2025 Strategic Topics
- Post-election analysis: What should we be paying attention to?
- Workforce wellbeing & improving organizational performance
- Climate change and its impact on facilities & campus operations
- Rising costs
- The impact of the Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) rule on student experience
- What to ask before the P3 RFP? How did we get here?
Speakers & Sessions
Captivating speakers and a slate of can’t-miss sessions are waiting for you.
Dr. Kevin R. McClure, University of North Carolina Wilmington
Key People Indicators: Unlocking Organizational Excellence by Understanding the Employee Experience
This interactive keynote challenges participants to grapple with the question: “How well do you really know the employees you supervise or lead?” The truth is that many leaders don’t know enough about who their employees are and what they experience on the job. Too often, higher education institutions, divisions, and offices set lofty goals without truly considering the capacity of their most important resource: people. Grounded in principles of Caring Leadership derived from Dr. McClure’s forthcoming book, The Caring University: Reimagining the Higher Education Workplace after the Great Resignation, the keynote helps attendees move from awareness of workplace well-being to strategic action. It identifies barriers preventing leaders from understanding the employee experience and shares concrete strategies to overcome these barriers and improve organizational performance.
About Dr. Kevin R. McClure
Dr. Kevin R. McClure is the Murphy Distinguished Scholar of Education and Associate Professor of Higher Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He also serves as Co-Director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges. He is an expert on college leadership, management, and workplace culture, especially at broad-access institutions. He is the co-editor of Regional Public Universities: Addressing Misconceptions and Analyzing Contributions and Unlocking Opportunity through Broadly Accessible Institutions. Dr. McClure’s public scholarship covers a range of topics, and throughout the pandemic he wrote viral articles on morale, burnout, disengagement, staffing, and leadership in higher education. He now writes the workplace column at The Chronicle of Higher Education. His book, The
Caring University: Reimagining the Higher Education Workplace after the Great Resignation, will be released with Johns Hopkins University Press in 2025.
Emmanual A. Guillory
A New Congress & A New Administration: Forecasting potential impacts on higher education
The Trump Administration has now taken over and the new 119th Session of Congress has begun. This session will dig into how these crucial changes can have an impact on the higher education landscape from an insider’s perspective in Washington, DC.
About Emmanual A. Guillory
Emmanual A. Guillory is an advocate, policy expert, and motivational speaker who currently serves as the Senior Director of Government Relations at the American Council on Education (ACE). In this role, he manages an extensive portfolio of legislative and regulatory issues as a primary government relations resource for the broader higher education community to the United States Congress, the White House, the United States Department of Education, and other agencies as warranted. His portfolio includes a primary emphasis on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA), especially Title IV programs, and the budget and appropriations process. Other issues within his portfolio include accreditation; college costs; student aid; institutional accountability; institutional aid in Titles III and V of the HEA; oversight; privacy; technology; accessibility; and disability, among others.
Previously, Guillory served as the Director of Student and Institutional Aid Policy at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) leading the private, nonprofit sector of higher education and as Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs at UNCF (the United Negro College Fund, Inc.). Guillory earned his Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Texas A&M University, obtained his Master of Arts in College Student Personnel from Bowling Green State University, and is currently pursuing his Doctorate in Education in Higher Education Management at the University of Pennsylvania.