Combined Call for Proposals for the 2025 Annual Meeting and 2025 Best Practices Award In Partnership With ACUPA

Overview  |  Topics  |  Submission Guidelines  |  Contact Information

The deadline to submit a proposal has now passed. Thank you to those who submitted.

Overview

The SACUBO Professional Development Committee and Best Practices Committee invite you to submit a proposal for the SACUBO Annual Meeting in Miami, Florida on April 13-15, 2025. We are seeking presenters from Business Partners, Constituent Committee members, Speakers, and ACUPA Members, to share their experiences/stories addressing issues facing college and university business officers today. These proposals should give consideration to our conference theme "Adapting to New Realities in Higher Education." 

Presenting at the meeting offers an opportunity to share effective strategies and showcase solutions to manage many of the challenges facing higher education today. The meeting typically brings together more than 600 college and university business officers, including CFOs, Vice Presidents of Finance & Administration, AVPs of Finance, Controllers, Comptrollers, Accountants, Budget Directors, AVPs of Facilities, Auxiliary Directors, and others.

This year the Association of College and University Policy Administrators (ACUPA) will be holding their annual conference in partnership with the SACUBO Annual Meeting and will have a dedicated track of sessions related to higher education policy and policy administration. ACUPA is the only professional association that focuses on the needs of policy administrators at institutions of higher education.

Those who respond will also have the option for their proposal to be considered for the Best Practices Award Program. This program showcases the best of college and university business officers' efforts in creating better, more efficient, and customer-friendly business practices. Past submissions have showcased a wide variety of unique programs improving the operations of the college campus. The 2025 Best Practices competition will select up to five finalists to present their "best practice" at the Annual Meeting. The institution with the overall "best practice" will receive an honorarium of $1,500. Runners-up will receive $750.

If you would like for your proposal to be considered for the Best Practices Award Program, please provide the initial required information related to the call for proposals, and then answer “Yes” to the question, “Would you like for this to be considered for the Best Practices Award Program?” Note that submissions for the ACUPA policy track are not eligible for the Best Practices Award Program unless the presenter is also a member of a SACUBO member institution.

Proposals should include at least one presenter from a SACUBO Member Institution OR who is a Member of ACUPA. Any submission that does not include a presenter from a college or university or an ACUPA member, will be considered incomplete and will not be accepted.

Topics for the Call for Proposals

Submissions with in-depth and practical treatments of topics relevant to higher education are welcome, including, but not limited to, the following.

Finance and Accounting

  • Foundations – Evaluating Endowments and Roles
  • Post Federal Stimulus Funding – How to Keep These New Things Going and Maintain the ROI
  • Long-Range Financial Planning – Cash Flow and New Revenue Streams
  • Capital Planning
  • Diversity in Investments
  • International Taxes

Compliance and Risk Management

  • Compliance Primer (GLBA, FERPA, HIPAA, etc.)
  • Ethics/Fraud
  • Cybersecurity Breaches – How to Fix it and Move Forward

Leadership, Management, and Human Resources

  • Soft Skill Development and other Vital Skills for Business Officers (Conflict Resolution and Civility)
  • Train the Trainer (Engagement Activities for Managers for Team Building)
  • Alternative Staffing Ideas to Overcome Labor Shortages
  • Compensation and Equity – Salary and Non-Salary Incentives
  • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging
  • Succession Planning
  • Compensation Structure (Career Tracks, Pay, Retention, Right Sizing the Workforce, etc.)

Operations

  • Student Affordability and Impact on Retention
  • Failing to Succeed (what didn’t work – RCM, athletics, ERP implementation, etc.)
  • Consolidation of Community Colleges and/or Small Institutions
  • Shared Services
  • Student-Centric Services – One-Stop Shop to Help with Retention
  • Centralized vs. Decentralized (HR, IT, Finance, etc.) – The Good and Bad
  • Enrollment Challenges and Student Success Initiatives
  • Housing (Responding to the Housing Demand, Market Trends, Rates, Capital Projects, etc.)
  • Campus Safety
  • The Future of the Campus Bookstore
  • Promoting Workforce Development
  • Changing Dynamics in Student Populations
  • Athletics (Value, Program Profitability, NIL, etc.)
  • Dual Enrollment – How to Convert them to a Fee-Paying Student

Other Hot Topics in Higher Education

  • Governing Boards
  • Changing Accreditors
  • Accepting Alternative Assets and Gifts (Cryptocurrency, Land, etc.)
  • Life After HEERT

In addition to SACUBO’s recommended topics, recommended topics for the ACUPA policy track include:

Higher Education Policy Topics

  • Developing a policy process
  • Regulatory compliance
  • Risk management
  • Human resources
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Title IX, sexual harassment, and discrimination
  • Research security
  • Academic and faculty related policies
  • Policy process and organization

Note – The list of topics above were specifically selected by SACUBO’s Professional Development Committee and higher education policy topics selected by ACUPA’s Event Planning Committee; however, all proposal submissions may include other topics.

Guidelines for Submissions

  • Sessions are 50 minutes in length.
  • Accepted proposals will not be assigned a specific date and time until several weeks prior to the meeting. Presenters should be available to speak on any day of the meeting. All sessions on the ACUPA track will be held on Monday, April 14 and Tuesday, April 15.
  • Proposals should include at least one presenter from a SACUBO member institution or ACUPA member. Any submission that does not include a presenter from a college or university will be considered incomplete and will not be accepted. Business Partner sessions are the only ones that do not require a college/university speaker.
  • Include all presenters that will take part in the presentation. Do not list co-presenters without definite commitment that they will be on the session. The co-presenter(s) must agree to all the terms and conditions for participation. There is a limit of four speakers per submission.
  • Speakers must complete an agreement form to be confirmed for a session.
  • General proposals should be a brief one-paragraph summary of the presentation that will be used for the meeting program and should include three learning objectives. Additional information will be needed for proposals submitted for the Best Practices Award Program.
  • After sessions are chosen, each speaker from colleges and universities will receive a $200 discounted registration rate for the conference.
  • Speakers will not receive any royalties, honorarium, reimbursement of expenses, or other compensation from SACUBO in connection with the program, unless otherwise noted by SACUBO staff.
  • SACUBO reserves the right to revise presentation titles or edit the session description of selected presentations for SACUBO promotional and program publications.
  • Business partners should contact Randy Ellis, Business Partner Relations Coordinator.
  • Proposals for the ACUPA track will be evaluated and selected by the ACUPA Events Planning Committee. To ensure that proposals are routed correctly, write “ACUPA” in the organization box and selected that you are submitting the form as “an ACUPA member” to send your submission to the ACUPA Events Planning Committee.
  • The deadline for submission is November 11, 2024. Topic selection will be completed by February 15, 2025, with formal notifications to follow.   

Contact Information 

For more information, contact a member of the Professional Development Committee or Best Practices Committee.

For more information or questions about the ACUPA track and proposals for the ACUPA track, contact [email protected].