The Arkansas Union team recently represented the University of Arkansas at a major conference of a professional association.
The Association of College Unions International Annual Conference was held March 13-17, 2022, in Chicago, Illinois. The conference, held in-person again for the first time since 2019, was attended by hundreds of professionals and students from different college union facilities across the nation and as far away as Ireland. The conference featured multiple educational opportunities, a vendor fair, keynotes, engagement and networking opportunities, and a true Chicago-style culinary experience.
Representing Arkansas at the conference were Rob Stagni, director of the Union; Sophia Schmidt, Union graduate assistant; and Gabi Gies, Union administrative specialist. Stagni serves on the ACUI Leadership Team as the director of ACUI Region II, which covers a geographic region stretching from Mexico to Missouri. Schmidt and Gies were first-time attendees at an ACUI conference, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
“The conference was great networking experience” Schmidt said. “I had the opportunity to meet administrators from across the nation and learn how the Union can better serve our campus community.”
In addition to attending the conference, all three representatives from the Arkansas Union were involved as presenters. The team presented a joint virtual educational session, “Working With Your Hyper-Involved Students” which was open to attendees both in-person and online. Stagni was also a presenter in a multi-institutional session entitled “Not More, Not Less: Doing Different with Different,” discussing multiple institutions’ current situations with events, enrollment, policies, and future directions. On top of that, Gies was selected as a keynote panelist at the conference, participating with four other students at an all-conference panel focusing on students’ experiences and expectations from the past few years.
“It was such a privilege to share how my own college experience has been affected by the pandemic, as well as to listen to other students about how their campuses adapted” Gies said of the experience. “The panel largely focused not on lamenting what was lost, but rather what creative approaches we can continue to implement to ensure student success.”
Perhaps just as important as any educational content, the conference was a much-missed opportunity to reconnect. Stagni, who has attended every ACUI Annual Conference for a decade, remarked on the difficulties faced by Arkansas Union staff not being able to connect with other institutions.
“We’re community-builders,” Stagni said. “Connecting with other people – other students and staff at different institutions – that’s innate to who we are. We last saw our ‘union friends’ when we hosted the 2019 regional conference on our campus, and going two and a half years without being in the same room really made us appreciate the connections we had.”
The Union team has returned from Chicago with new ideas about how to help run the facility, and a new energy for doing so. The team’s attention turns to completing the 201 Infill project, which will create new space in the facility for the first time since the 1998 expansion. Future opportunities for renovation, furniture selections, and student recruitment will now benefit from the lessons the team learned at the conference, and the relationships built and strengthened there.