Ask a Mustang is a pop-up Q&A table hosted by the Office of Student Success and Retention, with volunteer support from staff and students. It’s located at popular student spots and serves as an informal platform for students to ask questions about all aspects of student life. Sessions are held at key points during the term, including the beginning of the semester, enrollment periods, and finals preparation.
Our first Ask a Mustang session this fall featured the SMU Peer Academic Leaders (PALs) and took place on September 5th and 6th in the morning hours at Fondren Library, near Starbucks. During this two-day event, we invited students to ask questions to SSR and the PALs, as well as share their SMU experiences.
We had a total of 44 student participants (6 first-year students, 10 sophomores, 8 juniors, 18 seniors, and 2 graduate students), many of whom shared insights on our question board: ‘What do you wish you knew before coming to SMU?’ and ‘What advice would you offer to new students?’ Here are some notes left by students:”
“Study hard! You are not alone, reach out if you need help!”
“Find out about SMU’s resources, they have everything!”
“Don’t miss classes. Prioritize mental health. Have a balance.”
“A-LEC provides tutoring and (professor) office hours are helpful too!”
“Keep your priorities straight and focus on school and make good relationships with professors.”
“Don’t wait until the last minute to start studying.”
We’ll have our second Ask a Mustang session during the enrollment period and the final round during the preparation for finals. We look forward to seeing you there!
p.s. Lesson learned – sometimes giving someone something free is not as attractive as asking for help. We attracted 10X students with the question, “Would you be willing to help new students” vs. “Would you like a free cookie? ”
Please join me to congratulate the 2023 Engaged Learning Starter Award (ELSA) Winners: Alina, Alexis, and Ryenne! The award is given to first year students who had come up with their own research projects to explore throughout the year. These three winners will be presenting their findings at the Fall Research Symposium on November 1st! Until then, let’s get to know more about each of the awardees and their projects.
Alexis Schroeder
Alexis Schroeder is a second-year transfer student majoring in Psychology and Health and Society with a minor in Sociology. Alexis knew that she wanted to gain experience in research and through the help of SMU professor Dr. Nia Parson, she was connected to Engaged Learning to pursue her passion project: Medical Ableism: Neoliberal Stigmatization of Holistic Medicine in the Biomedical System.
Alexis Schroder
Alexis’s research discusses the “intersection between neoliberalism and the biomedical healthcare system and how that perpetuates systematic medical ableism.” This topic is incredibly close to Alexis’s heart as she is disabled and is very active in the disabled community on SMU’s campus. Alexis wants to advocate for “representation by the represented” and promote the voices of disabled people in academic literature. Additionally, Alexis discusses how to balance ancient medical practices with biomedicine to create a more integrative approach to healthcare. This research project also plays a larger role in Alexis’s long-term goals because she wants to go into therapy and to manage her practice in an integrative way.
Alina Munoz
Alina Munoz is a second-year student majoring in Health and Society and minoring in Neuroscience and Spanish. Alina was introduced to the fellowship through Rotunda Scholars, an SMU program for first year students from underrepresented communities, that introduced her to the Office of Engaged Learning. Alina’s project is called Saludstria: Opening the Gates to Healthcare.
Alina Munoz
Saludstria is an important key word for this project as it is a combination of the Spanish word for health, Salud, and Alina’s grandmother’s name Salustria. Her grandmother deals with diabetes and high cholesterol and Alina would accompany her grandmother to the doctor’s office to help translate information. It was there she saw firsthand all “the barriers that individuals have with healthcare,” especially minorities. Alina works directly with her local community at the Agape Clinic and is planning on using the data she collected from surveys from the clinic in her research on how “minorities are blocked from receiving the proper care they need.” At the Fall Symposium you can learn more about this research project and see the real impact Alina has made on her community in Dallas!
Ryenne Reiter
Finally, we have Ryenne Reiter, a sophomore double majoring in Political Science and Human Rights with minors inNeuroscience and Law and Legal Reasoning. Her journey began with Rotunda Scholars as well.
Ryenne Reiter
In October, Ryenne will be presenting her project: The Role of Gender Expectations and Stereotypes in Eating Disorders. This will be a literature review along with her own qualitative study of comments found on TikTok videos by famous fitness influencers. She chose this topic because of how social media can “teach young women and young girls to think about femininity, beauty, what it means to look feminine, and how that develops into eating disorders later on.” Her passion for this research project comes from a combination of her own experiences during high school and classes she has taken here at SMU like psychopathology with Dr. Alicia Meuret. The knowledge she gained through her classes has helped her understand her own experiences better. This inspired Ryenne to create this project because she “knew that people don’t like to talk about the hard things, but [she] feels like they need to be addressed.”
All three of the ELSA winners have worked incredibly hard this past year to create high quality projects inspired by their own stories and passions. Keep an eye out for them and the symposium to learn more!
On Wednesday, September 13, from the Office of General Education email, the following message was sent to all undergraduate students. Students can satisfy two Common Curriculum requirements via service with this pre-approved opportunity.
——— [ Begin Message ] ———-
From: Office of General Education (gened@smu.edu)
Subject: Think big, do good with Engage Dallas, and satisfy two Common Curriculum requirements
Engage Dallas is a place-based community engagement initiative via SMU’s Residential Commons to address community needs focusing on South and West Dallas. The initiative is a long-term, university-wide commitment led by students to partner with local residents, organizations, and other leaders to positively impact the community. There is equal emphasis on campus and community impact stemming from the initiative.
To earn service hours and get connected to the Dallas community, connect with your Commons to participate in Engage Dallas monthly service events. All Engage Dallas upcoming events can be found on the Engage Dallas SMU360 page and your Residential Commons SMU360 page.
Solo Service
Engage Dallas offers solo service as a way for students to serve independently with our community partners. There are over 20 solo service opportunities ranging from art class volunteer to kennel companion to reading tutor for kids. All solo service opportunities can be found on the “Find Opportunities” page in the Engage Dallas Canvas Course under “Individual Service.” All students have a Residential Commons affiliation—Commuter students are affiliated with Boaz Commons, and Transfer Students are affiliated with Ware Commons.
#1Day4Dallas
Engage Dallas will host the 3rd annual #1Day4Dallas service event on Saturday, October 21. Breakfast, lunch, and 4 hours of direct service are included—spots are limited, so students are encouraged toregister today!
Ivy, Kolin, Shun, and Jeff invite y’all to Pony (on) Up to the 3rd floor of Perkins Administration Building for a trip to “World Changers R Us”. Our “sweet” suite is 301 and ask Jeff or Kolin about the creatures that live in the haunted attic above us.
Michael Kelly is joining the Office of Engaged Learning team this semester as the first Entrepreneurship Fellow. In this role, Michael will host the E-Launch workshop series and coach winners of the Big iDeas Pitch Contest.
Michael is the Co-Founder of Resolute Future, a software company dedicated to empower the next generation of innovators, and a former VP of investments at JPMorgan Chase where he spent 12 years with a variety of responsibilities including sales, financial planning, management, & training. He held his series 7, series 66, and insurance federal and state licenses in over 20 states during his tenure there. Michael built a $120 million business before leaving to start Resolute Future. While at JPMorgan, he was recognized multiple times for his sales accolades, served on the Diversity Board, and helped increase the book of business 60x under his leadership. Michael is also a serial Entrepreneur dating back to his first venture in 2005/06 while still in high school. He currently sits on the Venture Board for the Dallas Entrepreneur Center focused on increasing venture activity in the DFW area. He donates his time to the DEC, the Capital One accelerator program, Mass Challenge’s accelerator program, and giving speeches at Universities. He was voted by his peers North Texas’ Startup Evangelist of the year for 2023. He graduated Summa Cum Laude with his business administration and management degree from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Critical Reasoning was assessed for the first time in Summer 2021 by the Office of Institutional Planning and Effectiveness. Following that round of assessment, raters recommended reviewing and revising the rubric, which they found difficult to apply in many cases. A faculty-led committee was charged to review and revise the rubric over the summer.
Further review of the rubric found that although the learning outcome for Critical Reasoning is appropriate to the components (Students will demonstrate university-level critical reasoning proficiencies through written expression), the supporting skills emphasize writing and are nearly identical to the supporting skills for Academic Writing requirement, which has a different learning outcome (Students will develop competency, clarity, coherence, and organization in their writing). Plus, writing is assessed separately under the Academic Writing, Writing, and within the academic evaluation process.
The current design of the Critical Reasoning rubric has functioned as a barrier to the development of courses outside of the Writing and Reasoning Program (WRTR), mainly because of the primary focus on academic writing in the current iteration of the rubric. Therefore, efforts to revise the Critical Reasoning rubric have been joined with this effort to expand offerings in Critical Reasoning beyond WRTR 1313, WRTR 2304, and WRTR 2306.
Students creating Paracord Bracelets for Project Gratitude
The Hilltop Scholars Program (HSP), an honors community at SMU for students interested in service and leadership, hosted their annual Service Showcase on Monday, August 28th at 6 PM. This year, 185 Hilltop Scholars made 500 sandwiches for Austin Street Center, 500 coloring books for Dallas Children’s Health, 100 menstrual packs for the SMU Period Project, 100 meal kits for Vogel Alcove, 50 dog toys for Operation Kindness, 50 paracord bracelets for Operation Gratitude, 40 meal bags for Meals on Wheels, 40 book recordings for Readers to Leaders, and 100 self-care kits for Genesis Women’s Shelter.
Students creating meal kits for Vogel Alcove and Meals on Wheels
While building community, students learned about the HSP culture of service and made a considerable impact on local nonprofit organizations. Special thanks to HSP Student Workers Lilly Chapman, Gracie Doyle, and Paul Rowe, as well as all the HSP mentors and faculty, for their support in planning and implementing this important event.
Energy is high on the Hilltop as we welcome students back to campus.
This academic year, the Office of General Education is committed to enhancing the student experience by providing programming to connect students to SMU resources and help them stay on track toward graduation. Plus, we want each student to get the most out of the Common Curriculum.
As we work towards this mission, the Office of General Education has begun student communications to keep all undergraduate Mustangs in the loop of campus offerings.
A quick look at two recent communications sent to all undergraduate students is featured below:
Scheduling information about Common Curriculum workshops and pop-ups. A link to Zoom office hours was provided, increasing the accessibility of our services.
As part of the brand migration, the SAES Marketing, Communication, and Digital Technology committee worked with unit webmasters to assist with a site content refresh (e.g., text, pictures, layouts). The committee recommended reorganizing navigation and pages based on Google Analytics data of high-traffic pages. As part of the process, broken links, spelling, SEO optimization, SMU web governance, and site navigation were addressed. Finally, professional headshots and employee biographies were also added.
Due to the migration and restructuring of pages, the Media Library was updated into a structure similar to the page organization (e.g., academic support, academic enrichment, and initiatives).
Webmasters should notice folder organization changes and our removal of files that are no longer linked to any front-end pages. This eliminates constituents from finding outdated files by accident in SMU searches. Plus, file names may have been changed to improve accessibility and navigation.
The final step of our process will be to finalize redirects, verify brand standards across SEAS pages, and delete the old web pages the week of September 11. If units require content from their old sites, they are advised to make appropriate arrangements to export and/or archive.
