Challenges confront higher education in virtually every part of the enterprise: funding, governance, teaching, technology, equity, outcomes, and purpose. It's obvious that many of these challenges will not go away any time soon; indeed, if anything, the number of challenges seems to be increasing. In the academic part of the system, critical challenges include helping under-prepared students, designing intrusive and effective advising, creating pathways that students understand, tracking and responding to student progress, creating engaging learning environments, assessing and increasing learning outcomes, designing a coherent general education curriculum, developing more contemporary majors, designing effective, early career planning, and a host of other issues. The campuses that survive and thrive will be those that innovate.
In our Academic Affairs Summer Meeting, we will continue the focus of the recent winter meeting on innovation in higher education. We're interested in what innovations are currently being tried on different campuses. Who is leading innovation and why are they doing it? What are the innovations being attempted? What innovations are successful? What are the obstacles to innovation? How do we build a culture of innovation?
We'll also have the broad array of other issues that we typically present in our academic affairs conferences, addressing prominent academic issues in the academy: faculty issues (hiring, professional development, academic freedom, contingent faculty), academic policies and practices (free speech, tenure, etc.), instructional innovation, and a variety of other academic issues. A core strand running through this conference will be a focus on student success, engaging participants in the recent work AASCU has undertaken thru Re-Imaging the First Year and the Frontier Set. Our conferences are deliberately eclectic, with a wide range of topics that appeal to the broad range of experiences and interests of our diverse set of participants.
We also use a variety of formats: presentations, poster sessions, small group discussions and other ways to engage participants in engaged, interactive activities. Our conferences are first and foremost learning events, where participants can gather ideas and interact with colleagues in a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere.
The continued success of our conference is built upon the many substantive and timely presentations our members offer about work on their own campuses. This summer we have added a poster session to expand the opportunities for shared learning within our meeting timeline. Submit your proposals here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DN3Y5JQ. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, April 24, 2019.
If you are the provost or CAO of an AASCU member institution, your registration fee is $695. All other representatives from your campus should pay the reduced registration fee (see below). This includes the provost-only program beginning on Friday afternoon (including dinner) and concludes mid-day on Saturday.
Provosts are encouraged to invite other individuals from their campuses (deans, associate provosts, student affairs representatives, faculty members, etc.) to attend the meeting. These individuals should pay the reduced registration fee of $595.
This registration fee includes the opening reception on Thursday, breakfast on Friday and Saturday, lunch on Friday, and the closing reception on Saturday.
The special conference rate is $219 for a single/double room plus 13.15% state and local taxes (current tax rate may change).
AASCU is pleased to partner with American Airlines to provide discount travel for all meeting attendees traveling to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International (MSP) and the St. Paul Downtown (STP) airports.
The discount can be booked on-line at www.aa.com for AA/AE flights only, without a ticketing charge, allow at least 1 business hour for AA.com loading. Use the Authorization Number 6779DY as the AA.com Promotion Code.
Specialized content for serving Provosts or Chief Academic Officers only (including interim or acting Provosts); begins on Friday afternoon with a Provost-only reception and meeting; continues on Saturday morning with Provost-focused sessions and a discussion forum; concludes at 12:00 pm on Saturday. All costs are included in the Provost fee for attendance.
If an individual must cancel their registration (or that of their guest), they will receive a full refund if the cancellation is received before 5p.m. EST on Monday, July 8, 2019. There will be a $200 cancellation fee after July 9. Special circumstances will be handled on a case-by-case basis.