With the higher ed student population rapidly changing to majority “non-traditional” students, staying up-to-date on the latest innovations in edtech and holistic student support practices is vital to ensuring student success.

That’s why we’ve created a growing calendar of higher education conferences for student support/affairs professionals so you can have a centralized location for upcoming opportunities for learning, professional development, networking, or sharing some of your own learnings or practices.

The calendar below includes conferences on topics such as basic needs (housing, healthcare, etc.), policy, and equity-centered practices.

Here’s a list view, if you’d like to view multiple events at once. Otherwise, feel free to go through the traditional monthly calendar view!

For more info on how to go through the calendar, continue reading.

In our list view, conferences are sorted into either “Upcoming”, “Current” or “Past”. Toggle each section to see the events in that category. We’ve also sorted them by their start dates; closest start date to the furthest off start date.

In our calendar view, the statuses are color coded with upcoming events in blue, current events in yellow, and past events in green.

For each conference you can see the name of the hosting organization, dates, registrations fees, type of conference, attendance type (virtual, in-person, or both), location, and lastly a link to the conference’s landing page. To see a short description of a conference, click on the name of the particular conference to open its window.

By “type” we simply mean the general topic of the conference. For instance the #RealCollege 2022 conference is an annual conference on the policy, research, and practices surrounding meeting students’ basic needs in higher education. If you’re looking for a higher ed conference on basic needs, education, policy, AND equity, this is a conference you wouldn’t want to miss!

Our current list of conference topics include:

Great question! At BestFit, we believe holistically supporting student basic needs is the best way to ensure student success. The biggest barrier(s) to academic achievement for students often have very little to do with academics. Instead, they’re much more likely to be related to the accessibility and affordability of basic needs like food, medicine, shelter, etc. Relief is out there for students, but outdated and frustrating user experiences cause $12 billion in benefits to go unclaimed each year by eligible post-secondary students.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, this problem was only exacerbated for both colleges and their students as many students left higher education in droves. Colleges, universities, and practitioners have seen the time for modernizing their student support services is now. The basic needs conferences included provide great insights into innovative ways to ensure students have the non-academic support they need to complete their post-secondary education.

If you're looking for more on student basic needs, check out our SNAP (food stamps) eligibility and application guide for practitioners & students and our guide to Medicaid.

You should also note that the registration costs we’ve put down are one cost of attendance. Registration fees may vary based on membership, your organization's nonprofit status, and early or late registration.

Make sure you check out the host’s event page for the most accurate information on fees and other event details.

Yes! This calendar will be updated weekly as new conferences get announced. Don’t see a conference you’re looking for, or have one you think we should add to the list? Don’t hesitate to shoot us an email!