Presentation of Award
Plenary Address: Preserving What Matters, Redesigning What Does Not, and Rebuilding for the Students of Today and Tomorrow
Many colleges were designed around assumptions about students, learning, and institutional life that no longer fully match current realities. As demographic shifts, economic pressures, technological developments, and changing student needs and expectations reshape higher education, institutions are being challenged not simply to adapt existing models, but to reconsider more fundamentally what higher education should look like.
In this plenary, Alexandria Radford will explore what it means to redesign institutions around the students of today and tomorrow in ways that stay true to, and even advance, institutions’ missions. Drawing on research and practice, she will discuss how student needs and the broader forces shaping higher education are evolving, as well as what those changes imply for institutional design. She will also introduce a framework and set of guiding questions that institutional leaders in different divisions should be asking now. Attendees will leave with practical tools for identifying which elements of their college remain essential to preserve, which need to be redesigned, and which may need to be built anew to help both students and institutions thrive in the next century and beyond.