AACRAO 2024 Highlights

AACRAO Consulting

• We secured an 18-month project to design an SEM plan for the California State University (CSU) system, including all 23 public and regional institutions in partnership with the Education Strategy Group (ESG), The Burning Glass Institute, and Yes &.
• We hosted a convening in June 2024 to celebrate a year-long SEM planning project with the state of Louisiana Community and Technical Colleges, where all 12 colleges, with support from AACRAO Consulting, completed their individual SEM plans.
• The AACRAO SEM Pre-conference workshop on Leading Through SEM (Next Generation of SEM), facilitated by our two Managing Consultants and four Senior Consultants, had the highest attendance of all pre-conference workshops, with 64 senior leaders, including presidents, vice presidents, and associate vice presidents.
• We are developing consulting partnerships with other higher education organizations with subject matter expertise that complement AACRAO, e.g., CAEL, AIRC, and NACADA.

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Government Relations

• The AACRAO Government Relations team hosted the annual Congressional Hill Day event, where 27 AACRAO advocates from 20 different states met in person with over 90 congressional offices in one day.
• The GR team signed on to over 20 community letters on a range of issues from financial value transparency (FVT) and gainful employment (GE), to funding for the Federal Student Aid office, to visa processing and cybersecurity.
• The GR team shared insights on issues including proposed distance education regulations, partial withholding and partial transcript holds, as well as FVT/GE.

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International Updates

• AACRAO celebrated 75 years of IIE's Open Doors as an original partner of the Open Doors Joint Task Force.
• AACRAO partnered with Credential Engine on Credential Transparency Pilot Credential Engine and EDGE 4.0 Retreat.
• AACRAO International trained more than 100 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services personnel on education in Brazil, Colombia, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.
• 12 institutional participants successfully attended the Baden-Wurttemberg seminar alongside an AACRAO representative.
• We hosted a successful International Credential Evaluation Workshop at the 2024 Annual Meeting.

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Learning Mobility

• #LERAccelerator: AACRAO is leading the LER Accelerator Coalition, a coalition of national associations representing college campus stakeholders to address the slow adoption of digital credentials. The LER Accelerator Coalition will increase awareness of the need for and use of digital credentials, reduce obstacles to adoption for institutions and employers, develop guidelines for implementation and application, and demonstrate successful models and examples. Funding from Walmart enables the LER Accelerator Coalition to address the identified needs and challenges institutions experience when adopting digital credentials.
• Infuse: This month, AACRAO hosted a convening of key stakeholder groups, technology providers, and other industry leaders to advance the Infuse initiative. Designed to democratize access to innovative credentials, Infuse focuses on providing foundational LERs for millions of learners—particularly those at under-resourced institutions. By converting transcripts into structured data, leveraging AI to infer skills, validating credentials, and building a secure, interoperable infrastructure, Infuse seeks to enhance learner agency, reduce institutional barriers, and foster the adoption of equitable, scalable digital credentialing systems.
• Southeast Talent Collaborative: The Southeast Talent Collaborative is a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) project to provide a means to enable credential interoperability between Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR) and Alabama’s Talent Triad, Alabama's statewide Learner and Employment Record (LER). (Note - TBR administers the College System of Tennessee, which includes 37 Community & Technical Colleges.) A student receiving a CLR from TBR will be able to place their credentials, which include TBR asserted skills and competencies, and place them directly into the Alabama digital wallet/repository. The PoC will leverage the "Advanced Manufacturing" award, which will provide a demonstration of both digital and semantic (i.e., how asserted skills from TBR translate to Alabama's context) interoperability. The initial exchange of credentials is scheduled for January of 2025 (an administrative exchange of credentials) with the learner agency over their disclosure expected in June of 2025.

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Member Opportunities and Engagement

• AACRAO established our inaugural AACRAO Curriculum Committee.
• AACRAO conducted eight onsite international credential and admissions trainings.
• The SEM Endorsement Program (SEM-EP) graduated 10 learners in 2024. For the first time in the program's history, SEM-EP has graduated 10 or more learners for three consecutive years.
• SEM-EP admitted its 200th learner.
• The 2024 SEM Conference welcomed a record-setting 1,043 attendees and featured three new workshops.
• The AACRAO Awards Committee and Board of Directors created a new member award to recognize and celebrate the hard work and dedication of their peers. The State & Regional Leader Award recognizes significant contributions, accomplishments, and the exceptional leadership attributes of members within our State & Regional organizations.
• AACRAO introduced the Peer Mentor program. Since the program's creation, we have introduced two groups of peer mentors and a total of 176 participants. We added additional programming this fall, including monthly Lunch and Learn events.
• AACRAO launched Credential Chats. These are weekly, 15-minute conversations about how innovative credentials support learning mobility. With over 30 different guests, listeners have been able to hear from peers at other institutions, leaders from other professional organizations like UPCEA and NACADA, and industry experts.

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Research and Publications

• AACRAO published two AACRAO-member exclusive reports "Enhancing Accessibility and Inclusion: The 2024 Landscape of Credit for Prior Learning in U.S. and Canadian Higher Education" and "2024 Summary of U.S. Registrar Survey AACRAO Career Profile Series."
• AACRAO partnered with Ithika S&R to release "Balancing Access and Accountability: Assessing the Implications of the New Federal Transcript-Hold Regulation for Higher Education - Part 1" and "Balancing Access and Accountability: Assessing the Implications of the New Federal Transcript-Hold Regulation for Higher Education - Part 2."
• AACRAO partnered with Ad Astra for "The SPOT Advantage: Reimagining Academic Terms," a paper studying the adoption and outcomes of shortened parts of term.
• AACRAO released "Academic Operations and The Role of the Registrar," edited by Dr. Wendy Kilgore, Director of Research at AACRAO. This book draws from AACRAO's professional competencies and proficiencies, comprehensive practice surveys, policy insights, technology assessments, and staffing benchmarks to serve as a how-to guide. Tailored to benefit both novice and experienced registrars, "Academic Operations and The Role of the Registrar" equips readers with the knowledge and tools to champion agile and strategic academic operations, bolster learner success, and achieve institutional objectives.
• In preparation for the 2024 Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Conference, AACRAO released "SEM Core Concepts: Leading Toward Learner Success and Campus Enrollment Health," authored by Jody Gordon and Stanley E. Henderson. Informed by over 50 years of research and practice in SEM, this book outlines the definitions, principles, building blocks, frameworks, processes, steps, and options that colleges and universities can use as tools to build campus-specific enrollment best practices.

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