'll throw that over to Jen.

Jennifer Nguyen  
For sure. And one thing I want to mention is These grants are not very big. I mean, they're sizable in the sense it's $30,000 and it's in the complete control of the advisors, but relative to a campus budget, it's a small line item. So that's something to keep in mind. What Cheri just mentioned that a lot of these practices and programs and initiatives that people have implemented have not actually taken that much money, and in many cases, is leveraging events and practices that people had before, but just accelerating it moving forward. So I just want to keep that in mind, it's just wellness doesn't necessarily have to be expensive, although it's always nice to be able to have discretionary funds, especially within your control. I would say if you're thinking about implementing an advising initiative on your campus or advising wellness initiative on your campus, one is to start where Cheri started with her explanation, which is to make the case and to try to figure out any kind of data, whether it's through survey or through climate surveys in particular, how advisors are feeling on campus. There's a number of instruments and tools. Cheri and I are happy to communicate with folx to talk about what those specific instruments and tools are that campuses have used. But really it just boils down to creating some kind of pre and post so that you're able to assess what the current climate is on campus and. Then you're able to go up to your own administrative advocate and say, hey, you know, there's something that's happening on this campus. It's going to be a detriment in the future for this campus to continue operating this way, especially because the retention advisors is so important. It's so expensive to recruit other people to come into the campus, and it's also really expensive to provide the level of professional development, to bring them up to speed to where a current advisor is, that's the argument that I would make, that we need to do something about it. Then I would do an assessment of the wellness practices that the campus currently has already either as a whole campus or as individual departments, including including the advising departments, and to see if there's any way to align those existing practices with what advisors actually want. So again, it's not the what, but the how. So if you're able to just listen to advisors and ask, How can we adjust current practices, or even try to get what we're currently doing right now with events or with, you know, maybe like meeting list Fridays, for example, if we can make it more aligned to advisor voice, that can make a big difference with that being said. You know, the idea is that private foundation money, this is only a one year grant. It's going to go away anyways, because we are not going to be around forever. We're a spend down foundation. So the idea is to be able to get the campus on board, to give them more permanent sources of money. So in many cases, if you don't have a grant, you're kind of accelerating your process to sustainability without having the money to begin with, and making the case will be incredibly important to answer the second part of your question, the quote, unquote, cheaper things that you could do from the get go, I would say, you know, revisiting the advisor awards are really, really big thing, developing decision making processes that are inclusive of advisors. Because, again, it's not just pay that is making people leave the field. It's also a lack of say as well. And so if there's any way to listen to advisors and to center their voices and decision making practices that can go absolutely in a long way to retaining advisors on campus. So those are things that come in mind immediately. But what I will say is a lot of it is just making sure that people feel like they have a voice. And so whatever people choose to do, as long as advisor voice is in the process, you just make that event or that initiative that much better and more worthy of an advisor feeling like they belong on campus. 

Matt Markin  
And now we've been talking about this initiative, talking about advisor wellness, but for the both of you, what do you do for your wellness? 

Cheri Souza  
I like to be outdoors. So anything from going to the beach, going hiking, my son is really active. My son and daughter are both active in sports and spending the weekend at the baseball or the soccer field. Just love being outside and just just being outside and just doing things in nature, running, yeah, anything outside.

Jennifer Nguyen  
I'm similar to Cheri, although Cheri can run a marathon without training, and I would probably die if I did that. So I'm a worse runner than Sherry, but I still try. I found that I love being in community with family and friends, and so I try to take any opportunity to spend time with the people that I love, whether it's you know, my partner, my parents, my sister, my friends. It is API Heritage Month, and so I'm really trying to spend a lot of time in community with fellow API advocates and folks who are really doing fantastic work. And that keeps me inspired, not just for the short term, but for the long term. And next month is pride. So I'm going to do the same with my LGBTQ+ colleagues as well, but really, really trying to tap into the incredible energy and wisdom of folks around me.

Matt Markin  
Well, you both are inspiring to me. I've gotten to know you both over the last couple of years. So thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Thank you for sharing your expertise on this, about the step ski grant, and then what advising teams have been creative and innovative things they've been doing. So thank you both so much for being on the podcast today. 

Jennifer Nguyen  
Thank you so much, Matt. I'm curious to know what is your wellness practice? Is it podcasting?

Matt Markin  
Let's say, when I first started doing a podcasting it was something that I was like, Oh, great. This is my wellness. I, you know, something I get to do outside of work. And then it kind of then became its own job. So maybe not so much with that, but kind of like you're talking about, like family, friends, especially. I don't run, I walk. I don't think I could ever do a marathon, like the both of you, but traveling is something over the last few years that I've gotten into, and then the pandemic happened, so I'm kind of catching up on places to go. So my partner and I are looking forward to, whether it's cross country or going to Hawaii, that's on our list. So we have a long list, and we're trying to start scratching those places off our list. So Cheri, I might be in Hawaii. You might be in Hawaii soon.

Cheri Souza  
Awesome. Thank you so much for having us. It was so fun talking to you.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, same here. All right. Take care.