College advisor uses Girl Scout leadership experience to design new NSO activities

If life is like a box of chocolates, college advisement might be like a box of Girl Scout cookies. This month, JJ Conn, senior academic advisor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, will present a session on how hobbies can inform your work as an advisor during the NACADA 2025 Annual Conference to be held Oct. 26-29 in Las Vegas.

The session titled, "Bet! And I'll Raise You a Thin Mint: How Personal Passions Can Ante Up Your Advising," will connect Conn's six years as a Girl Scout troop leader to her career as an academic advisor.

"Advisors feel like they need to reinvent the wheel sometimes when it comes to engaging and working with students," Conn said. "The reality is, we do a lot of things as part of our everyday lives that can actually be leveraged to help our students."

An 8-week workshop on AI offered through UNM's College of Learning and Library Sciences inspired the ideas that will be presented at the NACADA conference. During the workshop, which coincided with cookie season, she asked ChatGPT for similarities between the two parts of her life. The response helped her see how both require her to interact with different personality types and develop new ideas to keep people engaged.

Connecting the two parts of her life prompted her to think creatively about ways to engage students more at New Student Orientation. This past summer, Conn used a new scavenger hunt game with orientation groups to familiarize incoming students with the registration materials they were given. Completing questions in the scavenger hunt led students to finish a word scramble game. It was an activity she'd used before to prepare scouts for the cookie season. Advisors in her department noted fewer issues with registration on the second day of orientation after the activity, she said.

"Advisors feel like they need to reinvent the wheel sometimes when it comes to engaging and working with students. The reality is, we do a lot of things as part of our everyday lives that can actually be leveraged to help our students."

- JJ Conn, senior academic advisor, Mechanical Engineering

In future semesters, she is interested in implementing a game called "Badges to Bachelor's," where students earn pins for doing things like visiting the Engineering Student Success Center or completing certain actions in LoboTrax, drawing parallels to how Girl Scouts earn badges for learning new things and completing different activities.

At the conference, Conn will use her ideas and hobbies as a case study in how advisors can use their personal interests to better engage students. Then, attendees will discuss their own interests with the people they're seated with using a game involving playing cards and poker chips.

"I am sure other advisors also have things they do, from hobbies to helping coach a team, that have actionable skills they can use in advisement and take some of the pressure off of coming up with something new," Conn said.

While the connection to earning badges and playing games was new for Conn, she and the other advisors and staff in the Department of Mechanical Engineering have long sought to support students in unique ways. Conn's office, decorated with colorful lights, Squishmallows and Pop Figures, is a warm environment for the students she supports. During finals, she places a test buddy cart outside her office, where students can pick up small figurines or animals to place on their desks during exams and motivate them to finish. Two former students who would use Chip and Dale figures during finals took their test buddies after graduation and now have them on their desks at Sandia National Laboratories.

No holiday, midterm or finals week passes without some sort of planned activity to help students smile or give them a quick break from studying. The Mechanical Engineering staff has planned an egg hunt every Easter for the past eight years, hiding 200 eggs filled with candy around the building for students to find. For Valentine's Day, students can write cards and leave them for faculty and staff who've supported their academic careers. In late fall and early winter, you might find supplies to make hand turkeys or snowflakes.

"My students are my favorite part of this work," Conn said. "I love working with them throughout their time here and then seeing them graduate." Last year, three advisors from the School of Engineering presented at the NACADA conference.