2025 Mentoring and Advising Summit

8th Annual Mentoring and Advising Summit

Inclusive Excellence in Mentoring and Advising
March 14, 2025

Revisit the 2025 Summit

Presentations from the event are available to view on the 2025 Summit Session Recordings page >>

We are pleased to have welcomed over 2,600 attendees representing hundreds of institutions and organizations from around the globe to the eighth annual Mentoring and Advising Summit. 

About the Mentoring and Advising Summit

At the University of Pittsburgh, advising and mentoring are integral to our educational mission as we advocate for collaborative and holistic advising interactions. Through the eighth annual Mentoring and Advising Summit, we will continue to cultivate a strong culture of student success and inclusion as we convene mentors, advisors, coaches, and administrators from around the globe to discuss new trends and best practices in mentoring and advising.  

During this virtual summit, participants will engage with and learn about specific tools, techniques, theories, and concepts to support undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdocs as they chart goals, develop enduring networks, and sustain their pursuit of success after graduation. These aims are important as together, we work to make our institutions of higher education more dynamic and inclusive places for everyone, most especially for at-promise student populations including first-generation, income-eligible, underrepresented minority, exploratory, transfer, rural, international, and those in need of academic intervention.

2026 Summit Sponsors

Advising Success Network

Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities (UERU)

Agenda Overview

Session Spotlights

Opening Keynote: Building Authentic Relationships with Kristen Hadeed (9-10:15 a.m. ET)

Welcome and Introduction: Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor Joseph J. McCarthy
Keynote: Kristen Hadeed, Founder and CEO of Student Maid, author of Permission to Screw Up, and Optimism Instructor for Simon Sinek’s Optimism Company

When we come to work, in higher education and beyond, we are often told to leave our “personal life” at the door. While work-life balance is important, why do we make people feel as if coming to work means pretending to be someone they aren’t? When we approach our professional relationships with authenticity and vulnerability, we create a more loyal, committed, and engaged workplace community. This is especially important for advisors and mentors across our institutions, who do the heavy lifting of meeting students every day with compassion and optimism – we can provide the same joy to each other!

In this session, CEO and Founder of the internationally acclaimed company Student Maid™, Kristen Hadeed, shares how to create genuine relationships within a team and how these relationships allow us to accomplish more together.  

• Learn how to create deeper relationships with better communication
• Identify techniques to enhance your listening
• Understand the power of in-person communication
• Discover ways to make team meetings more effective and engaging
• Explore how to be more authentic and how to encourage authenticity in others

Kristen Hadeed Bio

Kristen Hadeed believes that authentic, human leadership can change the world. At 19, with hardly any leadership experience, Kristen started a cleaning business called Student Maid. She never expected it to be her career; it was simply a way to earn money while she was in college. But before she graduated, her company received a contract to clean hundreds of apartments, and it changed her path forever.

Kristen hired 60 people to help her and, within days, 75% of the team had quit. That’s when Kristen’s obsession with learning how to be a leader began. Over the next 14 years, Kristen learned a lot by screwing up. But most importantly, she learned how to lead from her heart. Doing so helped her take Student Maid from a small cleaning company to a business known globally for its culture of belonging, its focus on people, and its purpose of building leaders. She chronicles her leadership journey in her bestselling book, Permission to Screw Up.

Today, Kristen spends her time helping leaders, teams, and organizations around the world embrace their humanity. She’s worked with just about every industry with one purpose behind it all: to build a better world through courageous, compassionate leadership.

Plenary Panel: Shared and Collaborative Advising: An Equity and Excellence Imperative for Higher Education (11:30 a.m.-12:45 p.m. ET)

Welcome and Introduction: Steve Dandaneau, Executive Director, Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities (UERU)
Moderator: April Belback, Associate Vice Provost for Student Success and Advising, University of Pittsburgh

Panelists: Kevin Clarke, Associate Director for Research Advisory Services at EAB, Tammy Wyatt, Senior Vice Provost for Student Success at University of Texas San Antonio, and Claire Robinson, Assistant Provost for Undergraduate Advisement at University of South Carolina 

The Boyer 2030 Equity/Excellence Imperative highlights that all students should receive excellent advising that is holistic and student-centered, enabling them to navigate the complexity of our Universities. Many UERU (The Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities) institutions are championing the shift towards a shared model of advising to streamline student experiences and boost student success measures. In this session, EAB will discuss the key tenants of a recently published white paper “Breaking the Advising Stalemate” which explores the coordination of advising and how to build a consistent experience to address student needs. We will also present case studies from several institutions. 

Closing Plenary: Cultivating Student Success: Re-Imagining Academic Supports Towards Inclusivity and Belonging in Higher Education (3:50-5:00 p.m. ET)

Welcome and Introduction: Adam J. Lee, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies, University of Pittsburgh
Panelists: Omid Fotuhi, Director of Learning Innovation at WGU Labs, Shannon Brady, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University, Catherine Shaw, Managing Director at Tyton Partners

Today’s higher educational landscape is changing and requires institutions to re-imagine academic support systems towards fostering inclusive and belonging spaces for today's students. This session will bring together a panel of experts to discuss these issues and innovative solutions in both the undergraduate and graduate student journey.

Timely Topics at the Summit

• Creating a sense of #belonging through mentoring and advising interactions
• Cultivating #studentsuccess for improved outcomes and at-promise student populations 
• Leveraging #technology tools as critical elements of our campus ecosystems  
• Developing partnerships to ensure #transfer student success  
• Understanding #collaboration towards holistic mentoring and advising approaches and theories
• Extending meaningful #discourse opportunities to enrich mentoring and advising

Who Should Participate? 

Any faculty member, staff member, administrator, graduate student, postdoc, or researcher who advises, mentors, or coaches undergraduate students, graduate students or postdocs.

Why Should You Participate? 

• It is accessible! Thanks to our sponsors, the Summit is a world-class conference at no cost to attendees and can be engaged virtually anywhere in the world.  
• 3 keynote sessions! Our speakers are leaders in the field where you get up-to-date information on research-backed topics, trends, and successful strategies. 
• Make new connections! You can network with colleagues who mentor, advise, and coach students and postdocs and share your innovative solutions and strategies.