What’s New, What’s Next: Your Membership Unlocked

Explore the full potential of your toolkit in our series, What’s New, What’s Next: Your Membership Unlocked. These interactive sessions bridge the gap between content and practice, featuring real-time demos, expert-led navigation, and reflective activities to help you overcome hurdles. Whether you are a longtime member or just starting, you’ll gain insider strategies to streamline your workflow and maximize your professional impact. Join us to see how recent updates and upcoming features can solve your toughest leadership challenges—things like having difficult conversations or leading through change—in real time.

What’s New, What’s Next: Your Membership Unlocked 

Explore the full potential of your toolkit in our series, What’s New, What’s Next: Your Membership Unlocked. These interactive sessions bridge the gap between content and practice, featuring real-time demos, expert-led navigation, and reflective activities to help you overcome hurdles. Whether you are a longtime member or just starting, you’ll gain insider strategies to streamline your workflow and maximize your professional impact. Join us to see how recent updates and upcoming features can solve your toughest leadership challenges—things like having difficult conversations or leading through change—in real time. 

Fostering Collaboration and Building Strong Teams in Advancement 

To meet the evolving demands of advancement, shops must intentionally develop staff into connected, strategic partners who understand their role in the institution’s mission. Fostering Collaboration and Building Strong Teams in Advancement offers a deep dive into leadership growth and career development using the Five Paths to Leadership® Self-Assessment. You’ll gain a toolbox of proven practices and a peer network to build high-performing, unified teams. Through this Academic Impressions program, you will learn to empower leaders at every level to act as strategic collaborators rather than siloed managers. To help preserve a practical and interactive environment, attendance for this program is capped at 30 participants.  

Fostering a Student-Centered Campus

Across higher education, institutions are being called to demonstrate—not just state—a commitment to student success and belonging. While “student-centered” is a widely used phrase, it often lacks shared meaning or operational clarity at the senior leadership level. Too frequently, structures, policies, and services reflect institutional convenience rather than the lived needs and experiences of students. This two-day workshop is designed for senior leaders who shape campus culture, strategy, and systems. You’ll examine what it truly means to lead a student-centered institution, probe assumptions embedded in existing practices, and explore how leadership decisions—intended or not—affect student access, persistence, and retention. Rather than focusing on programmatic fixes, the workshop will introduce a framework that will lead to true structural change. Through case studies, facilitated dialogue, and applied learning, you’ll leave with an implementation plan for student-centeredness along with concrete next steps to advance this work within your own institutional context.

Advanced Supervision Certificate – October Cohort

Welcome to the October 2026 cohort of the Advanced Supervision Certificate. Our goal is to help you to develop your supervisor toolkit and grow in your confidence and ability to positively and effectively develop team members who can contribute to your institution’s goals and mission. Our offerings are based on the premise that the most important elements in a supervisor’s leadership and organizational development include understanding the best practices, taking space to practice and reflect, and taking part in a community to enhance and broaden your perspective.   As such, our supervision offerings combine written and video content, live practice sessions, a cohort experience, and a community of practice.    If you haven’t taken any supervisor training previously, we recommend that you start with the Supervision Certificate as a pre-requisite for this program. Learn more and register for the Supervision Certificate Program. 

Leading as a Department Chair

Department Chairs hold a unique and pivotal position in any academic institution, sitting at the intersection of faculty and administration. They are not just managers; they’re expected to be academic leaders who can navigate a complex and ever-changing higher ed landscape. However, many Chairs step into this role without formal leadership training, leaving them unprepared for the challenges of balancing competing interests, managing resources, and navigating the tension between being faculty and being a leader.   This self-directed program provides you as Chairs with a way to focus on your role as a leader. Whether you are new to your role, aspiring or tapped to become a Chair, or you’ve been a Chair for many years, this program will help you to develop a deeper sense of who you are as a leader, deliver and receive feedback in a professional way, manage conflict effectively, delegate with the intention to build the leadership capacity of faculty and staff in your department, and create intentionally designed meetings to improve the quality of the overall experience.

Leading as a Department Chair

Department Chairs hold a unique and pivotal position in any academic institution, sitting at the intersection of faculty and administration. They are not just managers; they’re expected to be academic leaders who can navigate a complex and ever-changing higher ed landscape. However, many Chairs step into this role without formal leadership training, leaving them unprepared for the challenges of balancing competing interests, managing resources, and navigating the tension between being faculty and being a leader.   This self-directed program provides you as Chairs with a way to focus on your role as a leader. Whether you are new to your role, aspiring or tapped to become a Chair, or you’ve been a Chair for many years, this program will help you to develop a deeper sense of who you are as a leader, deliver and receive feedback in a professional way, manage conflict effectively, delegate with the intention to build the leadership capacity of faculty and staff in your department, and create intentionally designed meetings to improve the quality of the overall experience.

Supervision Certificate Program – July 6 Cohort

Often in higher education, individuals move into a supervisory role without the necessary tools and skills to be successful. Particularly in today’s challenging environments, effective supervision is key to building an effective culture where each individual can contribute to team success. Join us online for a four-week cohort based program leveraging both asynchronous and synchronous learning specifically designed for higher education supervisors who are new to their roles, looking to deepen their skills, or for those who aspire to supervisor roles. Once you have completed the asynchronous modules of the course, you’ll receive your digital badge and certification. For the most comprehensive experience, we recommend you also attend the live sessions or watch recordings of them to learn some additional tips and skills in feedback and career growth.

Supervision in Advancement: Focused Strategies for Effective Leadership

Advancement supervisors are more critical than ever for building high-performing, collaborative teams that drive robust donor and constituent relationships. Join us for this workshop, where you’ll learn to adapt your leadership style using the Five Paths to Leadership® framework, empowering you to navigate both every day and high-pressure supervisory situations with greater clarity and purpose. We’ll emphasize the critical role of intentional supervision in shaping internal culture and enhancing external impact. Through advancement-specific scenarios and practical tools, you’ll explore how to lead effective meetings, conduct purposeful one-on-ones, and provide meaningful feedback that fosters team growth. Overall, you’ll leave with a deep understanding of a relationship-centered approach to supervision that strengthens both team dynamics and advancement outcomes.

Leading from the Middle: Essential Skills to Drive Success

Leading from the middle is a complex task. You must understand, communicate, and operationalize strategy while also being staying attuned to the needs and expectations of your supervisor, your team, and other partners with whom you collaborate.     Join other experienced middle and senior managers to explore such critical topics as leveraging your scope of influence, deepening your self-awareness, building effective relationships, and the intersection of agency and followership. We’ll use our leadership framework to guide you from personal mastery to interpersonal and team mastery, helping you to: