Sessions and Speakers

Excel is an excellent tool, but not every workplace process is truly spreadsheet-shaped. When a small student-support program needed a way to track participants, repeated contacts, advising notes, and follow-up, the work required more than a table of information. It required a system that could connect records and present them in a way that matched how staff actually completed the work.

This session will share how Microsoft Lists, Power Apps, and generative AI were used to build a functional participant-tracking tool. Attendees will see the original workflow problem, the structure created in Microsoft Lists, the people-centered Power Apps interface, and examples of how generative AI supported learning and troubleshooting throughout the process. The session will also share practical lessons about testing, permissions, interface design, and the small adjustments involved in turning a working idea into a usable tool.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to recognize when a process may not be well suited to Excel, describe the different purposes served by Microsoft Lists and Power Apps, identify a manageable workflow problem that could benefit from a low-code solution, and explain how generative AI can assist a non-developer without replacing subject-matter expertise or human judgment.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

• Recognize signs that a workflow may have outgrown Excel.

• Explain the different roles of Excel, Microsoft Lists, and Power Apps.

• Identify workplace processes that may be good candidates for a low-code solution.

• Explain how generative AI can support someone learning an unfamiliar low-code platform without replacing subject-matter expertise, testing, or human judgment.

• Apply a people-centered approach to evaluating or redesigning an everyday workflow.

Attendees will leave with a relatable example of how WSU employees can use curiosity, available resources, and knowledge of their own work to improve a local process. The session emphasizes that ingenuity does not always mean inventing something entirely new. Sometimes it means recognizing that the current tool does not fit the work and being willing to explore a better approach.

During times of change and transition, employees often look first to their immediate supervisors for clarity, context, and reassurance. But helping our team navigate uncertainty isn’t about having all the answers. Instead, success lies in our ability to listen, facilitate understanding, and reinforce connection.

This interactive workshop, led by Chantell Cosner, equips supervisors, managers, and department leaders with a simple framework to help them communicate effectively during periods of change, enabling them to serve as trusted translators between institutional priorities and the employee experience.

Participants will learn how to:

• Recognize their role as change communicators.
• Maintain trust and credibility during uncertainty.
• Facilitate two-way dialogue that reflects WSU’s academic culture.
• Apply a practical communication framework for leading through change.

Did you know WSU pioneered the award winning Grants Forecasting tool in Adaptive Planning? This tool is a university-wide grants forecasting tool enhancing support for research on a brand new level. It assists Grant Managers and Principal Investigators (PIs) across the WSU system in projecting future expenses and remaining balances on their grants

Learn more about this tool with Modernization’s Grants team as they demonstrate the Grants Forecasting tool in Adaptive Planning for Grant Managers, PIs, and AFOs.

Learn about the university’s new marketplace for scientific supplies in Workday which simplifies how departments purchase commonly used used scientific and research supplies.

Join Modernization’s HCM team for an interactive and engaging run down of the latest HR related updates and optimizations in Workday. This 90-minute session includes plenty of time for Q&A. Modernization holds What’s New sessions every quarter, and October’s session is the third in this year’s series.

Modernization’s Time & Leave and Payroll Services teams show you what happens between time entry in Workday and what comes through in Payroll.

Join Modernization’s Time & Leave team for an informative and engaging session that helps you understand advanced time entry scenarios and processes in Workday.

Modernization’s Finance team share what Funds, Functions, and the Financial Data Model (FDM) are and how to use them in Workday.

Join five university communicators from ITS, HRS, and Modernization for a discussion about managing both long and short-term projects, events, and communications. Topics include:

• Using content calendars and templates for repeating events or communications.
• Time management and organization.
• Working through “writer’s block” and other creative or productive roadblocks.
• Planning for and executing emergency communications.

This session offers strategies, tips, and tricks for handling projects and communications at any scale, for employees of all experience levels.

Designed for administrative professionals, project managers, support staff, and individuals who manage complex schedules, this session explores advanced Outlook and calendaring tools that improve coordination. Participants will learn techniques for managing multiple calendars, scheduling across units, coordinating executive-level meetings, utilizing delegation features, and using Outlook tools to support projects and organizational priorities.

This practical session will help you make the most of Outlook’s everyday tools. Learn strategies for managing your inbox, organizing your calendar, scheduling meetings efficiently, and utilizing contacts and campus resources. We’ll also explore how to find and reserve campus spaces, along with other helpful tools and services that can make your workday run more smoothly. 

The most important cybersecurity decisions aren’t made by firewalls or software. They’re made by people. Join WSU Office of Information Security and Assurance for an engaging discussion about navigating today’s cyber landscape, making informed technology decisions, and protecting yourself, your colleagues, and the university.

This course highlights Excel’s highest‑impact features for getting real work done more efficiently. There are many cool tricks in Excel and this session covers:

– Autofilters and conditional formatting to quickly surface what matters in large datasets

– Core functions like IF and XLOOKUP (including nesting) to make spreadsheets more intelligent

– Text functions that dramatically reduce cleanup time on messy or imported data

– Break down fixed references with the $ operator

– Introduce pivot tables as a fast, flexible way to summarize and analyze information

– Macros and coding with VBA

By the end of the session, you should be faster, more confident, and better able to build spreadsheets that answer real‑world questions.

This engaging session shares how to get the information and advice you need from WSU Libraries’ vast resources to solve your problems.

Join Jill Freuden, Assistant Registrar, in this engaging session showing how SmartSheets helped improve processes and efficiencies in the Registrar’s Office and how you can use WSU’s license to bring SmartSheets in to your own department.

Most supervisors know what needs to be addressed. The challenge is knowing how to address it effectively.
Whether it’s performance concerns, workplace conflict, accountability issues, or difficult employee behaviors, avoiding conversations often leads to larger problems. This interactive workshop provides practical tools to help supervisors build trust, navigate conflict, deliver feedback, and hold employees accountable while maintaining positive working relationships.

Participants will leave with conversation frameworks, coaching techniques, and conflict management strategies they can immediately apply in the workplace.

Know who to call, what to report, and what to do when students and colleagues need you most. This interactive presentation provides faculty, staff, and campus leaders with an overview of Washington State University’s coordinated approach to student support, community standards, threat assessment, and civil rights compliance.

Participants will examine the roles of the Office of the Dean of Students, Threat Assessment Team, Center for Community Standards, and Compliance and Civil Rights, while applying reporting and referral practices to realistic campus scenarios.

By the end of the presentation, participants will be able to:

• Identify the appropriate WSU office or resource for student support, conduct, safety, and civil rights concerns.
• Recognize behaviors and circumstances that may require consultation, referral, or immediate reporting.
• Describe their responsibilities for documenting and reporting concerns as WSU employees.
• Distinguish between emergency response, threat assessment, student-support referrals, community standards processes, and civil rights reporting.
• Apply WSU referral and reporting pathways to complex, real-world scenarios involving students, faculty, and staff.
• Use a coordinated, community-of-care approach to connect students and colleagues with appropriate support while promoting campus safety, accountability, and compliance.

Elevating Cougs is excited to bring guest speaker T. Andrew Wahl, from the Humanities Washington Speaker’s Bureau, to this year’s conference.

From the advent of the internet to recent developments in artificial intelligence, the digital revolution continues to remake our world. While many of the changes have been positive, these innovations have also left many of us trapped in filter bubbles, overloaded with information, mistrustful, anxious, and polarized.

Lifelong journalist and media educator T. Andrew Wahl breaks down the key developments that have led to our current information landscape and, more importantly, offers concrete tips to help attendees develop a healthier relationship with their information diet.

T. Andrew Wahl has worked in journalism and media communication across Washington state, earning awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, National Federation of Press Women, United Nations, and others. Wahl is tenured faculty at Everett Community College where he teaches journalism, media literacy, and comics studies.

Everyday Coug Ingenuity is about practical learning, meaningful connection, and the confidence to solve real problems in everyday work. That’s exactly what this session does. The loneliness epidemic isn’t abstract, it’s showing up in our Zoom fatigue, our siloed departments, and our teams that are technically collaborating but not really connecting. This session gives WSU employees practical, research-backed tools to do something simple but surprisingly rare: actually connect with the people they work with every day. No grand initiatives required. Just skills any Coug can start using right away.

Most of us have experienced going through the motions at work without really feeling seen or connected. It shows up in our Zoom calls, in the hallways where we walk past people without stopping, and into meetings where we’re technically together but not really present with each other. The U.S. Surgeon General called it a public health epidemic, and higher education employees are not immune.

But here’s what the research actually shows: connection is a skill, and it can be practiced.

We’ve all sat through the sessions that tell us to reach out if we’re struggling, to check in on our colleagues, to keep our doors open. And those things aren’t wrong. But they put the weight of fixing it on the very person who is already running on empty. And, in real life, waiting for someone to reach out means waiting for something that may never happen. This session flips that. We’ll focus on something harder and more honest. How do I recognize when someone is reaching out? How do I respond in ways that actually help? And how do I build environments where connection happens naturally?

We’ll move quickly past the why and most of the session will be on practical strategies you can use the same day, whether you’re trying to feel more connected yourself or trying to build a team that actually functions like one.

Participants will leave able to:

• Recognize personal and environmental barriers to genuine connection at work.

• Identify and respond to bids for connection from colleagues.

• Apply practical strategies for building organic connection within their teams.

Percipio is a powerful tool to enhance personal and professional development. In this session, participants will learn how to effectively navigate Percipio, access tailored content, and utilize various learning tools to enhance their development journey. Ideal for learners of all levels looking to unlock the full potential of the platform. Highlights include: Access & General Navigation: Learn how to log in, explore the platform’s layout, and quickly find courses, videos, and resources. Learning Tools & Tailored Content: Discover how to leverage personalized learning paths, curated content, and skill-building tools to achieve your goals. Analytics: Track your progress and performance with built-in analytics to ensure continuous growth. Troubleshooting: Gain tips for overcoming common technical issues and challenges within Percipio.

Come learn how your plan works, when you are eligible to retire, and how you could be saving more for your future, if you so desire.

WSU has several different plans our employees could be participating in:

• WSURP (TIAA),
• PERS 2
• PERS 3
• TRS 3
• Two voluntary plans – the TIAA Voluntary Investment Plan (VIP) and the Deferred Compensation Plan (DCP).

Join yoga instructors Cassondra Yarlott and Marcia Gossard for a welcoming and inclusive wellness experience. Designed for all fitness levels, this class accommodates a wide range of mobility, flexibility, and yoga experience. Whether you’re new to yoga or a long-time practitioner, you’ll find supportive instruction, modifications, and options to help you move, stretch, and recharge at your own pace.

Recent research from Stanford Medicine shows that even brief mindfulness practices, as short as five minutes, can significantly reduce anxiety and enhance overall well-being. In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore the latest findings on the science of mindfulness and its impact on workplace wellness.

Led by a certified 500-hour yoga teacher with additional training in iRest (Integrative Restoration) and Yoga Nidra, this session combines evidence-based insights with simple, accessible practices. Participants will learn short mindfulness techniques that can be easily integrated into the academic workday. No prior experience required.

Whether you’re looking to reduce stress, improve focus, or simply take a meaningful pause, this session offers practical tools to support mental clarity and resilience in your professional life.

This presentation will equip departments with the foundational knowledge needed to navigate graduate assistantships confidently and effectively in their day-to-day work. Assistantship processes can often feel complex, especially for those new to the role, and this session simplifies key concepts into practical, accessible guidance.

By focusing on clear explanations of assistantship types, eligibility, funding, and processes, the session empowers staff to problem-solve more independently, reduce errors, and make informed decisions. It also connects attendees to existing resources and trainings, supporting continued learning beyond the session.

Learn about Security Roles in Workday, organizations, cost centers compared to supervisory organizations, and how to successfully manage security roles for the teams you support.

When employees think about Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), they often associate them with counseling during difficult situations and times. However, EAPs offer a range of resources that can help employees recharge, build resilience, strengthen interpersonal skills, navigate workplace challenges, and pursue personal and professional goals.

This session will explore how employees can use EAP services as a tool for growth rather than a reactive resource during difficult times. Participants will learn how EAP benefits support communication, stress management, work-life integration, leadership development, career transitions, financial well-being, and family support. By understanding the broad range of available resources, attendees will leave with practical strategies while advancing both their professional and personal journeys.

This session offers a focused introduction to supporting WSU’s veteran and military-connected community. Through short discussions and practical examples, participants will explore how military services can shape campus experiences and how small, intentional actions can contribute to a more inclusive environment, and work toward building confidence as a community ally. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of military-affiliated identities and experiences, familiarity with key resources, and a set of adaptable best practices to confidently stand with military-affiliated Cougs, across classrooms, teams, and campus interactions.

Learn about Workday’s Accounting Center which consolidates accounting from external sources into Workday.

Accounting Center will support the following objectives for improved financial reporting and budget planning at WSU:

– Consolidation of accounting from external sources into Workday, including attributes that may not naturally exist within Workday.

– Expanded available data points.

– Increased ability to reconcile with other systems, and simplified bank reconciliation.

– Reduction in accounting errors and increased trust in financial data.

Learn about TouchNet, the university’s comprehensive suite of applications that support the commerce needs of colleges and universities. TouchNet includes solutions such as Student Office Cashiering for departmental payments and deposits, a Student Account Center for student payments, and more.

Join the Bursar’s Office, Central Accounting, and Modernization’s Finance team as they explain Item Types and how to use them in Workday.

Join HRS’ Learning & Organizational Development team as they show Learning Administrators how to run learner reports, assign trainings, and troubleshoot in Percipio.

Every member of the WSU community deserves to work, learn, and participate in an environment free from discrimination and harassment.

UPPM 10.60, the university’s policy prohibiting discrimination and harassment, outlines our shared responsibility to foster a respectful, inclusive environment, and what to do when concerns arise. This training helps you understand your role in supporting a community where everyone can fully access opportunities and feel respected.

Attending the entirety of this session completes your annual Employee Rights and Responsibilities Under UPPM 10.60 training assignment for 2026.

University Ethics Policy training is part of Washington State University’s commitment to maintaining a workplace built on integrity, accountability, and public trust. It’s designed to help you recognize ethical considerations in your day-to-day work and feel confident navigating situations that may not always be clear-cut.

Attending the entirety of this session completes your annual WSU’s University Ethics Policy Under UPPM 10.65 training assignment for 2026.

Hazing prevention is part of how we take care of each other at WSU. Whether you work closely with students or primarily with colleagues, everyone plays a role in creating an environment where people feel safe, respected, and supported.

This sessions defines hazing, identifies key WSU Executive Policies addressing these topics, gives examples of “look-fors” for managers when supervising staff, and provides links to resources available to help in cases of alleged hazing incidents. The training also highlights employee and supervisor responsibilities when hazing misconduct is reported or observed.

Attending the entirety of this session completes your annual Hazing Prevention at WSU training assignment for 2026.

This session provides an overview of FERPA and how it applies to daily activities at WSU through discussion, real-world examples, and Q&A.

Join us as we start this year’s event with an overview of what’s on offer and how to build your schedule.

Join us as we close out this year’s event and share some of our favorite moments.