Event Category: Workshop

Essential Leadership Skills for Department Chairs 

Leading as an academic department chair is a challenging role, requiring the navigation of competing priorities, resource constraints, and an evolving higher education landscape. This two-day, in-person workshop is designed to equip department chairs with practical strategies to lead effectively. On day one, participants will reflect on their leadership approach, focusing on enhancing influence, engagement, and collaboration. Day two will address managing conflict, offering tools and techniques to handle challenging situations with confidence and ease. 

Essential Leadership Skills for Department Chairs 

Leading as an academic department chair is difficult under the best of circumstances. You must balance the competing interests of faculty and administration and stretch limited resources, all while maintaining your own scholarship and teaching loads. Add to this the uncertainty and complexity of leading through an ever-changing higher ed landscape, and it becomes clear that the current environment can test even the most seasoned leaders.  Join us in person for this essential two-day conference designed specifically to help academic department chairs discover or reconnect with the most effective ways to lead in a variety of situations and circumstances. On day one, you’ll begin by reflecting on your approach to leadership, where you’ll explore ways to enhance your overall leadership effectiveness. You’ll also examine how your position of influence can support and enable the engagement, collaboration, and, ultimately, the success of your faculty and staff. The focus for day two will be to explore one of the trickiest topics a leader must face—conflict—where you’ll practice tools and strategies that will allow you to navigate that conflict with greater confidence and ease.  To preserve an intimate and productive experience, this conference is capped at 30 attendees. 

Developing a Comprehensive Retention Plan 

Join us for this longstanding, must-attend conference to develop a campus-wide retention plan that ties your mission, data, and programming together in a unified approach. Our expert speakers will share their latest insights as we continue to navigate the effects of the pandemic and changing student demographics. Whether you have a retention plan already in place or are just getting started, during this conference you will outline and build an improved retention plan under the guidance of our experts.   You will leave the conference with the ability to approach retention holistically by:  

Optimizing Your Fundraising Strategy: A Summit for Presidents and Advancement Vice Presidents

As a president, you play a critical role in creating the institutional conditions that attract significant and sustained philanthropic investments. Some of the questions you may be asking as you seek to define your unique institutional narrative for donors are:  It’s easiest to answer these questions when you have established a clear delineation of responsibilities with other key leaders at your institution, so that you can work toward achieving both long-term and short-term advancement objectives even in the face of competing, persistent responsibilities.  Join us at this summit with your board chair and chief advancement officer to understand how changing philanthropic realities are impacting your alumni and donor engagement. You will learn how to use this information to articulate priorities that resonate with donors, improve your interactions with them, and engage your campus community in generating projects that solve critical problems—and in which philanthropically inclined donors will be keen to invest.  Whether you, your board chair, or your chief advancement officer are new to your roles, or whether you are an established team thinking about developing an institutional strategic plan or comprehensive campaign, this summit will give you the tools to optimize your fundraising potential and create a lasting philanthropic […]

Fundraising for Deans and Academic Leaders 

As a dean, you hold numerous responsibilities, and fundraising is likely a critical part of your portfolio. You are probably also finding the philanthropic landscape more competitive than ever, as donors are becoming more selective with their giving. To be a successful fundraiser, it is important to understand how to align your interests with those of donors seeking to make significant societal differences.  Join us for this one-and-a-half-day interactive conference, led by renowned university advancement consultant Jim Langley. Jim will help you to learn how to more effectively listen to prospective donors and align their personal values with the goals of your academic unit. Through group discussions and activities, you will:  Join us at this conference to unlock new philanthropic strategies within your academic unit! 

Customer Service Skills Training: Certification for Higher Education Professionals

Instilling a culture of service excellence at all levels of an institution is more important than ever. It creates a sense of community amongst faculty, staff, and students, which makes your campus a great place to be. Join us for this in-person conference where you will start taking steps to create or improve the culture of customer service in your unit. Whether you’re a frontline staff member wanting to make a positive difference with customers directly or a team leader trying to change the service culture in your unit, you’ll benefit from this conference as you: About the CertificationAcademic Impressions is the only provider of customer service certification in the higher education industry. Whether you’re seeking certification for yourself, or you want to get your entire team certified, you’ll be setting yourself apart from the rest. Being certified in customer service means that you’re the gold standard in service excellence, which improves your institution’s reputation and instills confidence in students and parents alike. To obtain the certification, you or your team will need to attend the conference and complete an online exam post-conference. 

Maximize the Success of Your Next Campaign: A Conference for Campaign Leaders

As the campaign leader, you must be thoughtful and organized in your approach to campaign planning to pull off this large-scale initiative for your campus community. This front-end planning phase requires you to evaluate the feasibility of your campaign, create the infrastructure of support, ensure buy-in and commitment from critical stakeholders, prepare your staff, and garner volunteer leaders, to name a few. Historically, you may have felt pressure to skip some of these steps since this work takes a lot of time and effort. However, in today’s competitive fundraising landscape, that is no longer an option.  In this conference, we’ve designed an experience where you, as a campaign leader, get to take a deep dive into preparing the front-end planning of your next campaign. You will learn all the critical components of this analysis, including:  This comprehensive two-day conference will not only give you the opportunity to zoom out and see the big picture of what a front-end campaign analysis entails, you will also walk away with practical tools, strategies, and resources that you can use right away in your planning efforts.  Our content has been carefully curated by our expert panel, who all offer extensive years of overseeing campaigns […]

Maximize the Success of Your Next Campaign: A Workshop for Campaign Leaders

As a campaign leader, you may have felt pressure to skip some of the front-end planning necessary to evaluate the feasibility of your campaign, create the infrastructure of support, ensure buy-in and commitment from critical stakeholders, prepare your staff, and garner volunteer leaders.  However, in today’s competitive fundraising landscape, that is no longer an option.  In this comprehensive two-day workshop, our expert panel, whose members all offer extensive years of overseeing campaigns large and small at campuses of varying sizes, will take you on a deep dive into preparing the front-end planning of your next campaign. You will zoom out to see the full scope of what a front-end campaign analysis entails and gain practical tools and resources on the following topics.  

Intentional and Strategic Management of Alumni Volunteers

Alumni volunteers are valuable to institutions in both their service and giving power, as they tend to give 10 times more than non-volunteers over their lifetimes. Their generous contributions of both time and treasure are often indispensable to institutions, and they can play a pivotal role in fostering a culture of philanthropy for your campus community.  However crucial their efforts are in advancement shops, managing volunteers also poses unique challenges. First, it can be difficult, at times, to manage people who are not officially employed by the institution and who have their own motivations. Secondly, it’s an ambitious undertaking to align volunteer efforts with the mission of the institution while also creating a cohesive experience across different types of volunteers to ensure that everyone is working towards a shared goal.  For volunteer managers like yourself, you are likely aware of the volunteer engagement cycle, which includes six important phases: planning, recruiting, onboarding/training, managing relationships/information, evaluating, and recognizing your volunteers. Our three-day conference is specifically designed for volunteer managers in higher education who want practical takeaways to help them to intentionally and strategically manage volunteers throughout the six phases of the volunteer engagement cycle. This hands-on conference will prepare you to […]

Intentional and Strategic Management of Alumni Volunteers

Alumni volunteers are valuable to institutions in both their service and their giving power, as they tend to give 10 times more than non-volunteers over their lifetimes. Yet, however crucial their efforts are in advancement shops, managing volunteers also poses unique challenges—like dealing with volunteer motivations and aligning volunteer efforts with your mission.  Our three-day workshop is specifically designed for volunteer managers in higher education who want practical takeaways to help them to intentionally and strategically manage volunteers throughout the six phases of the volunteer engagement cycle, covering:   This hands-on workshop will prepare you to return to your campus with a comprehensive toolkit, strategy, and a new level of intention when working with your volunteers. 

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