Event Category: Workshop

Essential Leadership Skills for Deans

Leading as an academic Dean demands a specific and often diverse skillset that requires you to inspire those above, across, and below you in the organizational structure. If that’s not complex enough, you’re doing this work in the context of frequent leadership transitions, evolving student needs, increasing competitive pressures, scarce resources, and the highest levels of burnout seen in decades. It quickly becomes clear that being a leader in today’s current higher education environment can test even the most seasoned of leaders. Join us for this highly interactive in-person conference to learn new strategies and approaches for how to address some of the most common challenges you’re currently facing as a Dean. Special focus will be given to how to create a unit culture that makes for a great place to work, and with the help of our expert speaker panel and a network of other deans, you will have the time, space, and support to discuss how to: Through a variety of group activities and discussions, you’ll share your perspective on how to successfully navigate your role, and you’ll also walk away with useful insights from other academic deans, as well.

The Fundamentals of Leadership for New or Aspiring Leaders in Higher Education

New leaders often find themselves learning on the go—and often at the expense of intentional reflection of their leadership strengths, journey, or skill development. This leadership conference, facilitated by experienced higher education leaders, provides you with a set of tools for applying the key tenets of successful and equitable leadership. You’ll practice how to approach difficult and complex conversations through healthy and constructive dialogue so that you can increase trust, motivation, and engagement within your team. You will also gain the confidence and skills needed to become a more effective leader in higher education, rooted in both a deeper awareness of your core purpose as a leader and in your commitment to equity. Highlights of the program include:

Transitioning Leadership Annual Donors into Major Donors

To shift the mindset of a leadership annual donor into that of a major donor is a task that requires you to go beyond just knowing their capacity; you must also understand what the donor wants to see their gift accomplish, and how to align that specific desire with your institutional needs. This requires knowing the effectiveness of each component of your leadership giving program and how to best manage and develop your leadership annual donors. Join us at this in-person conference to learn portfolio management and stewardship techniques to successfully transition leadership annual donors into major gift prospects. You will learn how to:

Building an In-House Leadership Development Program in Higher Education

Leadership development has emerged as one of the most important priorities for institutions today. The pandemic revealed the strength or weakness of an institution’s leadership—at all levels—while the resulting Great Resignation starkly revealed the depth or shallowness of an institution’s leadership bench. Most institutions are now investing heavily in building leadership programs, but they are all approaching it differently. Academic Impressions has helped more institutions to develop in-house leadership programs than any other organization in higher education, and in this unique two-day event, we’ll share what we’ve learned over 15 years of developing leaders and supporting in-house programs. Whether you are simply dipping your toe in the leadership space for the first time, or you’ve run a successful cohort-based program for years, we’ll share a wealth of resources, methods, and approaches that you can implement right away to develop the next generation of leaders at your institution.

Chief Strategy Officer Roundtable: A Cohort-Based Series for VPs of Strategy

Chief Strategy Officers tend to have no peers at their institutions. Charged with driving the university’s strategic plan forward and working across stakeholders to ensure proper execution, they play critically important roles on campus. This means that they simultaneously must be data-informed and big picture-oriented, ensuring alignment with institutional mission and vision, and they must also possess the leadership skills necessary to influence culture, develop talent, and create alignment across the cabinet, President, and Board. Given the singularity of this role, Chief Strategy Officers & VPs of Strategy need the ongoing support and community that can only be provided by others serving in a similar capacity. In this roundtable series, you can join a group of other Chief Strategy Officers across higher education to discuss the common challenges you face, get support from experienced professionals, and build your professional and personal network. You will: To preserve an intimate and productive experience, this roundtable will be capped at 12 attendees. In-Person and Virtual Sessions To facilitate community and trust-building among the cohort from the start, the roundtable will kick off with a full-day in-person strategy session in Denver, Colorado on Friday, October 6. Six weekly, hour-long virtual sessions will follow, running […]

Provost Summit: Leading for Innovation and Growth

In today’s rapidly changing world, innovation has become a critical driver of success for individual leaders and their organizations. However, fostering a culture of innovation is not easy—especially in academia, where traditions and hierarchy often prevail. This unique event aims to bring Provosts together to connect with peers, develop their own leadership, and learn proven strategies for fostering an innovative mindset and culture at their institutions. Participants will learn about key elements of an innovative culture such as openness, experimentation, collaboration, and risk-taking and hear translatable examples of how other institutions have successfully cultivated them, such as: The Summit is designed to be interactive and engaging, with plenty of opportunities for discussion, reflection, and practical exercises. You’ll leave with an expanded network of other Provosts across the nation who are equally invested in thinking outside the box to move their institutions forward.

Alumni Boards: Strengthen Your Strategy and Grow Engagement

Alumni boards can assist an institution to achieve strategic priorities, strengthen affinity, and motivate giving. Supporting your board in serving the institution and offering a meaningful volunteer experience starts with having a clear direction regarding your board’s structure, culture, and purpose. Join us for this two-day conference, where you will learn how you can increase the effectiveness of your alumni board and its members’ involvement. Our expert instructors will share practical tips and advice on how you can create a more effective board, including: You are encouraged to come to the conference with copies of your board’s bylaws or other policies and should come prepared to discuss specific challenges with, or current areas of focus for, your board.

Fundraising for Presidents Institute

With significant talent shortages in fundraising, it’s crucial that you manage your resources strategically and effectively to get the most out of your advancement buck—and to ensure that focus is maintained throughout presidential fundraising. Spending time with the right donors and understanding what to ask for—and when—can be the key to being a successful fundraiser. As president, by centering your focus on a multi-year strategic intent behind your fundraising efforts, you can make strides toward institutional development goals with the support of advancement leadership, the chair of your board, and the key relationships you cultivate with board members and top donors. Additionally, by knowing where you can be most effective in the solicitation cycle and how you can prioritize outreach efforts while also being an active steward of donor opportunities, you will leave this event with the depth of knowledge it takes to be a successful fundraiser as president. Building on key lessons from his book, Fundraising for Presidents: A Guide, Jim Langley will prepare presidents to be strategically incorporated into fundraising activities in today’s post-COVID landscape by ensuring that focus is maintained, and that you get the most out of your advancement resources by continuing to innovate even when fundraising […]

A Transformative Approach to Student Success Initiatives

Strategic plans drive the institutional vision and should set the agenda and goals for student success. But institutions often find that a new strategic plan gets left on the shelf after its completion, instead. Academic and student success leaders at the institution do not always know how to move those goals forward and are hindered by a fear of failure and a lack of creativity. And all too often, faculty and staff working directly with students do not understand how their roles contribute to the overarching student success goals of their institutions. Join us for this workshop to help you refine your student success goals. Our expert facilitators will help you to brainstorm what you do well, what you need to improve, and what’s not going well with respect to student success. You will then have the opportunity to work with colleagues from across the country on developing innovative solutions to the challenges you face. You will leave the workshop with some concrete steps to help you move forward big ideas on your campus. You will also learn a new process for workshopping problems and solutions to take back to your teams.

Navigating the Unpredictable: Strategies for Simplifying Complexity and Energizing Your Team

Shifts in higher education are happening faster and in increasingly unpredictable ways. Each day as leaders, we are challenged by increasingly politicized environments, the need to manage across silos, and the requirement to be as efficient as possible with scarce resources. These complex conditions cannot be managed away; they require instead that we lead through them. But this can be difficult to do as we juggle competing priorities, students and staff seeking increased flexibility, and a rapidly changing workforce. Join us for this two-day conference to learn how to increase your effectiveness as a leader and improve your personal satisfaction by focusing on three key themes: During the conference, you will gain tangible tools to increase your self-awareness and develop a common language of leadership to use within multi-functional teams. We will also introduce a four-step framework that will help you to recognize when and how various leadership tensions show up in your everyday practice, how they work together, and how to adjust your mindset to lead through them effectively. Gain Insight into Your Unique Leadership Style As a participant in this conference, you will have the chance to take Academic Impressions’ The Five Paths to Leadership℠ Self-Assessment, which provides […]

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