Sessions

This session focuses on the ways you can enhance your leadership, power, and well-being by choosing love as a leadership strategy. Leave the session inspired by your own leadership capacity and empowered to help others unleash their own leadership potential.

Students on campuses across the country are increasingly hesitant and fearful to engage with others about contentious issues, especially with those who disagree with them. Simultaneously, leaders are being called into the spotlight to explain, defend, or denounce student and administrative actions related to politicized issues and events. International conflicts and the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election are also intensifying polarization nationally. The confluence of these challenges has elevated the need for leaders to be equipped to proactively build cultures of civil discourse on their campuses. In this session, attendees will examine the larger societal forces shaping civil discourse on college campuses, examine successful models for campus dialogue, and explore the role of leaders in shaping discourse both on and off campus.

The considerable headwinds inherent in contemporary higher education often create conditions that thwart flourishing for leaders at every level. This interactive session will consider common energy “drains” and explore strategies for responding productively. Participants will reflect on strengths and gaps in both their internal and external resources and identify action steps for developing a values-aligned approach to more sustainable leadership practices.

As campuses work to animate their aspirations with philanthropy, intentional relationships, structures, and planning between academic leaders across the organization and advancement will be a crucial part of the solution. This session explores how higher education leaders can work in partnership with advancement to ensure that colleges and universities have the requisite resources to focus on our primary missions. This panel will offer key recommendations for building successful partnerships that contribute to broader institutional goals. The suggestions will be applicable in different institutional contexts and emphasize how resource raising is key to institutional survival and thriving.

In the face of an increasingly negative national narrative about the value of a college degree, higher education leaders across the country are working overtime to build trust across key constituencies – prospective students and families, local communities, donors, and even their own faculty and staff. The fact remains that trust is built between people, not between entities or organizations. To recover the public’s trust, we must first examine the state of trust in our campus environments and consider how leaders and colleagues can show up for each other most meaningfully. Using a practical framework, this session will explore the factors of trust that inform our professional and stakeholder relationships.