Americas Accreditation Conference

Interact with our exhibitors to learn more about products and services that can help your organization.

Join us for a welcome message from AACSB International Leadership followed by the opening keynote session.

If you have an upcoming Continuous Improvement Review (CIR) visit, this session is for you! This session provides attendees with an opportunity to ask the Chair of the Continuous Improvement Review Committee and the Vice President of Accreditation your specific questions on the CIR process, visit planning and execution strategies, 2020 standards, and more.

If you have an upcoming Initial Accreditation visit in the next two years, this session is for you! We invite you to bring questions related to the initial accreditation process, and we will discuss how to prepare for a visit, how to manage a visit, and what to do when the unexpected happens.

This session will give a high-level overview of what key elements make for a good strategic plan, with a focus on key performance indicators and developing a proper risk assessment. This session is in correlation with Standard 1 and will focus on how to identify unsystematic risks and mitigate major risks.

A key component of Standard 1: Strategic Planning is ensuring a strategic plan can evolve as needed to align with updated goals and the direction of the business school. Speakers will share key components to successfully refreshing a strategic plan. Learn how to break the traditional mold of a 5 year strategic plan and how to embrace agile strategic planning. They will also provide examples of transitioning between strategic plans without losing momentum.

How can a business school develop a meaningful partnership with a school outside of their country and why is it beneficial? Partnerships are interwoven throughout the Standards and a good partnership can help drive societal impact efforts, expand experiential learning opportunities, and drive impactful faculty intellectual contributions. Speakers will share the logistics of developing a global business school partnership, the benefits for both parties, as well as the challenges that can occur.

Interact with our exhibitors to learn more about products and services that can help your organization.

In this session AACSB staff will walk attendees through some of the tables that need to be completed during the accreditation process. Attendees will learn what the most common challenges schools have when completing accreditation tables and how to ensure you don’t miss the mark.

How does one operationalize lifelong learning and embed it into one’s strategy, programs and offerings? Learn best practices in sustaining continuous learning efforts and how to nurture the lifelong learning mindset of faculty with respect to their domain expertise.

This session will highlight key components of Standard 3 and share best practices in maintaining, supporting and deploying faculty. Learn how to ensure that your faculty members support your business school’s programs, mission, strategies, and expected outcomes.

Learn how schools are creatively embedding evaluation of teaching effectiveness and impact to their systematic processes. Hear best practices in multi-measure evaluations outside of just student evaluation, as well as successfully evaluation methods of online and hybrid programs.

This interactive session will share anonymized feedback from recent Host School evaluations following their accreditation visits this year, including what went well, and where we can continue to improve the PRT visit experience. The session is aimed at helping PRT members and Host Schools alike see what’s working and what’s not so we can realize our goal of the AACSB PRT visit being a valued experience by all.

Reconnect with old friends, make new ones, and network with the exhibitors. Relax and enjoy the company of your colleagues.

Interact with our exhibitors to learn more about products and services that can help your organization.

Connect with peers in a Networking Community Meeting! More details coming soon.

How does the accreditation process positively impact your institution’s processes and organization culture? What are challenges your organization has had to face because of accreditation? How has accreditation sparked innovation and new ideas at your b-school? Join this session to hear best practices in moving through the accreditation process in a timely manner and how to keep the ball rolling in your strategic efforts. 

Best practices in tailoring curricula, learning objectives, pedagogy, assessment, and course design to accommodate the new technology.

Learn strategies to approach various aspects of benchmarking, including understanding one’s competitive network and establishing measures of success.  

Interact with our exhibitors to learn more about products and services that can help your organization.

Learn how to align with the spirit and intent of the societal impact expectations embedded in the 2020 AACSB accreditation standards. And, participate in a hands-on interactive activity designed to ensure your school is ready to go on developing its societal impact strategy and plan. You will leave this session with a clear picture of how to choose a focus area for your societal impact and guidelines on measuring your school’s impact.

Developing and implementing an effective, and sustainable assurance of learning process presents a significant challenge to most schools. Given the commonalities in the accreditation journey, it isn’t surprising that schools face common challenges building AoL processes and systems. Frequently faced challenges include process efficiency, faculty engagement and building a continuous improvement-focused culture, effectively using AoL data, and capturing the AoL process and its detail in effective documentation. This session will examine the most common challenges schools face creating and operating AoL processes including discussion of likely causes and simple solutions to overcome such challenges. Participants will complete an inventory designed to help them identify which challenges they are facing in their own assessment processes and which solutions are optimal for their context.

This panel discussion will highlight how business schools have approached challenges during the accreditation process, as well as after becoming accredited. Challenges that will be discussed in this fireside chat discussion include managing leadership changes, partnering with non-accredited schools, and experimenting with alternative solutions to accounting requirements.