By Alex Lojko, Director, Membership and Operations, AACRAO
AACRAO implemented the biggest change to its membership structure in two decades. Over the past year, this change led to many exciting developments for the association—the most significant being a 60% increase in our membership. These 7,000 new members work across 1,400 institutions, meaning nearly two-thirds of all AACRAO member institutions added new members over the last year.
New members have taken advantage of numerous professional development opportunities, including courses, publications, EDGE, and the ASCEND Leadership Development Program. Perhaps most exciting is the incredible participation in our conferences, with new members making up roughly 15% of participants at the 2024 AACRAO Annual Meeting in April and nearly half of the participants at the 2024 SEM Conference in November. This most recent SEM Conference, with over 1,000 attendees, marked the highest attendance in the conference’s 34-year history.
Stronger Together
By reaching deeper into our member institutions, we strengthen AACRAO’s membership community and ensure our guidance and resources reach as many individuals on campus as possible. This growth also allows us to support career pathways and provide entry-level professionals with valuable networking, learning, and credentialing opportunities. Our larger, more diverse membership base fosters increased involvement and collaboration. We unleashed an incredible opportunity to reach new and experienced professionals who may have been unfamiliar with AACRAO before the membership structure change.
When AACRAO implemented a new strategic plan in 2021, one of the goals was to “reimagine engagement and community, through both digital and in-person modalities, for the membership of diverse professionals who have a variety of roles and complex responsibilities.” Around the same time, we began discussing ways to realize this goal by reimagining our membership structure. The Board Governance Sub-Committee and AACRAO Staff considered many factors, but inclusivity and membership access were the top priorities. We decided early on to lift the restrictions on member roster size and open up AACRAO membership to any employee of a member institution.
What's Next
We are excited about this new chapter and its potential for AACRAO and its members. As we look forward to 2025, AACRAO continues to advocate for the value of higher education amid a changing landscape. Our changes to the membership structure may seem only tangential to this evolving environment. Still, they represent a commitment to share our knowledge and policy-based guidance with as many higher education practitioners as possible. We hope to see even more members join AACRAO and look forward to another year of advancing institutional and learner success.
Use our status check tool to check your current membership status or find out if you are eligible to join an unlimited institutional roster. You can also contact the AACRAO Membership team at membership@aacrao.org or 202-355-1040.