Apply Now for APLU Annual Meeting Turning Points Competition: APLU & USU to Host Turning Points — From Setback to Student Success Video Challenge

Recognizing that a mark of leadership is to learn from failure, APLU and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) will hold a special session, Turning Points: Moving from Setback to Success, at the APLU Annual Meeting on Sunday, November 13, 2016 in Austin, Texas. This unique and innovative panel will feature up to five APLU institutions as they highlight failures that triggered later successes in student access and degree completion. Panelists will be selected through a competitive format, which includes financial awards. Application is by video. Emails indicating interest in submitting are due by September 2, 2016. We invite institutions to submit their videos by September 30, 2016. More details on this opportunity can be found in the call for submissions. Please direct expressions of interest and any questions to Shari Garmise at sgarmise@aplu.org or 202-478-6064.

Supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this session will feature representatives from up to five universities who will share their institutions’ Turning Points stories that led to measurable student success. Turning Points is based on the Fail Festival concept, developed in the international development community, to recognize that success at scale means innovating, taking risks, and pushing boundaries. When you do all that, things don’t always work as planned. Leadership is taking those setbacks, learning from them, and turning them to success – hence Turning Points. The Fail Festival model features short, TED-like talks that are humorous in nature, outline key failures, why they happened, lessons learned and how they were turned into a success.

To apply for the opportunity to present at the APLU annual meeting and win a cash prize, institutions should prepare a 5-15 minute video that details their failures and how they eventually turned them into successes. The quality of the video is not important, but the quality of the presentation is critical. In addition to the quality of the content, we want to gauge how well someone would be at presenting on stage at the annual meeting.

A national committee will review all the video submissions and select up to five entrants. Those institutions will receive $5,000 and be invited to present their story during the Turning Points session. All travel costs will be paid and conference fees waived for the applicants chosen to present on the panel. In addition to the winners, up to 12 honorable mention videos will be selected and those institutions will be awarded $1,000 each (but receive no travel support). All of those videos will be played on a continuous loop on a television in the APLU exhibition hall throughout the annual meeting. Following the annual meeting, we will also develop a short report or infographic based on what we’ve learned from this important experience.

We encourage your institution to apply and look forward to a very exciting and educational experience at the APLU Annual Meeting.