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Live Events

Faculty Mentorship: Incorporating Inclusive Practices to Foster Faculty Success

Faculty mentorship has proven to be a key factor in faculty success, as it increases research productivity, improves career satisfaction, and plays a crucial role in retaining faculty. Mentorship is especially important for historically underrepresented faculty, who face more barriers to career advancement in the academy than their white male cisgender peers. But knowing how to establish high-quality mentorship programs and how to effectively mentor across differences can be difficult. How can you set up meaningful mentor relationships that acknowledge and center issues of power and privilege across race, gender, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, and generational differences? This conference is designed to help both current faculty mentors and those who oversee faculty mentoring programs to develop better and more inclusive mentoring practices. Inclusive mentorship creates a dynamic where mentor and mentee can dialogue across differences and connect in a mutually beneficial relationship. In this virtual conference, you will gain practical strategies to help you:

Recognizing & Resisting Imposter Syndrome: A Discussion Series

The competitiveness, individualism, and emphasis on expertise in higher education creates an environment ripe for imposter syndrome, where people across roles and responsibilities feel as if they are not “enough” or ever “doing enough.” In this discussion series, you will learn how imposter syndrome operates, both institutionally and psychologically, to keep you from contributing your best self to the world. Using insights from recent research on imposter syndrome and focused reflection questions, our leadership coach, Jennifer Askey, will help you see through your own imposter syndrome and identify strategies for managing it in your day-to-day life. Each discussion in the series will feature research and/or a unique case study to guide the conversation. You can join all three discussions or attend only one, as preferred.

Women’s Leadership Success in Higher Education

Are you looking to take the next step in leadership but aren’t sure where to start? What strengths do you have that can help you lead with excellence? Would you like to connect with other women leaders in higher education for shared learning and support? Please join us for this powerful two-day leadership conference and experience. With this event, you will have opportunities to build a valuable affinity network with your peers that can provide mentorship and guidance as you move forward with your goals afterward. In addition, you will be able to take our Five Paths to Leadership℠ Self-Assessment before the conference at no additional charge. This assessment will help you to understand ways of achieving greater balance among five forms of intelligence in order to improve your overall effectiveness as a leader. You will actively use the results of this assessment during the first session.

Strategies for Campaign Planning and Public Launch

Due to popularity, this event has been moved to a larger venue 1 mile away from the original location. The event will now take place at the Denver Marriott Tech Center. Please see the Location header below for more details. The most critical phases of a successful campaign are the preparation leading up to the public launch, the launch itself, and the immediate road show that ensues. To pull off such a large-scale initiative, you want a cohesive culture of philanthropy thriving on your campus, a thoroughly thought-out marketing and communications strategy, committed volunteers, and significant progress on your fundraising goals. None of this comes easily, however. With challenges such as leadership and staff transitions, economic or societal uncertainty, or even negative publicity, you must be prepared to adjust and pivot where needed to continue down your planned path to campaign success. Join us to learn in-depth strategies and solutions covering:

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.

Customer Service Skills Training: Certification for Higher Education Professionals

As competition in higher education intensifies, so do the appetites of prospective students for institutions that provide the best education and experience for their tuition dollars. Instilling a culture of service excellence at all levels of an institution can directly enhance enrollment and improve student retention. The COVID-19 pandemic has had an undeniable impact on both the student and employee experience. And with the pending enrollment cliff, institutions will need to retain students at a higher rate, making service excellence more important than ever before. Join us for this virtual learning experience developed for higher education frontline customer service professionals and those who supervise them. Through interactive and small-group activities, you will dive into: You will leave this training with increased confidence in your customer service skills and a greater ability to handle a wide variety of service scenarios.

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 […]