2026 CHEC Virtual Conference


Save the Date:
July 29-31, 2026

The 2026 CHEC Virtual Conference is expanding and more dynamic than ever! Mark your calendar for July 29–31, when we bring you three powerful days of learning, connection, and innovation.

This year, we’re excited to introduce a brand‑new institute day along with an engaging pre-conference day to kick things off. The event will wrap up on Friday with a full slate of conference concurrent sessions designed to inspire and energize your work.

click here to login or create a new account and register

July, 29

View Description Now

July, 30

View Sessions Now

July, 31

View Schedule Now

2026 CHEC Virtual Conference Pricing Information

If you have any additional questions or concerns, please email us at  info@higheredcoaching.org.

click here to login or create a new account and register

Schedule

Below is the tentative event schedule, which is subject to change as details are finalized. All times listed are Central.

July 29
  • 9 a.m.–Noon – Institute Session 1
  • Noon–1 p.m. – Break
  • 1–5 p.m. – Institute Session 2
July 30
  • 10 a.m.–5 p.m. – Pre-Conferences (sessions are two or four hours)
  • Noon–1 p.m. – Break
  • 1–5 p.m. – Institute Session 2
July 31
  • 9–9:30 a.m. – Welcome & Business Meeting
  • 9:45–10:45 a.m. – Keynote
  • 11 a.m.–Noon – Session Block 1
  • Noon–1 p.m. – Break
  • 1–2 p.m. – Session Block 2
  • 2:15–3:15 p.m. – Session Block 3
  • 3:30–4:30 p.m. – Session Block 4
  • 4:30–5:30 p.m. – Networking Breakouts

CHEC Coaching Institute Day- July 29

As coaching continues to gain momentum in higher education, many professionals are seeking ways to move beyond tools and techniques toward more intentional, competency-based practice. This interactive full-day workshop explores how the  ICF Core Competencies come to life in higher education coaching conversations with college students. Participants will examine each competency through a higher education lens and engage in real-time practice using student-centered scenarios, including first-year transition, academic challenge, and student development. Through coaching demonstrations, and applied reflection, participants will strengthen their ability to create meaningful, growth-oriented conversations that foster student ownership, resilience, and success. This session is designed for both beginners who are new to coaching and trained professionals looking to deepen and refine their competency-based practice.

Pre-conference Day Sessions – July 30

Building a Coaching Program that Works: Using Data to Inform Structure, Strategy, and Scale
Coaching professionals understand the transformative power of coaching in educational settings, but sustaining and scaling that impact requiresintentional assessment and a strong evidence base. This session examines the launch of an academic coaching program, highlighting the developmentof evaluation frameworks, key data insights, and strategies for measuring effectiveness. Participants will explore how to leverage data not only to refinecoaching practice, but also to demonstrate value, strengthen stakeholder buy-in, and support long-term program growth.

Coach Training Changes Everything: Explore the Research, Reflect on Your Practice, and Apply It to Student Success
What makes a coach? As coaching gains traction within higher education, institutions increasingly grapple with this question while seeking cost effectiveways to prepare staff for coaching roles. Coaching psychology and professional standards emphasize that meaningful coaching requires immersivelearning and guided practice, yet empirical evidence supporting the impact of coach training remains limited. This interactive workshop sharespreliminary insights from a qualitative study of Slippery Rock University staff who completed a six month Academic Life Coaching program throughCoach Training EDU. Using collaborative narrative inquiry, researcher participants reflected on how immersive training shaped their identity, beliefs, andeffectiveness in supporting students. Participants will explore the study’s emerging themes while engaging in reflective activities that mirror its inquiryprocess. Participants will learn how comprehensive training can deepen educators’ coaching mindset and expand their capacity for transformationalconversations. Through research presentation, panel dialogue, and interactive reflection, participants will gain conceptual insight and practical tools.

Burnout is a Choice: Recovery Systems for High-Performance Coaches – and the Students They Work With
This presentation will center on burnout science in terms of what drives its occurrence, and how to best prevent and recover from it. Attention will be paidto the science of what is occurring when burnout occurs, the cycles of choice that lead to it happening, and how to intercede to prevent it from escalating.This presentation will be part lecture, part interactive activity, and part training on how to implement the tool – “Intentional Recovery Routines.” LearningOutcomes: 1. Understand the core drivers of burnout 2. Develop more intentional monitoring of burnout within self 3. Develop Intentional RecoveryRoutines for self 4. Learn to implement the Intentional Recovery Routine for others as coaches Objectives: 1. Equip professionals to understand, monitor,and avoid burnout 2. Equip professionals with effective Intentional Recovery Routines 3. Equip professionals with actionable skills to employ theIntentional Recovery Routine tool in their coaching practices

The Canary as a Compass: Values-Based Practices to Navigate Neurodivergence in Higher Education
Explore how values-based coaching can support more thoughtful, ethical responses to neurodivergence in higher education. Using insights from The Canary Code, this interactive session invites participants to examine real-world challenges, navigate complex systems, and apply shared values to coaching practice. Participants will leave with practical strategies and a personalized action plan.

The Power of Your Presence: Enhancing the Relational Climate of Your Coaching with Mind-body Skills
Rooted in research about autonomic nervous system functioning, stress transmission and the mind-body connection, this highly interactive session includes didactic, experiential, and reflective components. The didactic portion of the session will allow participants to build knowledge about the body’s autonomic nervous system, the personal and professional impacts of unregulated stress (including unintended negative impacts on those we coach), and three research based practices that can be used to regulate the body’s stress response – biofeedback, self-directed relaxation, and expressive meditation. After identifying different biofeedback devices that one can easily find right in their own office or home, participants will spend time engaging in expressive meditation and self-directed relaxation to consider how these change their embodied sense of calm. The session will close with a discussion about what participants observed from their biofeedback devices, how they were impacted by the mind-body practices, and the implications of what they have learned for their work as coaches – including the positive impact that a coach’s stress regulation can have on coach

“Who Am I Becoming?” – Coaching Through Identity, Culture, and Belonging
Academic coaching can be a powerful space to support identity development, meaning-making, and a sense of belonging, especially for first-generation, underrepresented, and minoritized students in higher education. By framing coaching as a relational and reflective practice, we can engage students in working through a deeper question: Who am I becoming? By integrating storytelling, guided reflection, and counter-narrative frameworks, academic coaching can work alongside students to help them make sense of their lived experiences across family, cultural, and institutional contexts. Participants will also engage in structured self-reflection to examine their own identities, assumptions, and coaching approaches. Through interactive activities and case-based examples, participants will learn how to facilitate strengths-based storytelling that centers resilience, cultural knowledge, and community assets. By centering students’ stories, this session offers a humanizing and culturally sustaining approach to coaching that fosters deeper engagement, identity building, and belonging.

Assessment Bootcamp: Measuring What Matters to Inform Decision-Making
This interactive workshop, designed for coaching professionals who want to strengthen their assessment practices and demonstrate impact, empowersparticipants to transform how they measure and elevate their programs. Participants will be guided step by step through the assessment cycle, movingbeyond basic participation counts to measure what their coaching programs are truly designed to accomplish: empowering student learning and behaviorchange and promoting student success, persistence, and thriving. Through practical examples and guided reflection, participants will learn how to alignoutcomes with their program mission, select effective measures, and design assessments that capture what matters most. The session highlights howprogram models shape assessment strategies, while addressing challenges such as selection bias and scalability. Participants will also discover how toleverage cross-campus partnerships to build sustainable, data-informed practices. Participants will leave with the tools and confidence to evaluate theircoaching programs effectively and convey their impact with clarity and accuracy.

Introduction to Basic Coaching Skills
This interactive workshop will include a general introduction to some fundamental skills often connected to academic coaching. The presenter willprovide a live coaching demonstration with a volunteer from the audience and an introduction to the four-part ION coaching model, a coaching modeldesigned in-house at the presenter’s home institution. Four essential life coaching skills will be introduced: 1) Establishing Trust, 2) Engaged Listening, 3)Powerful Questions, and 4) Well-Designed Actions. Built into each skill segment, there will be opportunities for attendees to practice and collaborate.After attending this workshop, participants will have a basic understanding of the value of a model for academic coaching, knowledge of four fundamentalskills necessary to begin practicing coaching skills, a coaching tool to use as a potential resource in coaching practice, and have an awareness ofseveral ICF Competencies.