Welcome to SEM 2019!  The conference promises to offer you a stimulating environment in which to consider how your work is impacting student success and institutional health. The speakers, sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities are designed to generate new ideas, both confirm and challenge the initiatives you have undertaken, and to allow you time to interact with your colleagues—one of the most valuable aspects of the meeting.

 

As a primer to the conference, Managing Editor Heather Zimar selected a number of articles from the most recent volumes of SEM Quarterly. These articles reflect the panorama of SEM research and practice today. While SEM was born in private, nonprofit American colleges and universities, its concepts have spread to every institutional type and level, and across the globe.  As practice has matured and SEM is implemented in new settings, it takes on nuances that are important to understand, study, and report.  This special edition of SEMQ is designed to reflect the breadth of SEM today, and to seed the ground for your experience at SEM 2019 in Dallas, Texas.

 

Please enjoy this special edition of the journal.  Heather and I hope you find it useful in framing some of your thoughts about SEM and that it inspires you to investigate the ways in which SEM is practiced at institutions like yours and in those that are quite different.