Help Support the Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) Program!

Powering the Profession provides funding to Higher Education and Student Affairs students at NIU to engage in professional development, including organization memberships and conference attendance.

Professional development and networking opportunities are the cornerstone to establishing and advancing careers. With the expense of tuition, many students do not have the capacity to include professional development in their budgets. Additionally, HESA has very limited resources to support our students in engaging outside of the program in skill development, building networks, participating in scholarly conversations and presenting research and newly discovered knowledge.

Powering the Profession would establish a fund to provide students with financial support for a variety of career development and networking opportunities, including professional organization membership, regional and national conference participation and opportunities to submit proposals and present at conferences (often co-presenting with our faculty).

A targeted goal of this year’s campaign is to raise funds for ACPA – College Student Educators International’s 50th anniversary, which is being celebrated at the 2024 conference in Chicago. We are striving to bring a sizable contingency of HESA students to experience this milestone event.

We hope to expand this campaign to an annual giving event championed and led by HESA alumni.