Charlie Nutt, NACADA Executive Director
2020 is a year none of us across the globe will forget. Our personal lives have been changed in so many ways, and our professional lives in higher education have changed so much as well. Therefore, it is important that NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising continues to look toward the future and provides the highest quality professional development and outstanding opportunities to connect with each other. Each of you have been doing amazing work with your students in this time of uncertainty in their lives, and NACADA is so appreciative for all you have done for both our students and our association. It is a great honor for NACADA to work with all of you to both provide support for you and recognize the health and safety of our members who look forward to our spring events each year.
Thus, for Spring 2021, NACADA will be hosting our spring events virtually, beginning with our Academic Advising Administrators’ Institute on Feb 9-11, 2021 and the Academic Advising Assessment Institute on Feb 17-19, 2021. The Advisory Boards and the Faculty for these two events have carefully organized a virtual event that will both provide the highest quality professional development and the opportunity to work with each other on planning for change on your campuses. These virtual events will be a great opportunity for you to attend in 2020 when in the past travel and other costs may have prohibited your attending the events. We encourage you to consider sending teams from your campuses as you look to gain knowledge and make changes on your campuses.
Following our advising institutes, our region conferences will follow virtually as well. In addition to our five combined conferences from March through May, we will host for the first time a week of region preconference workshops. For the first time, everyone will have a chance to become actively involved in preconference workshops from across all 10 of our region conferences. It will be an opportunity to attend workshops during the entire week at prices that are low cost to you and at times available for your schedule.
As with our highly successful annual conference in October, when you register for one of our five combined region conferences, you will have access to keynote speakers, live sessions, semi-live hybrid sessions, and video-recorded presenters which will be of great benefit. Opportunities to interact with your fellow participants also will be provided. We encourage you and all your colleagues to come and take advantage of these low cost virtual experiences!
In addition to learning from each other at these spring virtual conferences, attending will also allow you the chance to connect with and interact with your fellow academic advising professionals across the world! I want to thank all our NACADA Region Chairs and Region Conference Chairs for all their hard work with organizing these events! In addition, the NACADA Executive Office Staff will be so actively involved with the planning and implementation of our virtual events.
NACADA continues to value all our members and all of the academic advising community across the globe! It is only through all of your participation that we can continue to be one of the top associations for student success! Please join us for NACACDA Virtual Spring 2021!
Cite this article using APA style as: Nutt, C. (2020, December). From the executive director: From the Executive Director: NACADA: The global community for academic advising goes virtual for spring 2020! Academic Advising Today, 43(4). [insert url here]
