When you join the health and wellbeing revolution at the NIRSA 2019 Annual Conference & Campus Rec and Wellness Expo, you know you’ll be gaining all kinds of new ideas and seeing innovative examples of integrated wellbeing initiatives from your NIRSA family – as well as renewing and invigorating your energy to return to campus and put ideas into action.
Yet we all know that, by their nature, the success of integrated wellbeing efforts depends on more than just you and your campus recreation department – you need your partners in wellbeing on campus to buy-in and be on board as well.
So, this year, NIRSA wants to help you make that happen! Modeled after the Bring Your Boss opportunity, NIRSA is offering you the ability to Bring Your Health & Wellbeing Colleague with you to NIRSA 2019 in Boston! This can be a colleague or colleagues from counseling or psychological services, residence life, the student health center, student affairs, etc.
Use the robust conference program—with over 120 educational sessions, celebrated invited speakers, abundant networking opportunities, and high-energy expo experience—to generate ideas, ask and get answers to questions in real time, and formulate a shared vision of how to best pursue integrated wellbeing efforts on your campus.
There are numerous sessions highlighting the incredible wellbeing work happening on member campuses across North America. There are also some new and exciting ways to lean into this topic in Boston this year, including several presentations featuring a panel of international representatives who will share their approaches to integrating wellbeing and engage in conversations examining health and wellbeing frameworks as a catalyst for systemic change.
Other exciting new sessions will include a representative from Gallup sharing results from a study on college student wellbeing and engagement and evidence-based practices for a thriving student experience.
And, if you’ve ever felt starting – or building upon already great – work in this space can feel overwhelming and/or far too slow, a session on improvement science will provide practical methods and tools to help higher education professionals from diverse settings accelerate improvement of outcomes, while minimizing risks associated with failed initiatives.
Bringing a health and wellbeing colleague provides NIRSA members with an opportunity to learn alongside the integral players in the wellbeing space on their own campuses. These colleagues, who are otherwise unaffiliated with NIRSA, will be able to accompany you to this year’s Annual Conference by registering at the same professional registration rate that you paid! Just include their name, title, email address, and payment details when you complete your online or pdf registration form.
If you’ve already registered for conference and want to extend this offer to a colleague, no problem. You can still get your colleague registered! Just contact Rachel Hart, NIRSA’s Billing Coordinator, if you had already registered for conference. And, even if it takes a little extra time for your colleague to get their registration logistics squared away, they can still take advantage of the same member rate (including early bird discounted rates) you paid.
Erin O'Sullivan is currently the Director of Advocacy & Strategic Partnerships at NIRSA.
