2019 Year in Review

Dear ACPA member, 

On behalf of the ACPA International Office team, I am pleased to share with you our best wishes for a Happy New Year! I hope this message finds you still enjoying some rest due to the winter holiday season and/or end of semester or quarter at your institution. Our staff gathered with the three Presidents (past, present, and future) of the Association in early December to celebrate and reflect on our achievements in 2019, and to plan for how we will lead ACPA and the profession together in the coming year. If you have not already done so, I invite you to take a few moments to receive the reflections on the prior year from the current group of three Presidents on their most meaningful reminiscences from 2019 by clicking here. 

2019 was a significant year for ACPA, and there is much to celebrate! From the unprecedented increase in the number of members over the prior year to the membership approval of a new mission statement, ACPA once again demonstrated our ability to boldly transform higher education. There will be a lot of good news coming your way in the next few weeks, including the results of the Fall 2019 Governing Board leadership elections, the 2020 Association Award announcements, new scholarship and resources, new issues of our celebrated publications and much more that will continually demonstrate our love for supporting, enhancing, and amplifying the work of college student educators. 

 At the start of 2019, the ACPA International Office staff identified our “big rocks” for the year. These are what we affectionately call the most significant areas of focus that we believe will matter in the following year. Our team and individual goals then cascade out of these centralized objectives. For 2019, our team “big rocks” were:

1. Meet and exceed our membership goals
2. Attend to our members in California
3. Enhance ACPA membership and web technologies
4. Embrace opportunities to market the Association’s story

During our December retreat last month, we reflected on the four objectives and are pleased to share our progress and accomplishments with you now:

Meet and exceed our membership goals

Following a number of team and individual initiatives, membership in ACPA was up nearly a thousand new members compared to the same time last year. During 2019, overall membership crossed 6,000 again for the first time in several years. Financially, this success in membership growth accounts for exceeding revenue goals for membership by nearly $40,000 beyond what had been budgeted by the Governing Board for fiscal year 2019. This success was achieved through a number of strategies included offering additional professional development institutes in 2019, strengthening our focus on increasing individual members at institutional member schools, tremendous response to Careers in Student Affairs Month incentives and campaigns, revitalizing our support of state and regional Chapters through a new Local Only membership type, and piloting a new all-campus institutional membership type. We are grateful to our first three pilot all-campus member institutions for your leadership and commitment to professional development for your staff – thank you to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Syracuse University, and Virginia Tech! We are also excited to expand the pilot to include Cal State University – San Bernardino as an all-campus member institution in 2020! If you would like to learn more about this new membership opportunity for your college or university, please contact ACPA Director of Membership, Brenda Fogg, and bfogg@acpa.nche.edu. 

Attending to members in California

When setting our membership focus for 2019, we were empathetic to the potential restrictions that our members in the state of California might face in making plans to attend the ACPA20 Convention in Nashville, Tennessee due to the California Attorney General’s travel ban to the state. Beyond our commitment to our members in California to not sign contracts for future Association events in any U.S. state on the Attorney General’s travel ban list, we wrote to the Attorney General requesting exemption for our California members to be able to join us in Nashville related to the justice-oriented focus of our professional development curriculum. We also offered convention registration discounts to members in California to reduce the costs for those who may be required to pay for convention registration and travel without institutional or state funding. In addition, we hosted two of our largest and record-setting professional development events (not connected with the annual convention in the state of California) – the Donna M. Bourassa Mid-Level Management Institute in Orange, CA in January 2019 and the Institute on the Curricular Approach in Anaheim, CA in October 2019.  We know that our presence in California matters to our members there, as has been demonstrated in the dramatic increases in both of these annual institutes. In the coming year, we will be in Long Beach, CA for the Student Affairs Assessment Institute in June 2020 and then the ACPA21 Annual Convention in March 2021, and hope our California members will plan to join us for both professional development events. California has been on our minds! 

Enhancing Association technologies

For us to continue to grow as an organization, our technology infrastructure must continue to evolve and improve to better meet your needs. In 2019, we conducted a survey of our members to better understand your desires from our website and web-based services. Based on your feedback, we have selected Pathos Ethos Inc. to partner with us on creation of a new ACPA website, which we will launch in 2020! Improvements were also made to the membership database to update several transactional processes, and this work will continue into 2020. The Governing Board has approved an additional $20,000 in technology support in the fiscal year 2020 budget to allow us to continue this critical infrastructure work that meets your needs as a valued member.

Embracing opportunities to tell the Association’s story

In July 2019, ACPA members approved a new mission statement for the Association, which centers our historical reputation of being an association that continues to transform higher education. The ACPA Governing Board expanded on the membership’s overwhelming support of the new mission statement by approving a new tagline as the association that is Boldly Transforming Higher Education.  In truth, this has been the identity and reputation of ACPA since our founding in 1924 and continues today in our centralization of the pursuit of racial justice and decolonization. Our new mission statement and tagline are now pervasive across our marketing and outreach efforts, as we want to be intentional about growing our membership by welcoming faculty, professionals, and students who believe that social justice is the work of college student educators. Specific marketing in 2019 has included an increased focus on interpersonal and video communications in our marketing, as well as the releases of two iterations of the Bold Vision Forward framework document related to the Strategic Imperative for Racial Justice and Decolonization. 

There is so much more to celebrate about what was achieved in 2019 than these four “big rocks” that served as coordinating goals for the ACPA International Office staff. We would be remiss to not also acknowledge the following achievements and contributions from across the Association in 2019 that made a difference to one or many:
 

• Held an incredible annual ACPA19 convention in Boston (March);
• Launched and hosted the first Senior Student Affairs Officer Institute on social and racial justice in Seattle (June);
• Cohosted the Student Affairs Assessment Institute with the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS) (July);
• Broadcasted two Presidential Symposia in partnership with the University of Maryland College Park (January) and ASHE and Michigan State University (September);
• Approved a new 2020-2024 Strategic Plan for the Association (December);
• Hosted numerous online and in-person learning and networking events sponsored by ACPA entity groups, engaging thousands of prospective and current members (throughout and ongoing);
• Continued collaboration with the ACPA Foundation on a transformative investment in an upcoming Association initiative (throughout and ongoing).

I told you…2019 was an incredible year for the Association, and these are just a few of the highlights! We could not have done any or all of this without your support, encouragement, and continued loyalty to the Association and to the bold transformation of our profession. 

Once again, Happy New Year!  I am excited to welcome you to Nashville for ACPA20 (or for one of our other 2020 events)! 

Chris Moody
ACPA Executive Director