Course Category: Free for All-Inclusive Members

Customer Service Skills Training: Certification for Higher Education Professionals

Customer Service Skills Training: Certification for Higher Education Professionals November 1 – 3, 2023 Gain the knowledge and skills you need to provide high-quality customer service in the higher education environment. Welcome to your course page for your virtual conference! We’ll be adding links to meeting rooms, schedules, social media, and course materials as they become available. Make sure to check back as it gets closer to your conference! EVENT INFORMATION Check back soon for links! ENSURE YOUR TECHNOLOGY IS READY This workshop is intentionally designed to allow for maximum learning, connections, and engagement. We advise the following in order to participate fully: Audio & Visual Needs

Creativity Without Limits: a 5 Day Program to Build and Strengthen Your Creative Muscles

Are you looking to spark your creative energy and explore new ways to develop ideas? Look no further, this 5 day program offers a unique opportunity to tap into your creative potential and unlock your imagination.   You’ll begin a journey to build and strengthen your creative muscles by participating in carefully curated activities that are designed to be fun, inspiring, and accessible to all skill levels. These activities are designed for attendees to:    How it Works For 5 days, you will get a daily email with a bite-sized video and directions for the activity. The activities range from options that can be completed quickly to others that will require that you set aside time each day (roughly 30 minutes). Don’t miss the opportunity to integrate professional development into your daily routine and to strengthen your understanding of the benefits of design thinking in your work.

5 Ways to Take Agency of Your Learning as a Leader

Higher education has grown more complex in recent years as it faces declining enrollments, contraction of the workforce, and high levels of burnout. As a leader, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and unsure of how to move forward. Because of this, the need to learn new approaches and perspectives to help you solve these tough problems has never been so high. However, given your competing priorities, you may feel guilty or feel that you lack the time to focus on your professional development. Perhaps you’re not certain of how to apply your learning in meaningful ways throughout the day. Too many times, higher ed leaders accept the idea that the work of their unit must come before their own learning and development. But it doesn’t have to be that way.   This video course is designed for aspiring and current leaders of any/all experience levels and it includes five short lessons that provide you with simple yet impactful actions you can take—every day—to help you advance your learning and leadership development. If you feel like everything around you is out of control, this video course will help you to grow your confidence and agency in order to feel more connected to […]

Navigating Higher Education Politics as Mid-Career Faculty: A Time for Discussion

As faculty move through the mid-career stage, they can face additional career hurdles and possibilities. Higher education feels more unstable than ever, with challenges from state legislatures to funding and tenure, struggles with student engagement and mental health, and greater numbers of faculty and staff leaving for jobs outside universities. Faculty who are able to respond to these challenges with flexibility and by generating connections on their campuses can see them as opportunities, and thus are better able to make career decisions intentionally. Join us for a one-hour discussion facilitated by Dr. Edmund Acevedo to consider what it takes to successfully navigate the politics of higher education at the mid-career stage. You will have the chance to:

Supervising Multigenerational Teams: Building Understanding to Support Success

Your team may have up to five generations working together, a phenomenon that is unique to our time in history. This generational diversity makes our teams stronger and more ready to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student population. To leverage the full strength that comes from this generational diversity, however, supervisors must first understand the value of and know how to appreciate the unique styles and preferences of each team member.   Join our facilitator and your peers across the country to share best practices and experiences for increasing all of our understanding on successfully supervising multigenerational teams. You will come away from the training with the following:  

Have It Your Way (or Not): Customer Service Across Generations

A college community has perhaps the most generationally diverse members of any organization. From Baby Boomers and Generation X to Millennials and Gen Z, today’s students and employees alike co-navigate university systems with vastly different expectations of how they like to be treated as customers. These varying preferences have great impact on the campus culture as a whole, as well as on the diverse knowledge and skills service providers need in order to deliver great experiences for all. This virtual training will provide you with a greater awareness of the varying preferences for customer service that exist for employees and students in college and university communities, as well as a look at how service providers can modify styles to meet expectations and enhance the university experience across generations.

World War Z? The Impact of Multiple Generations on Campus

With more generations in the workplace than ever before, there is no shortage of jokes, social media flurry, and casual speculation about the Millennials in your team meeting or the Boomer down the hall. Interestingly, while we love to discuss these topics, very few people actually know what their differences are beyond vague stereotypes like “work ethic” and “quiet quitting.” Many of these conversations also lack the nuance that includes a judgement-free understanding of why the generations are different. This session will demystify the strengths and weaknesses of each generation, confirm that your favorite 15-year-old TikTok influencer is not a millennial, and provide you with information that you can use to navigate the varying work styles, expectations, and communication patterns that you encounter across generations in your everyday context.

Success Managing a Hybrid Workforce

While many supervisors ‘got by’ in managing a hybrid workforce when the pandemic necessitated it, it is now a strategic recruitment and retention tool for many institutions, and frankly, it is here to stay. Despite this, training on how to manage hybrid teams successfully is woefully lacking. If we fail to learn how to best supervise our hybrid teams, we risk a lack of productivity, retention issues, and disengagement. Join our expert facilitator and your peers from across the country to share lessons learned, common challenges, and proven solutions. This virtual training will provide you with:

Connecting Values to the Gift: Strategies to Incorporate Families into Your Fundraising Goals

The donor’s legacy and philanthropic goals need to be carried on through their gift to your institution. Before a formal proposal is presented, or prior to a meeting that focuses on outlining the gift agreement, you need to connect the donor family’s values to your institutional goals. This process begins by aligning family engagement strategies into your institutional fundraising goals. Join us in this third installment of our Family Giving Series to potentially unlock millions of dollars in giving by building upon your approach to cultivation and stewardship with your most loyal and engaged families. By drilling into the core value of what a family holds dear, you will be able to continue deep philanthropic partnerships with donor families for generations to come.

Equipping Gift Officers to Facilitate Conversations Among Multi-Generational Families

The exercise of facilitating philanthropic conversations around values with the families you engage with is essential for the long-term philanthropic viability of your institution. However, gift officers are often not trained for this unique approach to fundraising that focuses on the family. Instead, they may often feel a natural hesitation to insert themselves into these intimate conversations—especially when there are unknowns involved, so as a result they end up forgoing relationship–building among multiple generations of the same family.    Equipping a gift officer with the knowledge of why this approach is important—and not extraneous work—can lead to more creative and meaningful gifts, trusted relationships, and a wider variety of natural opportunities for follow-up.  Join us in this second training within a three-part Family Giving Series to learn how to navigate the different perspectives and unique goals among a multi-generational family by helping them align their values to benefit your institution and increase philanthropic engagement. 

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