FALL Campus Life Trends (CLT) Magazine

APCA to Hold In-Person Fall Conferences in 2021:

This fall, APCA will be returning to IN-PERSON conferences! The conferences will also be offered live online for those unable to travel.

The theme of this year’s fall conferences is Upgrade Your Campus Life Experience! The conferences will offer the quality, affordable showcases and speakers that you’ve come to know and trust, and will also feature new best practices resulting from our collective experiences over the last academic year. 2020 was the most challenging time in the history of Student Life programming. The advent of virtual programming has been both a blessing and a curse for our campus staff members! Innovative programming for online populations has been plagued by technical and logistical issues, despite the best efforts of dedicated student life professionals. However, the lessons we have learned can only help us be better in the future.

Throughout this process, one thing has become very apparent; everyone is becoming strained by online fatigue. Student connections are best made through in-person, connective events that bring us together. Thankfully, those in-person events seem much closer to safely happening again than they have seemed for a long, long while.

We must be prepared, however, to reopen our live events with the care and caution that honors the sacrifices that have been made to return us to a state of normalcy. We are ready to adapt to circumstances by providing in-person examples of best practices to protect our campus populations.

Upgrade Your Campus Life Experience conferences will still feature the APCA core conference elements: Showcases, Exhibit Halls, Block Booking and Educational Sessions. There will be ample opportunities to find talent and receive massive savings for your budgets to justify the expense of attendance through our Cooperative Buying program.

Showcases / Cooperative Buying

Live showcases, esports, in-person and virtual events, and new, more affordable options in campus programing will be featured at the conferences. The showcases will also demonstrate CDC compliant audience distancing and sanitizing measures to keep attendees at the events and on their campuses safe.

All schools attending the event will be able to participate in the APCA Cooperative Buying process via our synchronized in-person and virtual Co-op sessions.  All schools will be able to save on talent costs on novelties, entertainment, and speaking options for limited budgets.

Educational Sessions

The APCA in-person fall conferences will feature Educational Sessions for both Advisors and Students on important topics such as leadership development, engagement and assessment, mental health, DEI, student organization recruitment and retention, effective events and activities, and much more!

We will also provide sessions and live examples of:

• Safe food distribution and packing procedures for events on campus
• Entrance admission and screening suggestions for returning to live events
• Seminars and live demonstrations of secure set up, production, and tear down of different safety levels for socially distanced events
• Risk assessment sessions on event scheduling and production of live events
• Safety guidelines for handling novelties, make-and-takes, and crowd participation

A safer investment of funds in a time of travel uncertainty:

In constantly changing times, many institutions just don’t know if they can travel or not this semester. We at APCA completely empathize with your situation and have arranged for a lowered financial risk situation.

1. Register for virtual attendance now, upgrade later!

If your institution is still not sure of its travel policy, you now have the option to ensure your student board’s participation in the fall conference of your choice and much more. By locking in a full-year access to the APCA Virtual Community Workplace, you can guarantee a full virtual experience for the fall conference of your choice AND the APCA National Conference in Hershey, PA in March of 2022. Virtual attendees will attend the conferences as they are live streamed into our Workplace. You’ll be able to watch and participate as if you were there.

Virtual attendees should block their calendars so they can attend the conference events as they happen, including Showcases, Cooperative Buying, Exhibit Halls, Ed Sessions and more. Community Workplace fees are only $169 for members or $299 for non-members, and your profiles are active through June 30, 2022. Click here for details on our Virtual Community Workplace!

HERE’S the best part:

Should you later be informed that travel is possible, you can use the cost of the virtual passes towards your in-person conference delegate fees. Or, you can keep your annual passes to the Workplace, which will allow you full-year access and virtual attendance at Nationals, and simply register for in-person attendance at your fall conference of choice.

2. Register for in-person now with a guaranteed virtual option and choice of a partial refund or a credit for future conference fees!

APCA has established a refund or exchange policy for schools or other talent buyers attending the fall conferences. At this point, after consultation with our partner hotels, any cancellation of the events is very unlikely due to Covid. However, out of an abundance of caution, we would like to assure our schools and other talent buyers that they will still have virtual attendance options and a compensation policy. If any in-person attendance for a fall conference is cancelled due to Covid, every school that paid for in-person delegate fees will be given compensation options for the cancelled in-person aspects of their fall conference (meals, conference logistics costs, etc.).

The APCA refund policy for schools and talent buyers in the unlikely event of cancellation of the conference due to Covid-19 is as follows:

1) Schools/talent buyrers can elect to receive a $100 per delegate refund of all fees paid and still attend the fall virtual conference for their area.

OR

2) Schools/talent buyers can receive a $100 per delegate credit towards any one conference or summer workshop in 2021 or 2022 and still attend the fall virtual conference for their area.

In-Person Pricing / Registration

School Delegate Fees – $249 for APCA members and $299 for non-members. Register now to lock in those early bird prices!

Delegate fee includes:

4 catered meals (2 dinners and 2 lunches) •Over 50 showcasing acts •APCA Cooperative Buying •Hybrid options to broadcast the event to non-attending board members •Social distancing measures to assure safety •Professional development for advisors •Leadership and organizational training for student boards •Certification programs

To register for the APCA Fall Conferences, email us at info@apca.com or visit us at www.apca.com.