On May 7, 265 faculty, staff, educators, advisors, students, and campus partners from across the university gathered in person at the Business College Complex to explore how MSU advances student success through collaboration, intentional design, and evidence-based practice.
The 2026 theme, Collective Impact: Empowering Student Success Across One MSU, centered our shared commitment to supporting students through the Five Opportunity Areas of Student Success and highlighted the incredible contributions to this work happening across campus.
Summit highlights
The 2026 Summit introduced a research, assessment, and metrics session outlining our proposal for mapping the data that informs our progress in each of the five areas of student success. We invite any final feedback on the proposal by Friday, June 5. The linked survey will display a chart for the area of success you are interested in and will then walk you through related questions. To give feedback on more than one area of success, revisit the survey link and choose a different area to review.
The Summit sessions were designed to promote collaboration and connection, not just the consumption of information. To that end, we added a session breakout this year, “Practices Worth Replicating,” that highlighted the practices and activities of our Student Success Award nominees and award recipients. This session created space for nominees of the Five Opportunity Areas of Student Success Awards and Recognition Program to share their approaches, allowing participants to learn from impactful work happening across campus while engaging in meaningful dialogue about current practices, shared insights, and opportunities to adapt and scale these efforts into their daily work.
The Student Success Summit concluded with the One MSU for Student Success Joint Awards Ceremony, held in collaboration with IT Educational Technology, Undergraduate Education, and the Center for Teaching and Learning Innovation (CTLI). This celebration brought together multiple recognition programs, including the Five Opportunity Areas of Student Success Awards and Recognition Program, the AT&T Teaching with Technology Awards, and the IT–Educational Technology Awards and Educator Awards. The ceremony closed with a simple but important call to action: take one small piece of the day with you, reach out to a colleague and let them know, specifically, what you value about their work.
Take aways
To help us continue improving future events, your feedback is incredibly valuable. We invite you to complete our brief 2026 Student Success Summit Feedback Survey to share your thoughts. The survey will close on Friday, June 5.
To revisit or review what you learned, view the Summit opening remarks, large group session, as well as presentations and materials here:
Our theme this year focused on moving the needle on our student success goals through the collective impact of macro, mezzo, and micro level efforts by each unit and member of the MSU community. We appreciate the commitment to engagement and learning by all those who presented, facilitated activities, and attended the event.
We also could not have planned an engaging and informative event without the support, experience, and creativity of our colleagues who served on the Summit 2026 planning committee. We appreciate their leadership commitment to advancing undergraduate student success at MSU.
- Lillian Brooks
- Jennifer Freitas
- Liz Fuller
- Qiana Green
- Alex Guo
- Ellie Louson
- Alysa Lucas
- Charlie Liu
- Annette McLane
- Taylor Marino
- Heidi Quintero
- Samuel Saldivar
- Wasek Sazzad
We look forward to meeting again in the fall for the 2026 Student Success Launch! Save the date for Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026.