Embracing Appreciative Inquiry: A Transformative Journey

Who’s Inspiring Impacts today? Jenny Bloom! Jenny Bloom, Ed.D. is a co-founder and leading expert on the Appreciative Advising and Appreciative Education movements. Tune in as Jenny speaks with host Dr. Lindsey Godwin about how appreciative advising can help students and advisors make inspiring impacts on themselves, each other, and the world.

Jenny shares insights on how Appreciative Inquiry helps you reframe challenges into solutions and visions of success and how appreciative advising can increase retention and GPAs in college students. Then, she shares her vision for how Appreciative Inquiry will evolve into the future of education.

Dr. Jenny Bloom joined the Department of Educational Leadership and Research Methodology at Florida Atlantic University in August 2015 as an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Higher Education Leadership Master’s Degree Program. As a co-founder of the Appreciative Advising and Appreciative Education movements, Jenny established the annual Appreciative Advising Summer Institute, the Appreciative Education Conference, an online Appreciative Advising course, the process for Certifying Appreciative Advisers, and other exciting initiatives. Jenny has co-authored 6 books, 6 book chapters, 31 articles, and even co-founded and serves as a section editor for the Journal of Appreciative Education (JAE).

Episode Highlights:

• How Jenny discovered Appreciative Inquiry over 20 years ago and what inspired her to enter the field of advising.
• What it takes to integrate Appreciate Inquiry, advising, and education.
• The 6 phases of appreciative advising + example questions you can ask students.
• Shocking stats that show the impact of appreciative advising in higher education.
• How appreciative advising grew into a movement that inspires impact.
• Research studies that inspire Jenny the most about the impact of advisors adopting appreciative advising methods.
• The biggest impact appreciative advising has made on Jenny herself.

Resources Mentioned:

Incorporating Appreciative Inquiry into Academic Advising by Jennifer Bloom and Nancy Archer Martin (2002) https://journals.psu.edu/mentor/article/view/61701/61346

The Appreciative Advising Revolution by Jennifer Bloom, Bryant Hutson, and Ye He: https://bit.ly/46defYH

FAU Office of Appreciative Education: https://www.fau.edu/education/centersandprograms/oae

Inspiring Quotes:

“90% of the people who’ve met with an appreciative advisor, and this was a voluntary thing… were eligible to return the following semester after they’ve come back off of dismissal, versus 33% of the other students who did not meet with an appreciative advisor.”

“The sustained impact is, I think, really important. It’s not about a one year blip going up… it’s looking at this data over time that really matters.”

“Appreciative advising is not just a powerful framework for enhancing interactions between advisors and students, it’s a framework for how you build good relationships with other people, whether they be students or your supervisor or your colleague.”

What is Appreciative Inquiry?

Appreciative Inquiry, sometimes referred to as “the other AI”, is one of the best kept secrets behind meaningful and lasting change at organizations. The AI approach is strength-based, meaning it focuses on identifying and leveraging successes to solve problems, rather than focusing on trying to fix individual failures.

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