The 2010 NCT: Thought Provoking, Inspiring, and Now Over

What a week. Close to 900 trustees, college presidents and other senior leaders, association and leaders of organizations that support higher education gathered at AGB’s annual National Conference on Trusteeship in Orlando. Of those 900, 630 attended informative pre-conference workshops on topics ranging from successful fundraising in hard times to the always-popular Seminar for New Trustees to workshops on achieving high performance and board and educational quality. Equally well attended were sessions on presidential assessment which included the launch of AGB’s new publication, Assessing Presidential Effectiveness: A Guide for College and University Boards and presidential search and transition, which is taking on heightened importance as the number of presidents reaching retirement age continues to grow.

From my perch, trustees are more engaged than ever, and appropriately engaged. From hearing about the similarities and differences of the governance challenges of our newest members -- proprietary institutions -- to participating in a panel on bringing about change across higher education, the discussions proved dynamic, provocative, and inspiring.

• AGB board member and former governor of Wyoming, Jim Geringer, who serves on the board of Western Governors University, challenged participants to think about how many strategic partnerships could be formed to leverage capacity beyond what institutions can do by themselves.
• University of Wisconsin system president Kevin Reilly identified three areas where higher education must focus in order to meet national needs: 1) increasing enrollment, 2) improving retention, and 3) addressing modes of delivery and credentialing, in order to answer the question "how do we improve the system to give more degrees at a lower cost per degree."
• Robert Zemsky, a 30-year trustee and a 30-year faculty member, identified three discussion points that must be put on the table: 1) Time – the division of time in the academy, and whether the 120 credit-hour degree is necessary; 2) What faculty members do – and what it means to be a faculty member; and 3) the curriculum ("it’s the curriculum, stupid!" he quoted), and the challenge of student choice of classes, majors, and time to meet that isn’t sustainable at many institutions.

Over the next few weeks, we will be adding more highlights from our meeting to agb.org. If you didn't have the opportunity to attend, we hope you will take advantage of information on our site, and will mark your calendar now for next year's National Conference on Trusteeship: April 9-12, 2011, in Phoenix, Arizona.