The Coaching in Higher Education committees are a highly valued and essential part of the CHEC community, helping CHEC to honor its commitments to its members and embody the values and purpose of the organization.
Each CHEC committee reflects the mission and goals of the Consortium. Committees allow members to connect with others who share similar coaching or specific student population interests. Information about joining committees can be found below.
The Training and Best Practices Committee works to develop and share best practices and strategies for coaching students within higher education, gather materials to create a resource library from coaching programs across higher education to share with the CHEC community and organize all efforts to provide professional development training and webinars for the CHEC community. The Training and Best Practices Committee is led by Jennifer Santoro, Campus Director of Career Services at East Coast Polytechnic Institute. To join, email JSantoro@ecpi.edu.
The Diversity, Inclusion, Values, Equity, and Social Justice committee (DIVES) works to create professional development opportunities, resources, and build a shared common language for coaching in higher education that promotes equity, inclusion, and justice on our campuses.
The best coaching practices share key areas of overlap with the best DIVES practices such as prioritizing empathy, understanding individual differences, and promoting growth and development. When DIVES initiatives are successful in our coaching practices and on our campuses, students persist and succeed academically. Additionally, they develop empathy, communication skills, and critical thinking abilities making them more prepared for leadership roles and engaging in an increasingly diverse society.
By encouraging and supporting institutions in creating and maintaining spaces that respect and acknowledge diverse voices, promote justice, and work to challenge and dismantle systems of oppression, we create room for robust learning, deeper conversation, and intentional action to generate positive outcomes for all. The committee plans to host training and webinars and build a resource library for the CHEC community in the upcoming year. The DIVES committee is led by Emily Argyle, Academic Standards Success Coach and Counselor at Utah Valley University. To join, email EArgyle@uvu.edu.
Community Agreements
The DIVES committee co-constructed and agreed upon these values to help create inclusive environments for innovative and equitable engagement; they are open to modification as needed.
- Respect each other as equals
- Honor everyone by creating time and space for their contributions
- Stay curious about each other and the individual paths that brought us together
- By pacing ourselves we create time for listening, thinking and reflection
- Practice self-awareness. Be generous with each other and mindful of your impact on others, regardless of your intent
- Respect the confidentiality of what is shared in this space
- Our conversations together may be complex, challenging, and difficult. Expect and accept non-closure
- In the spirit of learning, growth and cultivating shared values, commit when possible, to re-engage at a later opportunity
- Recognize that no one knows everything, but together we know a lot
During the initial CHEC Executive Board meetings, an unanimous decision was made to center the growth of CHEC around its most valuable resource: membership. The Membership Committee was created to help the CHEC Executive Board research and consider membership models and options. The committee continues to provide information to the Executive Board on options to grow to meet the future needs of its members and the profession of coaching in higher education. Committee membership is only available to CHEC Executive Board members at this time. The Membership Committee is led by Lyle Slack, Director, Academic Success Center, Texas A&M University. He may be reached at Lyle.slack@tamu.edu.
The National Conference Committee plans CHEC’s annual gathering, either in-person or virtual.
The Research and Assessment Committee works to advance the knowledge of student coaching by contributing to the scholarly literature. We will do this by first building a “Research Inventory” of prior works, then discussing topics of interest, identifying journals, establishing writing groups, and authoring works for publication. The committee also plans to establish research and assessment projects to advance and inform the practice of coaching within higher education, recognizing the interdependence of research and practice, engaging with the theory and body of literature within the coaching field and related disciplines, and suggesting outcomes for both students and coaches, propose measures of effective evaluation, and plans to host training and webinars for the CHEC community to provide guidance on evidence-based research design. The Research and Assessment Committee is led by Jenny Sumner, Ph.D., Assistant Vice Provost at the University of Central Florida. To join, email Jennifer.Sumner@ucf.edu.