April Newcomer

April M. Newcomer leads strategic advising and enrollment planning and student success initiatives for the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech, where she serves as the Advising and Enrollment Manager. She works closely with undergraduate and graduate students, providing holistic, individualized advising that supports academic decision-making and helps students make sense of their academic and experiential learning as they explore pathways, navigate uncertainty, and move toward career goals. Her work focuses on designing integrated advising and student success structures that guide student progression across the academic lifecycle from entry through career launch while improving clarity, coordination, and belonging within the geosciences student success ecosystem.

She is the architect of the Geosciences Integrated Advising and Enrollment Management System (GIAEMS) and the Graduate Enrollment Optimization through Demand Evaluation (GEODE) framework, which are used to anticipate course demand, inform seat planning, and reveal patterns in student progression that guide planning and decision-making. She has developed initiatives and courses that connect academic success, experiential learning, and career preparation, including the GEOS Tuesday academic and career development series, Foundations for GeoHokie Success, which supports student transition, belonging, and early exploration within the department and major, and Field Study Synthesis: Geoscience Career Success, which helps students synthesize experiential learning and translate it into professional narratives and career direction. She holds an M.S. in Counseling and Human Development from Radford University and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision at Virginia Tech

Professional Interests:
Holistic advising • Student belonging and mattering • Experiential learning integration • Advising systems design • Career pathway development • Student lifecycle and ecosystem approaches to student success