What is Academic Life Coaching?
Collegiate Success Coaching focuses exclusively on young adults in college. College-level learning and living on campus independently (or even at home with a new role and responsibilities as a college student) require advanced self-management skills that students are often unprepared for. Coaching focuses on adjusting to academic rigor, structuring independent living, and being intentional about daily decisions to create a calmer, more productive, rewarding and enjoyable college experience.
Coaching targets the present and the future and the specific behaviors that a client wants to improve or change. Coaching is based on the field of Positive Psychology and uses three primary tools:
Powerful Questioning
Active Listening
Growth Mindset
These components combine to evoke awareness and behavior change for students. Working with a coach helps to pattern academic goal achievement and self-directed learning, two things that most college students need help with. Common coaching topics include time management, organization, academic strategies, motivation, persistence, and personal accountability, among others.
Are you qualified to help students with an ADD/ADHD diagnosis or Executive Function challenges?
Yes. Lynn is an International Coaching Federation certified ADHD/Executive Function Academic Life Coach. She completed Coaching Teens and College Students with ADHD and Empowering Students through Coaching with JST-Coaching by Jodi Sleeper-Triplett and associates, the widely recognized leader in evidence-based ADHD coaching. Jodi is considered to be one of the founders of the specialty of ADHD Coaching. As a person with ADD herself, with a Master’s Degree in Higher Education, two children with ADHD, many years of experience in and out of the college classroom, and her own coaching practice, Lynn is eminently qualified to support students with an ADD/ADHD diagnosis or Executive Function challenges. She regularly screens her clients for the twelve most commonly researched Executive Functions, as identified by Dawson and Guare (2018): sustained attention, task initiation, emotion regulation, stress tolerance, working memory, organization, planning/prioritization, cognitive flexibility, time management, goal-directed persistance, metacognition, and response inhibition. Most coaching conversations include work in one or more of these areas.
Am I already paying for this with my student's tuition?
Your student’s institution may provide aspects of academic life coaching, but few offer the kind of personalized support that Lynn does.
You may see titles like "Graduation Coach," "College Concierge," or "Success Coach," and the professionals in those positions may offer any aspect of Lynn’s services in a small group workshop format or in occasional private sessions. In general, these departments do a great job, but they have notable constraints, including relying on the student to drive action, large case loads with limited staffing, traditional M-F, 8-5 workday hours, and the inability to communicate with students when they need it most.
Students in need of these services are often less amenable to seeking help, so the services go unused by the very clients for whom intervention could be most critical. Lynn is available during the crucial hours when students are most often making decisions about when and how they will (or will not) follow through on their academic commitments. With helpful support and accommodations that relieve some of the disorganization and stress of navigating a complex Learning Management Systems, Lynn guides the student toward deeper personal awareness, confidence and efficacy, with the long-term goals of self-advocacy, personal accountability, and independence.
How are you different from other coaches?
Lynn’s practice serves college students who need support during their transition to college or those who have had a setback they are recovering from. This means she works with students on academic re-entry plans; students with ADD/ADHD who work best when they have help maintaining structure and accountability; and students who are earning credit hours but are not thriving, not moving forward with their goals or getting the most from their college experience. For five years, Lynn taught a course full-time that was expertly designed to academically and emotionally equip college freshmen for success. She has personally taught and delivered this kind of targeted support to over 500 college students. In addition to teaching, in graduate school, Lynn had the honor to train under Dr. John Gardner, the founder and global leader of the study of college transition and success factors.
Lynn’s coaching sessions are a combination of teaching, thought-provoking questions, motivation, and accountability. She creates a scaffolded experience for each client, where she teaches early in the service period and provides high levels of support and motivation while the client practices using what’s been taught. As the client sees results and their confidence grows, they take progressively more responsibility and accountability toward the middle and end of their work together. That's different from many academic life coaches who simply coach from session to session without much continuity or plan. Lynn’s coaching can be described as a “One-on-One College Success Course” with particular insight and targeted interventions for students with EF and ADHD challenges.