Title: Creating Sustainable Practices for Graduate Success: Strategies for Balance, Belonging, and Burnout Prevention
Presenter(s):
Stephanie Olson (she/her)
Kaia Lee-Espiritu
Ketsia Mandjila (she/her)
Room: Thurgood Marshall 2113
Session Block(s): Session I
Time: 10:25 a.m. to 11:25 a.m.
Duration: 60 minutes
Program Abstract:
Graduate Assistants often juggle academic, professional, and personal responsibilities, leading to chronic imbalance and burnout. This session explores sustainable strategies grounded in resilience, belonging, and intentional self-care to support long-term success for graduate student staff. Through reflective activities and tangible tools, presenters guide participants in redefining balance and cultivating resilient practices in their own roles and departments.
Program Description:
Graduate Assistants (GAs) play a vital role in student affairs and campus operations while simultaneously navigating academic and personal demands. Whether pursuing degrees in higher education or in other fields, GAs bring diverse strengths and aspirations that shape their experiences in their assistantships. Balancing multiple identities and responsibilities often leads to stress, burnout, or uncertainty about how the skills developed in the role connect to future career paths. This session centers on resilience by exploring how both GAs and supervisors can intentionally build sustainable practices, supportive environments, and opportunities that honor graduate students' varied academic and professional goals.
Through an interactive workshop format, presenters will guide participants in examining how workload expectations, departmental culture, and personal wellbeing influence the GA experience. A Graduate Assistant panel will share insights on navigating balance, seeking support, and translating assistantship responsibilities into transferable skills—whether for careers in student affairs or beyond. Presenters will also discuss how supervisors can tailor experiences to strengthen communication, project management, facilitation, leadership, and other skills relevant across disciplines.
Participants will engage in reflection activities, pair-and-share conversations, and large group dialogue to identify stressors, strengths, and strategies for sustainable balance. Attendees will also receive accessible worksheets and tools for burnout assessment, skill mapping, and self-reflection. The session concludes with the creation of a personalized “Resilience Toolkit” featuring free, tangible practices such as journaling prompts, grounding exercises, boundary-setting methods, and templates for aligning GA responsibilities with future goals. This session equips both Graduate Assistants and their supervisors with practical approaches to fostering resilience, belonging, and long-term success within and beyond the field of student affairs.