Conference: 2025 Post-Secondary Summit

Join us for our annual summit which focuses on key strategic and legal issues facing Alberta’s post-secondary institutions.

Our panels will consist of lawyers (both from Field Law and institutions), professors, past Board members, key senior administrators, and other industry experts from across post-secondary, providing insights, discussion and advice drawn from years of practical experience in this unique area.

The Legal Landscape for Post-Secondaries: A Snapshot of Recent Legal Developments

As new legislation is enacted and judicial and arbitration decisions are released, institutions must navigate these developments with care and precision and adapt to a changing landscape. This presentation will highlight major legal trends, key reforms, and the impact of recent decisions. It will examine how the changing legal landscape has affected institutions, what challenges lie ahead, and what opportunities for adaptation and reform exist. 

Managing Complex Behaviors

Cases involving increasingly complex behaviours from students and employees are becoming more common, requiring a multi-faceted team and response by institutions to manage in order to meet legal and practical obligations for accommodations, safety, discipline, and other purposes. An panel of speakers from different institutions will speak to experiences, trends, and best-practices for collaborative institutional responses to these challenging and often prolonged situations.

Navigating Academic Appeals: AI, Complexity of Cases + Internal Resourcing

Institutions are grappling with a rapidly growing and increasingly complex set of challenges in this area. Procedural requirements have become more demanding, the number and complexity of cases continues to rise, and the emergence of AI has created new difficulties for both students and instructors. At the same time, many institutions may need to rethink and evolve their internal resources to keep pace. This session will examine the key issues driving these pressures and explore potential remedies.

Governance at Speed: Aligning External Pressures with Internal Realities Without Losing the Plot

PSE institutions are juggling rapid and evolving legislative demands, increasing conditions and compliance requirements from funding agencies, competing interest-group campaigns, and sometimes volatile public opinion. Inside, they face complex governance, varied stakeholders, collective agreements, entrenched values, and resource constraints that often align poorly with the external demands. In this moderated Q+A, experienced administrators will discuss effectively reconciling those tensions: how to triage these issues, when to adapt quickly, when to defend core principles (academic freedom, shared governance, institutional neutrality), aligning internal actors, communicating trade-offs credibly, and operationalizing decisions in this context. 

Innovation by Design: Building Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Higher Ed

As Alberta’s economic landscape evolves, post-secondary institutions are under increasing pressure to become catalysts for innovation and entrepreneurship. This session will bring together institutional leaders to discuss how colleges and universities are adapting—operationally and strategically—to create environments where innovation thrives. Through real-world examples of success and lessons learned from common challenges, the session will explore the policy development and structural changes needed to support entrepreneurial initiatives while staying true to academic values.

Challenges + Best Practices for Capital Projects Management

Modern post-secondary institutions’ capital projects can be numerous and complex, with vast and costly repercussions when difficulties arise. An experienced panel will review some of the most critical issues they have seen in different types of projects and advise on how best to approach them.

Potpourri Session

This interactive session will provide a valuable opportunity to engage in an open dialogue with your peers on issues of interest. Through an informal Q+A format, participants will be encouraged to ask questions, share insights, and discuss practical strategies for navigating the evolving landscape in post-secondary education. This session aims to foster collaborative discussions and provide actionable takeaways to address key challenges and opportunities.

Who Should Attend? The Summit has historically been a valued gathering and education opportunity for University Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Deans and other senior administrators, Board Chairs/Vice-Chairs and Committee Chairs, senior operational and governance staff and labour relations/human resource directors.