Dear Colleagues,
Last month NACUA reprised a pre-pandemic office tradition—the Thanksgiving potluck. As we contemplate our many blessings during this season of giving and light, I like many of you, find myself thinking about some of the big things for which I’m grateful. In addition to my loved ones, the NACUA professional team and our volunteer leaders are high on my list. Please know that I deeply appreciate your contributions, dedication, and commitment to our mission and core values; thank you for making NACUA what it is today.
We have an ambitious agenda for the year ahead. As the strategic planning process advances, we will decide what we will do, but also what we will not do. Tough decisions may need to be made. Now more than ever, our member institutions need NACUA’s timely, high-quality, information and practice pointers to help their campuses respond to the challenges of an eventual Supreme Court ruling in the Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard and U.N.C. cases, a final Title IX rule, and violence on campuses, among other things. I cannot think of anyone with whom I would rather tackle this work than our wonderful NACUA team.
As we enjoyed gathering in the same room at the same time for our potluck, I found myself reflecting on how deeply grateful I am for science and modern medicine—enterprises to which our member institutions make invaluable contributions. For the foreseeable future, COVID is here to stay, and with a robust and effective series of vaccines against both COVID-19 and the flu--not to mention other infectious diseases--we were fortunate to have a little breathing room to break bread with friends and colleagues once again.
Our celebration took place just over a week after the mid-term elections and roughly two weeks after NACUA’s November Board meeting. At the Board meeting, in addition to engaging in the important business of the Board, we invited Ron Daniels, President of Johns Hopkins University and the author of the book What Universities Owe Democracy, to engage the directors in a conversation about the observations and arguments set forth in his book. This led me to reflections of gratitude about our democratic system of government. Despite imperfections and challenges, democracy and the rule of law continue to hold, which should be heartening to us all. As lawyers, our collective obligation to protect the good parts of these systems and help our institutions bequeath a robust democracy to future generations is more critical now than ever.
Looking ahead, registration is now open for our Winter 2023 Virtual CLE Workshop: Student Affairs Legal Issues. Students are at the heart of the higher education enterprise, and the desire to improve the student educational experience is the reason many attorneys were attracted to higher education law. At the same time, their needs, complexities, and demands for responsiveness often lead to some of the biggest challenges our members’ offices face. Join us for this virtual workshop, January 25-January 27, 2023, to get updates on critical changes in the law, to learn practical approaches to thorny legal issues from your peers, and to hear what’s on the minds of your colleagues who work in the student affairs office.
Finally, please watch your inboxes early next year for invitations to participate in a strategic planning survey about what NACUA should prioritize in the coming few years. Everyone will be invited to participate, and we ask that you do to ensure representative, authentic, and meaningful input. We will also have some Zoom “Town Hall” style meetings to share our findings and elicit feedback as the process unfolds.
Please have a safe, restful, and restorative winter holiday season and I look forward to seeing you—either via Zoom or in-person—in the coming months.