Advancing Public Trust Summit

Welcome

Kathryn Enke
Vice President for Leadership and Strategy, AAC&U

Lynn Pasquerella
President, AAC&U

Anchoring Institutions in Community: Building Trust from the Ground Up

Nancy Cantor
President, Hunter College of the City University of New York

A key opportunity to advance public trust involves expanding the role of higher education institutions as anchor institutions in and of our local communities, from neighborhoods close by to regional geographies.  Collaborating with community-based organizations, cultural institutions, public schools, public agencies, and local employers, to name a few potential sector partners, addressing pressing challenges from workforce development to environmental justice to educational opportunity, health equity, public safety and more, serves not only as a platform for trust-building, but also as a signature of social impact. Building sustainable collaborative tables to share the voices of scholars, students, staff and community members, solidifies that trust, demonstrating that higher education is here to stay, here to listen, here to learn, and here to work toward shared goals. Meanwhile, building that two-way street of engagement opens our institutions to welcome new talent – as future students, faculty, staff, employers, and partners – demonstrating the mutual benefits of working on the ground. Living fully into the mission of anchor institutions requires both innovation within our institutions and broad and sustained community-engaged effort; the results then resonate well beyond the local.

Welcome

Felicia Fullilove
Associate Director, Advancing Public Trust in Higher Education, AAC&U

Trustworthiness in Higher Education: Rebuilding Relationships to Accelerate Impact

Amber Banks
Founder and CEO, Center for Trust and Transformation; Founder, Trust Compass Studio

AAC&U's Trust Agenda makes an important claim: public trust is not built through communications alone, but through demonstrated trustworthiness. That claim raises a natural next question: trustworthy to whom, and demonstrated how? We know that trust is dynamic. It is multifaceted and experiential, shaped by who we are and what we have experienced. Drawing on her Trust Compass framework and decades supporting institutions and networks to build and repair trust, Amber Banks offers a clearer way to see trust as it is shaped by identity, context, values, and power dynamics. She will unpack how different stakeholders (students, faculty, staff, and the broader public) often need entirely different strategies to rebuild trust and demonstrate trustworthiness. Leaders will leave with evidence-based, practical ways to hold a range of perspectives without losing focus, so they can rebuild the relationships needed to uphold their institution's mission and drive impact.

APT Leadership Institute Participants: AAC&U's Trust Agenda

Kathryn Enke
Vice President for Leadership and Strategy, AAC&U

Jeremy C. Young
Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives, AAC&U

The Trust Agenda offers campus leaders a framework for strengthening institutions’ trustworthiness, student-centered mission, and connections with the communities they serve. It presents five recommendations for action and offers a practical approach that campus leaders can adapt to their own institutional context. During this session, two of the report’s authors will discuss the findings and recommendations. Participants will leave with strategies to strengthen public trust through innovation, community engagement, inclusive excellence, clearer communications, and collaborative defense strategies.

APT Coalition Participants: Shared Agenda, Values Statement, Public Trust Definition Feedback, and Coalition Goals

Annmarie Caño
Senior Fellow, AAC&U 

Beyond the Message: Higher Education Policy, Practice, and the Future of Public Trust

Kaleb Briscoe
Associate Professor of Adult and Higher Education, University of Oklahoma

Public confidence in higher education has declined markedly in recent years, and state and federal policy has become an increasingly consequential factor in that trajectory. Prevailing responses to this decline often emphasize communication strategy and reputation management, yet such approaches leave unexamined the mechanisms through which trust is actually formed. This plenary advances the argument that institutional legitimacy is constituted less by public messaging than by the ways in which policy is interpreted, operationalized, and experienced within colleges and universities.

Drawing on scholarship in higher education policy implementation and organizational legitimacy, the session examines the relationship between external policy mandates, institutional practice, and public trust. Particular attention is given to how policy decisions shape the daily experiences of students, faculty, and staff, and how those experiences, in turn, inform broader perceptions of institutional credibility and accountability. The session also considers the conditions under which implementation strengthens or erodes trust, including questions of transparency, consistency, and institutional responsibility.

Opportunities to learn more about colleges, universities, and higher education organizations building trust through specific, replicable strategies.

1. Accelerating Innovation: Revising Tenure and Promotion Guidelines to Validate Public-Facing Scholarship

Rich G. Carter
Professor of Chemistry and Faculty Lead for Innovation Excellence, Office of Research, Oregon State University

Liz Hutchison
Professor of History and Regents’ Professor in Arts and Sciences, University of New Mexico

Recognized barriers to innovation in colleges and universities has long included institutions' reliance on outdated standards for academic promotion.  While recent decades have witnessed the transformation of graduate training, faculty hiring, and disciplinary research practices, professional and institutional metrics for scholarly achievement - as well as academic teaching and service - have not evolved at a similar pace. This panel will present two different initiatives to reform the academic incentive structure in ways that reward innovative scholarly practices, such as university-industry partnerships, digital humanities scholarship, and research with broader social impacts. Bringing together Rich Carter's leadership of the NSF-funded Promotion & Tenure Innovation & Entrepreneurship project and Liz Hutchison's work to revise the History promotion guidelines at the University of New Mexico, the panel will invite audience reflections on opportunities and challenges academics face in reforming promotion and tenure standards at their institutions.

2. Prioritizing Community Engagement: Providing Trustworthy, Professional Local News Coverage through the Center for Community News

Meg Little Reilly
Managing Director of the Center for Community News, University of Vermont

The Center for Community News at the University of Vermont is growing student-powered community newsrooms at colleges across the country. These newsrooms work in partnership with trusted community media outlets, addressing two urgent challenges at once: providing college students of every major with opportunities to do meaningful civic work before graduation and strengthening America's information ecosystem. In this discussion, the presenter will outline how schools of every size and type weave this approach into their offerings.

3. Recommitting to Inclusive Excellence: Aligning Program Standards and Professional Skills to Restore Trust in Higher Education

Michelle Brooks
Assistant Director of Higher Education, American Chemical Society

Student success in chemistry is amplified when undergraduate programs purposefully create an environment where all students are included and feel that they belong. The latest program guidelines for the American Chemical Society (ACS) Approval Program are anchored in our core values of inclusion and belonging and support students, faculty, and staff in bachelor's degree granting chemistry programs in the United States. Beyond rigorous technical preparation, these revised guidelines ensure that graduates are trained in essential professional skills—communication, collaboration, teamwork, and professional ethics, all done within accessible learning environments. By embedding the skill development into formal accreditation frameworks that provide accessible education to all students, we demonstrate a measurable commitment to student success that can address public skepticism in the value of higher education and possibly restore societal trust in the transformative value of a university degree.

4. Telling a Clearer Story: Effectively Communicating the Value of Higher Education to Legislative Audiences

Susan Balter-Reitz
Professor of Communication, Montana State University Billings

Michael Lane Bruner
Retired Professor of Communication Studies and Affiliate Professor of Public Policy, Georgia State University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Participants in this workshop will learn how to navigate diverse legislative environments to defend the value of their institution and higher education broadly. This hands-on workshop will provide participants with tools to analyze their specific legislative environments and strategies for engaging in advocacy within the constraints of those environments.

5. Mission-Centered Coordination: Lessons from Tribal Colleges on Trust, Mission, and Collective Action

Ahniwake Rose
President and CEO, American Indian Higher Education Consortium

For more than 50 years, Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) have worked collectively through the American Indian Higher Education Consortium while maintaining distinct institutional missions, governance structures, and responsibilities to the Tribal Nations and communities they serve. This session will explore how TCUs have built a model of collective action rooted in mission, relationships, and shared priorities, without requiring institutional uniformity. It will also consider the distinct meanings of trust in Tribal higher education, including the trust institutions earn from their communities and the federal trust responsibility to Tribal Nations. Drawing on the experience of TCUs and AIHEC, the session will examine how institutions can coordinate around common interests, protect mission and institutional autonomy, and build the relationships and structures necessary for collective action. Participants will be invited to consider how these lessons might inform trust-building and mission-centered coordination within their own institutions and networks.

APT Leadership Institute Participants: Team Action Planning with Mentors

Kathryn Enke
Vice President for Leadership and Strategy, AAC&U 

APT Coalition Participants: Working Group Presentations and Action Planning

Felicia Fullilove
Associate Director, AAC&U 

Jeremy C. Young
Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives, AAC&U

Philanthropic Perspectives on the Problem of Public Trust

Moderator: Dina Blum
Former Senior Program Officer, National Education Strategy, Raikes Foundation

Panelists

Angela Bednarek
Director, Scientific Advancement, The Pew Charitable Trusts

Zakiya Smith Ellis
Principal Consultant, EducationCounsel

Reuben C. Kapp
Program Officer, The Kresge Foundation

Questions of public trust have become ubiquitous in national conversations about higher education, and they are inextricably linked to issues of affordability, value, student success, and institutional autonomy, as well as trust in democratic institutions more generally. This closing panel will bring together leaders from the philanthropy and strategic philanthropy spaces who have a broad perspective on how the problem of trust shapes cutting-edge work across institutions and sectors. They will draw on this deep knowledge of trust and higher education to discuss productive next steps for public trust work on campuses, in communities, in regional and national associations, and in civil society more broadly.

Closing

Jeremy C. Young
Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives, AAC&U