AAC&U President Lynn Pasquerella will join other higher education experts in a webinar to discuss scenarios and potential outcomes for the fall semester. Featuring survey results from an upcoming report by AAC&U and ABC Insights, the candid discussion will explore the effects of COVID-19 on colleges and universities and what a return to campus might look like.

The AAC&U Institute on Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Campus Centers was held virtually on June 16–19. Recordings of the plenary sessions are now available on-demand. The sessions feature Lynn Pasquerella, Tia Brown McNair, Gail Christopher, Charles Alphin, and Jessie Daniels.

As new models for online education materialize in the wake of COVID-19, it is imperative that institutions keep quality and equity as their central goals. Held January 22–23 in conjunction with AAC&U’s 2021 Annual Meeting, the 12th Annual Forum on Digital Learning and ePortfolios will offer interactive sessions for participants to share emerging best practices and research. Proposals are due July 20, 2020

The Excellence in Assessment (EIA) Designation, cosponsored by AAC&U, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, recognizes institutions for campus-level learning outcomes assessment, with a focus on campus processes and uses of assessment outcomes, rather than on student performance or accomplishment.

The grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations will extend pilot faculty development programs designed to improve the effectiveness of course assignments. It will also support an examination of faculty expectations across student groups and the creation of a new tool for assessing the alignment between course assignments and expected learning outcomes.

Since the creation of a new lending facility for nonprofits through the Main Street Lending Program is not a certainty, AAC&U joined the American Council on Education and other associations in calling for the expansion of existing loan programs to better serve colleges and universities. The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, recently passed by the House, contains two provisions that the groups are requesting the Senate to support.

In a new statement, AAC&U and the TRHT Campus Center at Hamline University call on higher education to play a leadership role in addressing racism and white supremacy, the issues at the center of protests across the country and around the world demanding justice for George Floyd.