Institutes

Applications close March 31 | Starts July 24
Open educational resources (OER), such as textbooks freely available through an open license, help narrow performance gaps, reduce failure rates, and level the academic playing field. Through the yearlong online Institute on OER, participating teams gain the skills needed to design, launch, expand, and hasten their own campus OER plans for large-scale engagement and adoption. Teams interact with expert consultants and participate in regular webinars and planning sessions.

2023 Priority Deadline April 1 | Starts June 5
With a sharp focus on equal access to excellence in higher education, the Institute on General Education, Pedagogy, and Assessment helps campus leadership teams reimagine and redesign programming to advance student learning and assessment. Participants explore proven strategies to provide career-relevant experiences, integrate general education within majors, craft programs that link student learning with today’s pressing social issues, and accurately evaluate program efficacy.

2023 Priority Deadline April 3 | Starts July 18
Today’s college graduates must be able to integrate knowledge and skills, as well as apply them within real-world settings for work, life, and citizenship. AAC&U’s Institute on Engaged and Integrative Learning helps campus teams develop strategies and advance institutional-level efforts to embed engaged and integrative learning across student on and off-campus experiences. Teams will explore innovative approaches to community engagement, integrative learning, experiential learning, and global learning.

Applications close April 28 | Starts August 10
Through a focus on curricular and cocurricular alignment, defined learning and skill development, and high-impact experiences, campus teams will engage with experts from higher education and industry to advance curriculum-based projects that promote equity and student success through meaningful career preparation. The Institute’s approach to innovation emphasizes design-thinking, broad and inclusive interdisciplinary perspectives, collaboration across stakeholders, and systemic commitments to the equity that prepare students to seek purpose across an array of career paths.

Applications close May 19 | Starts July 18
In bringing people together across lines of religious difference, a campus serves as both a laboratory and a model for how diverse societies can thrive and as a launching pad for the next generation of leaders who can transform diversity into engaged and productive pluralism. The annual Institute on Teaching and Learning for Campus-wide Interfaith Excellence focuses on the integration of interfaith cooperation into campus life and on the development of civic interfaith leaders.

Applications closed
ePortfolios—digital repositories of student work—allow faculty and other educational professionals to help students organize, preserve the forms of, and reflect upon their learning. In this yearlong institute, participants discover how to best ideate, design, and implement ePortfolios according to their unique needs. Teams of administrators, educators, and student leaders develop and then actualize an ePortfolio strategy under the guidance of institute faculty, identifying and addressing challenges as they arise. This institute is ideal for any campus, state system, or consortium aiming to redesign learning for students using ePortfolios.

Applications closed
Through institutional self-assessment, campus visits, peer networking, and mentored support, the AAC&U Institute on Virtual Exchange/Collaborative Online International Learning (VE/COIL) helps higher education institutions develop the foundational knowledge and skills necessary to pursue sustainable VE/COIL partnerships.

Applications closed
Forward-looking institutions recognize the value of cultivating leadership capacity among STEM faculty and administrators. To this end, the PKAL STEM Leadership Institute empowers STEM faculty, principal investigators, and administrators to recognize their leadership strengths, navigate change politics, address conflicts, and restructure the institutional systems that limit America’s capacity for global competitiveness in STEM fields. Through experiential learning, reflection, and the simulation of diverse lived experiences, participants gain the skills and tools to embrace difference, initiate social change, and guide reform in undergraduate STEM education.

Registration closed
The changing demographic landscape of higher education demands that colleges and universities adapt more daring approaches to institutional change that are equally evidence-based and culturally responsive. This transformative event sensitizes STEM reformers to how institutional systems and structures disproportionately disadvantage STEM faculty, students of color, and other marginalized groups. It emphasizes accountability through critical questioning, critique, deep reflection, and introspection of self, department, and institution.

Applications closed
Research shows that students involved in high-impact practices (HIPs) enjoy higher levels of learning success. These evidence-based practices include service learning, undergraduate research, and internships—to name a few. AAC&U’s Institute on High-Impact Practices and Student Success helps campus teams refine and assess their HIPs, emphasizing quality, equity, and student engagement. Attendees participate in intentional reflection on institutional outcomes, develop comprehensive action plans, and have individualized consultations with HIPs faculty. The institute helps campus and system-level teams create sustainable student success goals and monitor progress toward achieving equity to improve educational outcomes for all students.

Applications closed
Colleges and universities have a unique opportunity to prepare the next generation of leaders to address enduring social challenges. Among the most urgent of these is confronting how racism and bias have shaped our nation’s communities and institutions, leaving deep wounds of distrust, discrimination, and division in their wake. AAC&U is partnering with higher education institutions to develop TRHT Campus Centers to prepare the next generation of strategic leaders and critical thinkers to promote racial healing and to catalyze efforts to address current inequities grounded in notions of a racial hierarchy. As a national, community-based initiative, the TRHT effort launched by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation seeks to address the historical and contemporary impacts of race and racism within our communities. Each TRHT Campus Center prioritizes expansive, community-based healing activities that seek to change collective community narratives and broaden the understanding of our diverse experiences.