The
Role of the Annual Conference in Strategic Planning
This section will help you to become acquainted with the role of the conference in the Association's strategic planning, the characteristics of institutions that have hosted effective conferences, and the benefits that have been associated with conference planning. The Annual Conference plays a pivotal role in bringing forward the goals of the AIS, particularly in creating a broad-based professional home for committed interdisciplinarians and a national clearinghouse of information on integrative and interdisciplinary approaches to the discovery, transmission, and application of knowledge. Many well-established integrative programs have gained their impetus from campus team involvement in AIS conferences, with both faculty and administrators participating in the AIS Orientation Plenary and reviewing case studies and literature from a wide range of institutions. Individual faculty members have prospered from a network for problem-solving and for collaborative research and teaching.
Each conference offers a new and often unique opportunity to reinforce these goals, based upon the themes put forward by the hosting school in collaboration with AIS. AIS has strongly supported conference themes that bridge both applied and theoretical areas, that promote consideration of the wider implications of individual cases, and that engage participants in a dialogue across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. Threaded through the conference are Board-led sessions that help to highlight, synthesize, and cultivate new directions for interdisciplinary practice and research. At the same time the AIS has welcomed the opportunity to highlight special programs at host institutions in order to feature the integrative and interdisciplinary work of a wide range of colleges and universities. The host institution's choice of a nationally recognized conference keynoter or keynote program/panel has also offered an opportunity to highlight a different feature of integrative or interdisciplinary work, performance, or study each year.