Meeting 11: February 27, 2026

Opener: 5 minutes

• SI Win in 5 Words: 

  • In 5 words or fewer, share a recent SI win. 

    • Example:  "Collaboration with professor increases attendance."

      • Marketing helped create SI Video!

      • Really good engagement for a spring semester!

      • New partnership allowed more classes

      •  SI Ambassadors owning midterm training

      • Students attending after no shows

      • Canvas–Teams integration for SI sessions

      • Campus partner pay for 1 SI Leader

      • 22% attendance inaugural semester.

      •  Attendance doubled with instructor support!

      • Creative Ice Breakers Increasing Attendance

Open Discussion: Zoom Chat

• • When resources are limited, how do you decide where to invest first in your SI program (staffing, training, technology, expansion)?

    • Training is critical in the quality of the SI sessions that can impact SI participation Faculty partnerships to help drive SI attendance and support the SI leader

    • Departmental sponsors a SI Leader 

    • Funding:  SI Leader scholarships 

    • Offer Service credits through Service-Learning courses for SI leaders to meet budget restraints

    • Q:  For department funded positions, did the department initiate the funding conversation or did your area? If your area initiated, how did you start that conversation?

      • A: We did! We reached out to them regarding DFW rates, requests from students, and our concerns related to funding and scheduled a meeting to discuss further. This led to us creating an MOU to make sure the partnership was seamless. 

  • What strategies or systems have been most effective for scheduling and managing SI sessions across multiple courses, instructors, and sometimes campuses/modalities?

  • How do you balance academic performance, interpersonal skills, and availability in your hiring process?

    • Multiple rounds of interviews, 1st is the assessment on the content area.  2nd is a panel consist of staff and SI leaders with interview questions and mock SI activity.  A scoring system is generated. This process evolved over time. Over the past few years, I have tried different things and then reflected on what makes most sense and focuses on maximizing everyone's time. 

    • Emphasize the requirements of the SI job such as lecture attendance. 

    • Group interview:  use breakout rooms and include activities incorporated into each breakout room 

      • Something else we’ve looked at addressing during group interviews is their attitudes towards academic support & the study habits they currently have 

    • Focus heavily on the other benefits of being an SI Leader (resume builder, consistent review for those that will eventually take an MCAT or NCLEX, service, etc.).  Since we can't pay them a ton, have to provide other incentives. 

    • Re-iterate transferable skills can be applied in fields such as medical field such as wait time and checking for understanding when talking to patients. 

    • Enthusiasm and recommendation

    • Individual interviews. We ask them when they think they will be available in the application but we finalize it during individual interviews and then follow up before pre-term training 

    • Lean into the interpersonal skills more 

    • Q: When in the process do you ask for class schedules? In their application packet? Individual interviews? 

      • A: Staff have access to transcripts and class schedules but do ask if there are any anticipated changes 

      • A: At the time of application and during the interview.  

  • What processes, boundaries, or strategies have helped prevent burnout for both you and your team?

    • Host workshops on resources and moderate stress 

    • Check in meetings to see how they are feelings, option to be anonymous 

    • Part of training: to maintain work life balance, students first, human second and SI leader 3rd. 

    • SI Leader Weekly meetings as support group 

    • We did something similar with google forms for our leadership team and had them fill it out each meeting and then look at an overview of their responses at the end of the semester as a sort of tracking system regarding their emotional states at different parts of the semester, then use that to set goals for how to navigate high-stress seasons/weeks. 

      • I love that you also connect this to an overall view of what times during a semester can affect the SILs the most! 

    • Allow SI Leaders to cancel up to 3 sessions or office hour if there are usually no students.

    • Standard workshop staff meeting time bi-weekly Fridays 3:15-4:45pm, classes usually end at 3:00pm 

    • Pre-set monthly development meetings from the time of hire, and house meetings bi-weekly which they come up with their own schedule among the members. 

  • What tech tools are you currently using in your SI program, and where do you see gaps?

    • Some institutions are only about to pay minimum wage, and proposals are sent to justify the increase for SI Mentors.  Definitely helps with retention to have that ability! They have something additional to look forward to.

    • Experience with decreased interest in tutoring certain subjects:  some courses that students are using more of AI for help and students are not interested in tutoring those courses.

    • Brand it in recruitment that they are developing skills and refreshing the content in those courses. 

    • True learning comes from interactions with other humans, talking about material, and discussions make learning more meaningful. 

    • What AI cannot do is the human connection. We can train our SI Leaders to be more focus on the human connection, such as putting content on the side to address the emotional needs.

    • We have been developing an AI policy/position statement for our unit and student employees, and one of the discussion points have been not "losing our job" to AI

    • A similar conversation was had at the ICLCA conference in October and they talked about putting the human back in academic support/success. Maybe the students use the tools but they vet the content with an actual human to build those necessary skills for success.

    • My struggle with hiring isn't AI focused but more students who are intimidated by challenging content. For example, I have struggled for the past year just to find tutors for Organic Chemistry because most students think it's a hard class and they worry they don't know the content well enough to assist with it.

    • Reiterate the skills that they can use in their professional field. 

Book recommendations:  The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning -- And How To Help Them Thrive Again by Jared Cooney Horvath | Goodreads 

Updates & Closer: 5-8 minutes

• ICSI Updates:

  • Peer Leader Webinar Series

    • Free opportunity for professional development for SI Leaders and other peer educators, and their supervisors!

      • Sign up to attend: https://tr.ee/Op31yDZfqb 

  • Spring 2026 Community Catch-Ups: https://tr.ee/NLz6y3YTLc 

    • Free opportunity for SI supervisors, directors, and coordinators to share resources and have discussion about specific topics each month

      • March 17, 2026 - 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM CT - Student Engagement & Campus Partnerships

  • 14th ICSI Conference: https://info.umkc.edu/si/2026-conference-information/

    • Regular registration ends May 3, 2026

    • Pre-conference Workshops:

      • HELP training

      • Accreditation Workshop

      • SIL Summit

      • Weathering the Storm: Strategic Leadership for Learning Centers in Times of Fiscal Crisis

• Closer:

  • Tell us about your weekend plans using Emojis only: 

    • Example: 💃🥂💤🏃‍♀️🎒🐱🌮