Last May 7 and 8, student success educators and staff gathered together for the 2025 Student Success Summit to explore how MSU continues to advance student success through the Five Opportunity Areas and to celebrate contributions that are making a difference across campus.
To accommodate busy schedules and remote colleagues, the 2025 Student Success Summit was held over two days: an in-person gathering on day one and a virtual session on day two.
The in-person summit, hosted at the Business College Complex, welcomed over 245 colleagues. In partnership with the MSU Spring TALKS Conference, the opening morning of day one featured Dr. Nick Sanders, professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Oakland University, and Spartan alum, as keynote speaker.
The morning session reviewed key efforts including the Spartan Undergraduate Experience Strategy Guide, Five Opportunity Areas Learning Community, and the initiative database. Throughout the morning, we recognized outstanding colleagues who were the first recipients of the Five Opportunity Areas of Student Success Recognition Program.
Afternoon breakout sessions covered topics including incorporating all five areas of success in bridge, transition or cohort programs; addressing sense of belonging in curricular and co-curricular efforts; tending to returning students’ success; assessing student success efforts; mapping student engagement, and more. You can find the breakout session materials at the following link: Summit 2025 Session Materials.
The second day brought 62 participants together virtually for interactive breakout sessions across the five opportunity areas, offering space for dialogue, reflection, and connection.
Thank you to everyone who attended and contributed feedback on this year’s Student Success Summit. Your reflections and insights are invaluable as we continue to build events that support meaningful dialogue, collaboration, and action to advance student success at MSU. We received thoughtful and constructive feedback from attendees, and we want to share some key themes which we will use to inform future programming.
- We heard a desire for more context at the outset with a clear outline of purpose and how the overall goals and clearer structure for the day. For future events, we’ll work toward articulating clearly how each part of the day connects to the purpose of each Student Success event.
- Participants expressed interest in hearing more about what’s happening at MSU, such as what’s working, what’s changing, and how colleagues are moving the work forward. Celebrating progress and learning from peers is something we’ll be more intentional about including in the future.
- Breakout sessions were a highlight, but long seated sessions and not enough breaks or opportunity for movement, made parts of the event static for some. We heard calls for more dynamic, interactive formats such as opportunities for rotating sessions and opportunities to collaborate across units.
- Finally, there was a strong interest in continuing the conversation. Many attendees asked for more opportunities to reconnect mid-year, share updates, and reflect on progress.
Your input helps us grow, and we’re grateful for your engagement and commitment to our shared goals. We look forward to continuing this work with you, and we are already working on how to incorporate this feedback at our 2025 Student Success Launch!
Looking ahead, we are excited to announce that for 2026, the Student Success Summit will be a part of “One MSU for Student Success” Week (May 4-8). “One MSU for Student Success” will include events like Grade-a-Thon, TALKS, and the Student Success Summit, in partnership with IT-Educational Technology, Undergraduate Education, and CTLI.
We look forward to connecting with you at future Student Success events! If you are interested in being involved in the Student Success Summit or Launch, you can reach out to me, Maria O’Connell (jacomema@msu.edu).
We are grateful to the contributions from everyone who attended, participated, volunteered, and facilitated sessions. We appreciate you and look forward to continuing to build contributions across campus.
A special thank you to our incredible colleagues who served on the 2025 Student Success Summit planning committee. Your thoughtful contributions, coordination, and collaboration made this event possible.
- Ariel Arnold
- Liz Fuller
- Alex Guo
- Joy Hannibal
- Abe Huyser-Honig
- Ashlee Lambert
- Emma Larocca
- Garam Lee
- Ellie Louson
- Taylor Marino
- Amy Martin
- Joyce Meier
- Makena Neal
- Coree Newman
- Leigh Norwood
- Maria O'Connell
- Susan Richter
- Jieron Robinson
- Carmen Ruiz-Sanchez
- Wasek Sazzad
- Sarah Schultz
- Mariam Turkey