Design thinking for student success

by Erica Howell

The third annual Student Success Conference at ODU invites faculty and staff to participate in a quality discussion and learn about design thinking techniques for student success. The conference will take place on June 7 from 9am to 2pm at Chartway Arena.

According to Harvard Business Review, design thinking is "a creative, human-centered problem-solving approach that leverages empathy, collective idea generation, rapid prototyping, and continuous testing to tackle complex challenges." In health care, design thinking has led to the creation of new products, improved layout of clinical spaces and enhanced efficiency in patient care.

Janice Hawkins, PhD, RN, CNS-B, DNP Nurse Executive Program Director, has served on the conference committee since its inception. "Nursing faculty recognized the potential of design thinking as a process to better understand the patient experience and solve problems," Dr. Hawkins said. "So we knew this was something that would benefit faculty, staff and administrators in using this same process to better understand student experiences."

This conference will be highly interactive and allow participants to use design thinking techniques to develop solutions for specific student success challenges. It will also feature a student panel as well as guest speaker Dr. Veleka S. Gatling. Dr. Gatling is the interim assistant vice president for the office of institutional equity and diversity at ODU.

More information including the schedule and guest speaker bio can be found at https://www.odu.edu/success/ssconference.