As a faculty member in the First Year of Studies (FYS), Swanke has a number of responsibilities beyond providing one-on-one advising to her students. These activities are meant to enhance the experience of Notre Dame undergraduates as well as the practice of academic advising more generally.

They currently include:

• Pursuing research for her project “How Minority Students’ Identities Affect Their Academic Success and Wellbeing”
• Conceptualizing and analyzing first-year data to measure student learning and retention in major fields for the Student Learning Task Force, which has been charged with evaluating how FYS can better assist students who are less academically prepared for math and science courses at Notre Dame
• Designing, planning, and assessing the Sorting Ceremony component of the FYS ND Ignite initiative
• Teaching “Writing and Rhetoric” for the University Writing Program
• Collaborating with the Center for Social Concerns on research for two Oxford University Press book projects, Poverty/Privilege: A Reader for Writers (2015) and Good Writing (forthcoming 2017)