Call for Proposals

Presenting at the NERCOMP 2024 Annual Conference provides an opportunity to build your professional network and experience lifelong learning with lifelong friends. Presenting a content-rich session individually or as part of a team is a wonderful way to share knowledge, experiences, and ideas. The conference's community-generated program will showcase future directions, best practices, stories of successful collaborations, lessons learned, and solutions to community-wide issues within various program tracks. We welcome your submission! Please read this page carefully before you begin work on your proposal.

If you or a co-presenter are a corporate member, you have two options:

  1. You can go through the CFP process and the NERCOMP program committee will determine acceptance to the program.

  2. You can contact [email protected] to purchase an Industry Insights Session, and will receive specific instructions about how to submit your session details. Limited opportunities are available.

Ready to get started? Just follow these simple steps:

  1. Find out how to create an excellent proposal by reading this page and the helpful tips in the EDUCAUSE Presenter Concierge pages.
  2. Develop a proposal in one of the program theme/focus areas.
  3. Choose a presentation format.
  4. Submit your proposal between October 30 and November 26. Submitters will be notified about decisions in mid-December.

Conference Program: Themes, Tracks, and Keywords

Conference Theme

This year's conference will focus on fostering engagement both between institutions, faculty, students, and the wider community, and engagement between people and technology, as we seek to build stronger and more sustainable bridges for the future. We'll explore new ideas and strategies for collaboration, innovation, and building meaningful relationships that can help shape the future of higher education.

Conference Tracks

These are more refined topics of interest or audience-specific issues which will help attendees navigate the conference sessions.

The rapid pace of innovation in technology offers exciting opportunities for education professionals, but it also brings with it a corresponding need for flexible support services and delivery processes to keep up with the challenge of constant change. Whether your institution is evaluating and implementing new technologies and support practices or has successfully updated your IT service operation's technologies and procedures, this track invites you to share your strategies for providing effective and efficient IT support services and solutions to diverse and ever-changing faculty, students, and administrators with uniformly high expectations. Discussions about social good, including diversity, equity and inclusion, within the context of AV and IT service provision are highly encouraged.

Examples include:

  • Help desk support applications (IM, ticketing, self-service, remote support, etc.)
  • Central versus distributed support models
  • Best Practices (ITIL v3, Pink Elephant, Six Sigma, COBIT 4.1, etc.)
  • Classroom technologies and design (computers, multimedia, and smart technologies, clickers, podiums, etc.)
  • Students: consultant programs and technology support (ResNet)
  • Training and documentation development
  • Information and computer literacy programs
  • Workstation standards, management, and peripheral support (multi-use printers, handheld devices, unified messaging, VoIP, virtual desktops, etc.)
  • Media services (asset management, scheduling, event support, audiovisual equipment, etc.)
  • Managing software licenses and software access
  • Hardware access and distribution programs
  • Support for distribution of streaming, podcasting, distance learning, etc.
  • Sustainability practices and green technologies (power management, recycling, print management, etc.)
  • Supporting the proliferation of consumer technologies in use by students

One of the most talked-about areas of technology—and perhaps one of the least understood—is that of data-driven decision-making. Promises of transforming our institutions and the lives of our students through the collection and analysis of data now seem plausible and within reach, but many of us need to learn a lot more about how to actually do it. If your institution has been successful in developing and using dashboards, predictive modeling, reporting and analytics, and business intelligence, this track is the place to share those experiences, processes, and insights that can help faculty and administrators in measurable ways. Discussions about social good (including diversity, equity, and inclusion) within the context of data, learning analytics, predictive modeling, and decision tools are highly encouraged.

Examples include:

  • Leveraging predictive modeling and analytics to assist with enrollment or retention
  • Creating dashboards that matter
  • Breaking down the silos of data
  • How to become a data-driven institution
  • Business intelligence/data management
  • Learning analytics
  • Using data to optimize student learning in digital environments
  • Data privacy

The world that today's college students live in is overwhelmingly digital (and increasingly mobile) and offers a wealth of opportunities that have only begun to be tapped by our institutions. With the potential to transform everything from recruitment and retention to academic success and alumni engagement, these constantly evolving digital technologies may provide the key to a new and more closely connected student/school relationship. This track encourages submissions that share current and completed projects, as well as visions for how the personalized world of today's technology can bring new opportunities to our students and our institutions. Discussions about social good (including diversity, equity, and inclusion) within the context of student success practices, initiatives and innovations is highly encouraged.

Examples include:

  • Using mobile technology to make service easier
  • Creating one-stop shopping
  • Using software or business processes to improve recruitment or retention
  • Improving student community experience
  • Innovative ways to engage with students (or to keep students engaged with the campus community)
  • Leveraging cloud-based solutions as a cost-effective means to enhance the student experience

Effective leadership takes place at all levels of an organization. We are continually asked to respond to changing client expectations, resource constraints, increasing calls for accountability, and proliferating technology alternatives. This track seeks to showcase strategies, both successful and not so successful, that create a shared sense of mission and allow all members of a team to contribute their ideas. Discussions about social good (including diversity, equity, and inclusion) within the context of leadership, team-building/high performing teams, and organizational growth and development are highly encouraged.

Examples include:

  • Developing and advocating for a shared vision
  • Creating and sustaining high-performance teams
  • Divergent paths to leadership, and leadership in every area and level
  • Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in your organization
  • Strategic planning and strategic-planning tools
  • Innovative budgeting and funding models
  • Aligning governance models and processes with institutional mission
  • Succession planning
  • Communication best practices
  • Cross-organizational/cross-institutional professional networks
  • Unconventional leadership
  • Creative project management
  • Building a culture of innovation and managing change
  • Talent management
  • Remote work/teams

As libraries seek to redefine themselves in the 21st century, branching out into content creation, makerspace management, and new partnerships around teaching, learning, and scholarship, the opportunities—and questions—for how libraries will lead the Information Age can seem overwhelming. What collaborative partnerships, decisions, and technologies should librarians take advantage of in scholarship and research? What strategic innovations can libraries share to help establish a new model of relevance in colleges and universities? And given the continual pressure to justify budget requests and resource allocations, how can we define and establish new organizational structures and services? This track encourages the sharing of provocative ideas, ongoing projects and plans, and early-stage successes that can help our community begin to answer these provocative questions. Discussions about social good (including diversity, equity, and inclusion) within the context of library operations, technologies, services and spaces are highly encouraged.

Examples include:

  • Reconceiving library spaces and services: new purposes, new partners
  • Emerging workflows and best practices in digitization and digital preservation
  • Issues surrounding 21st-century scholarly communication: copyright, open access
  • Supporting faculty in digital scholarship, digital humanities, and research
  • Assessment in the library: demonstrating the library's contributions
  • Innovations in delivery of content: e-books, ILL, patron-initiated purchasing
  • Instruction and outreach: information literacy programming and engagement
  • Getting to know our users: ethnographic research, usability studies
  • When cultures collide: changing perceptions of libraries' roles and missions
  • Integrating discovery tools and library management systems
  • Lessons learned working with archives, repositories, and publishing platforms
  • Campus and community outreach and partnerships
  • Building a culture of DEI in libraries
  • Decolonizing the library catalog

Protecting critical data and services in a culture that puts a high value on openness and accessibility presents special challenges. With increasing numbers moving to "the cloud" and increasing data available on mobile devices, how institutions deal with protecting data that is outside the control of central IT is a monumental challenge faced by every institution, no matter its size or focus. How campuses deal with issues such as the appeal and value of sites such Facebook and Twitter; the growing legal complexities surrounding data protection and personal privacy; and the consumerization of IT and the spiraling use of personal devices for work purposes are of increasing importance to IT managers and academic administrators. This track seeks to highlight the role that campus policies and regulations—along with the growing technical challenges of securing devices and data—play in our institutions' daily work, and it seeks to allow institutions to share their thorniest problems, brainstorm some attainable goals, and present examples of policy approaches and accomplishments. Discussions about social good (including diversity, equity, and inclusion) within the context of policy, regulation, and security are highly encouraged.

Examples include:

  • The evolving role of the information security officer
  • Policy development and governance models
  • Identity and access management policies
  • Policies that address emerging technologies
  • Policies on cloud services and social media
  • Strategies to manage the impact of social media on institutional brand/identity
  • E-commerce challenges such as PCI compliance, mobile merchant accounts
  • Information security awareness, education, and communication
  • Secure guest and/or remote access
  • Security audits, penetration testing
  • Data classification schemas
  • Endpoint security / remediation strategies
  • Data encryption tools
  • Data and network security risk assessment
  • Incident response / computer forensics
  • Intrusion detection and prevention

No matter the size or scale of the institution, user expectations are always high, and systems are always assumed to be running efficiently and without any glitches. Keeping systems stable and agile, secure yet accessible, feature-rich but easy-to-use, is a challenging and complex task. How does an IT department implement best practices, provide cutting-edge innovation, and remain cost effective—all at the same time? This track seeks to showcase examples and ideas from a wide range of institutions that can help us understand some of the creative and nontraditional solutions to both age-old and new problems in enterprise computing. Whether it's keeping up with the instantaneous tech expectations of our students, the work-from-everywhere needs of our faculty, administrators, and staff, or the dashboard-and-data demands of our top-level executives, come and share your stories of experiences and challenges for the benefit of the community. Discussions about social good (including diversity, equity, and inclusion) within the context of systems and solutions are highly encouraged.

Examples include:

  • Green IT
  • Virtualization
  • Cloud computing
  • Software as a service
  • Identity and access management
  • Document and records management
  • Building a project management culture that extends into the business and technical domains
  • Unified communications
  • Data de-duplication
  • Disaster recovery / business continuity / backup strategies
  • Administrative/ERP systems and integration
  • Systems integration
  • System Development Life Cycles (SDLC) and software release management

The changes that have taken place in teaching and learning over the past 10 years have been dramatic, and technology has been a motivating force behind many of them. From active and project-based learning to increasingly sophisticated means for engaging students online, the nature of higher education pedagogy has undergone a true transformation. The richness of these new approaches, methodologies, and techniques is the focus of this track, which seeks to demonstrate the innovation and creativity that so many professors, instructional designers, and tech support professionals are bringing to their classrooms (both physical and virtual). All manner of teaching and learning stories are welcome, as we share in each other's triumphs and the "back to the drawing board" moments.

We especially encourage co-presentations that include faculty members and students, as well as inter institutional collaboration. Discussions about social good (including diversity, equity, and inclusion) within the context of teaching and learning are also highly encouraged.

The range of questions includes:

  • How are digital technologies transforming the enterprise of teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education, both in the classroom and beyond?
  • How is the use of technology transforming faculty and student interactions?
  • In what ways can the digital landscape support diverse learning preferences as well as engage increasingly mobile and continually networked students?
  • How can we know if our use of technology improves the learning experience for our students? How can we assess our use of technology?
  • What opportunities are on the horizon? What developments should we be paying attention to?
  • How do we put theory into practice?

Examples include:

  • Strategies for faculty development and support, along with best practices for supporting change, innovation, and emerging technologies.
  • Designing and supporting learning experiences in hybrid, flexible, and immersive virtual learning environments.
  • Approaches to providing applications and resources for mobile learners
  • Determining the effectiveness of learning space design.
  • The evolution of the learning management system.
  • Assessment strategies for learning, course improvement, accreditation, technology adoption decision-making, etc.
  • Models for project planning, development, and instructional design
  • Use of assistive technologies and principles of universal design

Keywords

These are areas of specific interest and will help attendees fine-tune their personalized schedules. Optional: You will be asked to provide three keywords which relate to your presentation.

Delivery Choices

Please note that your proposal will be carefully evaluated and may be accepted for any of the formats below, depending on the scope of content and engagement strategies proposed. If you have questions, please contact Sarah Reynolds, speaker liaison, or visit our Presenter Concierge resource page for presentation ideas and resources.

Review the session formats carefully and note that although NERCOMP will make every effort to honor your preference for format, we reserve the right to assign both session and delivery format based on space and program balance.

Session Formats

Facilitated Discussion

Discussion sessions are opportunities for event attendees to share campus challenges and solutions through conversational exchange. By actively engaging audience participants in dialogue about hot topics or broad issues, presenters of these sessions will rely on the collective community experience among session attendees. There is no room for "sage on the stage" in a facilitated discussion session; this is a chance to have organic, topically relevant, peer-to-peer learning experiences at the conference. These will be either 20-minute or 45-minute sessions. You may have a maximum of two facilitators for this session type.

Presentation or Panel Session

These sessions are opportunities to share topics of interest, lessons learned, foresight, or evidence of impact related to a conference theme. Presenters, whether one person or a group, should include ways to actively engage the audience in the session, either digitally or in person. Panels should represent two or more opposing viewpoints for a lively group discussion. The best panels and group presentations have diversity in perspectives as well as diversity of panelists—organizationally and demographically speaking. Corporate participants: Please note that if your proposal is accepted by the program committee, no fee will apply. If you do not wish to submit through the CFP, you can contact [email protected] to purchase an Industry Insights Session and will receive specific instructions about how to submit your session details. Limited opportunities are available. These will be either 20-minute or 45-minute sessions. You may have a maximum of four presenters/panelists for this session type.

Demonstrations – Institutions Only

This type of session works best if your primary objective is to offer a tour or provide an overview of an innovative product, service, or new idea. Select this delivery format if you work on a campus and want to showcase a product or service you implemented, built, or created. This is a great way to tell your "it worked for us" story. These will be either 20-minute or 45-minute sessions. You may have a maximum of two presenters for this session type.

Poster Sessions (60 minutes)

A poster session demonstrates the use of an emerging technology or innovative practice for teaching and learning, typically in the early stages of development. Presenters may use a laptop, a poster, or both to demonstrate the unique features and functionality of the tool or program and to assist in providing a visual overview of the project. As attendees visit, presenters have the opportunity to discuss the poster topic with them. Therefore, presenters should prepare a few introductory remarks (1–2 minutes) to engage listeners in the subject.

A Special Note to Our Corporate Participants

EDUCAUSE and NERCOMP value insights from the corporate community. As such, we have developed two options for you to contribute to the 2024 NERCOMP Annual Conference. If any presenter affiliated with the session is from a corporation, you can choose from the following:

  1. You can go through the CFP process as outlined above and the NERCOMP program committee will determine acceptance to the program. If your proposal is accepted by the program committee, NO fee will apply to participate in the program. These session slots are highly competitive, and only the highest quality, most relevant, "thought leader" sessions will be accepted. Other corporate sessions are available for this event and a liaison from our corporate team will reach out to you with other opportunities to invest in the conference.
  2. You can contact [email protected] to purchase an Industry Insights session and will receive special instructions about how to submit your session details. These sessions will be integrated into the conference program with all other sessions, and will also include an Industry Led session type . This label is necessary to be transparent about the nature of how the session was picked for the program. Limited opportunities are available.

Selection Process

Proposals are selected to ensure the conference offers a comprehensive, non-promotional, objective, and diverse program. Proposals that clearly describe innovative and creative work will receive the highest priority in the selection process. Attention will be given to diversity of institutions/organizations, presenters, and geographic location. Note: You may be invited to present in formats other than the one you selected or those noted in the proposal submission form.

The identity of proposal submitters and proposed presenters will be hidden to reviewers. Proposals will be reviewed by the Conference Program Committee and peer reviewers using the following criteria:

  • Relevance of Topic: Is the topic of relevance, importance, value, and/or interest to higher education?
  • Session Outcomes Achievability: Is there alignment between the stated session outcomes and the proposal description?
  • Quality of Submission: Does the proposal demonstrate quality, as measured by accuracy, clarity, comprehensiveness, and depth of demonstrated understanding of the topic?
  • Engagement/Knowledge Transfer: Does the proposal provoke discussion, audience engagement, and/or facilitate knowledge transfer and development of new competency?

Guidelines for Submission

  • Profile Requirement: An EDUCAUSE Profile is required in order to submit a proposal, present, and register for the event. Please take some time before submitting a proposal to ensure all presenters have profiles and that all information is updated (title, profile picture, bio, etc.). You can search for members in the member directory; if presenters don't have a profile, they will need to create one so you're able to add them within the submission site. Note: Profile information will help reviewers and attendees understand a presenter's qualifications.
  • Presenters and Registration: One presenter from each presentation receives a free conference registration. Additional presenters are responsible for registering in advance for the conference, paying the full conference registration fee, and securing and paying for travel and lodging.
  • Presenter Commitment: Do not list co-presenters without their commitment that they will participate and that they agree to the terms and conditions for participation.
  • Acceptance notifications will be sent mid-December 2023.
  • All selected presenters must complete speaker agreement forms in order to be confirmed for a session.
  • Proposal submission topics cannot be changed after the review and selection process.
  • EDUCAUSE reserves the right to revise presentation titles and/or edit the session description for program publications.
  • Session Resources: Presenters will be required to upload their presentation and supporting materials and resources prior to the conference. If selected, you will be provided with further instructions on uploading your presentation materials.