Featured Speakers

Dr. Bryce D. Bunting is an associate clinical professor in Counseling and Psychological Services, the Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education, and Director of the First-Year Experience at Brigham Young University (BYU). He oversees all first-year programming at BYU, including New Student Orientation, first-year peer mentoring, and BYU’s required first year seminar course.

Bryce frequently speaks about issues related to student success at national and international conferences and is an affiliate scholar and national advisory board member for the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition; as a member of the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition; and is the former editor of the Journal of Peer Learning.  His research agenda is focused on practical strategies for helping students adopt productive learning mindsets; using instructional design to inform the development of high-impact and transformative learning experiences in college; the impact of peer leadership on those who serve as peer leaders; and the application of learning theory to rethinking and redesigning college transitions. 

He co-authored, with Dr. Dallin George Young, the recently released book Rethinking Student Transitions: How community, participation, and becoming can help higher education deliver on its promise. He was a peer leader as an undergraduate student and cites it as the most transformative thing that happened to him during college.

Dr. Dallin George Young’s research focuses on a line of inquiry that investigates how novices are trained, socialized, and educated as they move from the periphery to full participation in academic communities of practice. 

His research and practice includes: theoretical perspectives to interrogate student transitions into the academy; how graduate and professional students learn the rules, knowledge, and culture of their fields; and the (differential) impacts of educational structures on the success of students in transition. He has published his research widely in journals such as the Journal of College Student Development, Teachers College Record, New Directions in Higher Education, Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, Journal of Peer Learning, and Journal of Student Affairs in Africa. 

Dr. Young teaches in the Student Affairs Leadership (SAL) and College Student Affairs Administration (CSAA) doctoral programs as well as the CSAA master’s program. Before UGA, he was the Assistant Director for Research and Grants at the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition and an Affiliate Faculty in the Higher Education and Student Affairs master’s program, both at the University of South Carolina.