The University of Tennessee, Knoxville - HUMAN RESOURCES’ Post

Transcript

Hi everybody, thank you so much for joining us for another episode of our Into the Orange series. If you're new here, HR has created this series to help connect staff members with different departments on campus and help them showcase all their unique contributions to what we do here at UT. If I haven't got to meet you before, my name is hers. Hers. I'm a career development coach for staff and I work within the human resource office here at UT Knoxville. My goal is to coach employees. Your goal development, strength, finding self advocacy and using these two tools to really think about what their future could all look like at the university. I am excited to send spend part of my day with Katrina, who we've met through sessions before. So just excited to really sit down together. Katrina is a senior professional academic coach within the Academic Success Center with the Student Success Team. So let's go ahead. And if you're feeling up for it, let's go into the orange. Yeah. Yeah, OK. Tell us a little bit more about your role and the work that you do within the Academic Success Center and what people outside might not know about what it is that you guys do across. So as an academic coach, we work with students from all over campus, all years on campus, and we basically help them to be successful in college. And I think that anyone who doesn't work in this realm may not realize how much. Like the personal life, your sense of self, your sense of belonging really impacts your ability to succeed academically. And I think that our division in our office does a really great job of joining those two worlds. So as academic coaches, we have conversations with students not only about how they're doing in class, whether there's areas to improve and habits to change or, you know, make modifications to, but we also join those two worlds and we want to know how are things going with your. Time management, is there something else going on? Is there another conversation we need to have? Because if you do well as an individual, as your whole self, you're going to do well academically. And I think that our office and the division does a really good job of them. Ohh, that's amazing. And I agree, it's about meeting students where they are and that whole individual, like we don't want to lose them. Just just thinking about their justice students, their whole person outside of here and they're building them in. That is amazing. Yeah. So. How many people are drawn to work at UT because they wanna be a part of something that's bigger than them? They wanna be. They wanna feel like they're contributing to our community and Tennessee really overall. Right. So how do you feel that your work contributes to the sense of purpose within our community here in Knoxville and Tennessee as a whole? Yeah, yeah. So being part of the UT Success Academy, the the whole success team that every student. Has really plays a big part in helping them find community. So as an academic coach, we're part of that whole success team and for UT success Academy scholars, they meet with us regularly throughout the semester and throughout the year in their sophomore, in their junior year, they can continue meeting with us and in our roles we really strive to help them find that community. Have a touch point person on campus. As I said, like we talk about academics, we talk about personal things. We are really invested in their holistic well-being. We have events on campus with UT Success Academy to get them all together and hang out and get to know each other, and then also with the Academic Success Center we have tons of events for the campus as a whole. Welcome back, Breakfast. There's free Chick-fil-A there. And yeah, right. There's coffee, there's hot cocoa. There's so many events to just get them excited and make them feel like we're here for you. Here's a little treat. Let's talk about how things are going. We're here to support you. So yeah, we really try to increase that sense of belonging just by those little things. Alright, next question. OK, tell us about how you and your team collaborate across campus. How have you built? Those relationships, yeah. So a lot of that is through the events that we do. So there's so many people on campus, right? There's so many people. It's hard to get everyone if you're on one area of campus, it feels like all the students are on the opposite side of campus. It's hard to find them. So the more campus partners that we can collaborate with, the more resources the students have access to. It's a it's a team effort around here. I, I meet with staff so frequently and it sometimes the conversation. Is about helping them see, even if you're not directly working with students, we all circle back to this impact that we're creating this amazing space that students want to be everyday. And it's so special to be a part of the University of Tennessee, you know, like we have just a great culture. Yeah. Yeah. Building on the idea of collaboration for many, the people and the work that we do keep them coming back every day, you know. And So what is it that you look forward to most in your role that makes you excited to be on campus? Yeah, I would say it's the scholars. Yeah. Like interacting with the students, the way the opportunities that we have to connect directly with the scholars is something that I really enjoy. And being able to come to work and have it be really my full job to brainstorm and think of ways to make their experience better, to enhance their experience is is just really what I enjoy. Yeah. Bringing people together. Yeah. Yeah. And let's do something fun. OK. OK. So if you could describe your job as an animal, what animal would you pick? A dog? Yeah. Like like something fun? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Because as our job. We wanna have fun, We wanna get them excited, we wanna engage with them. We want them coming to our events. We want to make a conversation. And I just think of a puppy, like, golden retriever vibes. Nobody can resist and nobody ever exist in public. Like, yes, I want to be a part of that. I wanna be a part of what they're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yes. And if you have enjoyed getting to learn about academic success and the other departments we've had an opportunity to highlight so far. Make sure to check out Future Into the Orange or if you've missed anything, check us out on the Employee Hub. Look for Human Resources and you'll find all of the episodes there. But we look forward to showcasing more amazing people like Katrina, so here we are.