YOUR WORK. YOUR PRACTICE.
Bring student voice into conversations about academic expectations, campus connection and finding useful support.
An advising conversation may include uncertainty about a course, a worried family member or an earlier experience of feeling dismissed. Practice understanding the student's account while being clear about your role and the questions that need an answer.
Explore a student's own reasons for using support or making a change. In conversations about expectations or relationships, practice explaining information, checking meaning and responding in a way that invites the student to participate.
Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a collaborative, goal-oriented way of talking that helps people explore and strengthen their own motivation for change. Careful listening, shared focus and respect for choice guide the conversation. These skills also help when the immediate task is to understand a concern, explain information or agree what happens next.
BECOMING WITHIN YOUR WORK
Student support brings personal values, institutional responsibilities and a student’s priorities into the same exchange. Practice explaining your role, checking assumptions and inviting participation. Use your professional framework to consider what you want to develop next.
A question to carry into practice
How can I keep the student’s perspective present while attending to my responsibility?
ACPA / NASPA · Professional associations
Explore the current framework’s guiding values and essential practices. The overview is public; the linked download requires NASPA membership.
Explore the resources that fit your role, alongside your organization’s guidance and local credentialing requirements. These independent resources are offered for learning; their inclusion does not imply affiliation or endorsement.
CONVERSATIONS YOU CAN PRACTICE
Help the student separate established information from a question for the responsible staff member.
Understand what using support would mean to the student and what they want to know.
Acknowledge the concern while explaining the role and boundaries established in the situation.
Hear how the earlier conversation landed and practice a useful adjustment.
The daily conversation rotates within your field. Additional conversation choices depend on your account's access.
FROM PRACTICE TO YOUR NEXT CONVERSATION
Have a short back-and-forth with a fictional partner. Get specific feedback on your responses, choose something to try next, and return to your saved conversations as you develop.
Reflect on whose priorities shaped the conversation. Identify a response that could make the student's perspective easier to hear while keeping your responsibility clear.
Build my practice home →WHY BECOMING MI
Becoming MI connects daily practice with the person and professional you want to become. Try a response, consider feedback, and carry something useful into your next conversation.
Your values, responsibilities and well-being meet in your work. We make room for that whole experience, including the resources and support you need.
Explore AMIGA’s approach to becoming →