Larry D. Lauer

Higher education is an industry experiencing a “sea change.”  With governments all over the world changing roles; and competition for students, money and reputation going global; advancement professionals are becoming central to the future of their institutions everywhere.

And CASE is leading the way with it’s annual international Summit for Advancement Leaders. It’s aim is not to cover the usual “how-to” topics, but rather to focus on the big issues changing our industry, and their implications for the future of advancement.  This year the Summit in New York City more than met my expectations.

The opening session set a high bar. CASE president, John Lippincott, skillfully led a panel of cutting edge presidents through a discussion framed around the standard SWOT analysis topics of strengths, weaknesses, opportunites and threats. Presidents Lawrence Bacow (Tufts), Alice Gast (Lehigh) and Richard McCormick (Rutgers) set the tone for the rest of the conference with their imaginative and perceptive analysis of the road ahead.

In spite of the economy, attendance was up this year, and 40 presidents joined their senior advancement people for this adventure in ideas.  This certainly helped to set the desired high level leadership tone for the entire two-days.  You certainly will not want to miss the Summit next July in Chicago!

I led a session on my new book, Learning to Love the Politics: How to Develop Support for Advancement, with Mike Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations at Duke.  I was encouraged by a large attendance and the feedback that institutional politics is a really big issue everywhere. We sold all of the books we had at the signing event, and so I am certain to be writing more on this topics in the months ahead. 

Advancement is indeed front and center in more and more institutions all around the world.  The good news is that there will be strong opportunities in all of the advancement professions for years to come. The big challenge, however, is that we will have to be far more sophisticated than ever before in order to be successful.