CEA CAPA Education Abroad
2025 Forum Annual Conference

2025 Forum Annual Conference Highlights

CEA CAPA will be attending the 2025 Forum Annual Conference, ready to engage our peers in a stimulating, inspiring exchange of ideas. We’re excited to lead and participate in discussions with international education thought leaders about emerging trends and timely topics, and to reconnect with a community that’s dedicated to and passionate about the lifechanging work we accomplish together.  

Our attendees look forward to connecting with you and hearing about your institution’s latest updates. A link to schedule a meeting with one of our attendees will be available here soon. Be sure to also stop by our conference booth(#25) to say hello! 

CEA CAPA will also be hosting the Woolf Symposium in association with the Forum conference on Tuesday, March 18, 2025, at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel. Learn more and register here. 

CEA CAPA Session Presentations

Wednesday, March 19, 2025
 
Pre-conference Workshop | Empowering Leadership: Upskilling Your Team for Student Services Success 
Wednesday, March 19, 2025, 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. US EST
CEA CAPA Speakers: Eryn Kudzinski
Maintaining a skilled and prepared workforce is both an essential competency of leaders in education abroad and a persistent challenge in a highly fluid global environment. Those dedicated to direct support of student life face growing expectations of keeping their skills current as evolving student needs and issues become increasingly complex. This workshop will provide a framework for designing your own program in alignment with the Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad. Using examples from actual training sessions, participants will emerge with an understanding of their team’s training needs, the tools to create high-quality staff training modules, and examples of specific sessions related to health, safety, and wellbeing.

Thursday, March 20, 2025
 
Stranger in a Strange Land
Thursday, March 20, 2025, 3:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m. US EST
CEA CAPA Speakers: Dr. Martha Johnson, Beth Stiller
How do new leaders join and learn the field of international education? What observations and reflections can newcomers offer? In this session, two senior executives from different organizations and backgrounds will share their insights and journey as newcomers in the field. What makes it different? What can we learn from other industries? We will discuss how we can better engage professionals with different skills and perspectives as we grow and professionalize international education.

Storytellers of the Education Abroad Galaxy: Personal Narrative Advocacy
Thursday March 20, 2025, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. US EST
CEA CAPA Speaker: Aaron Yerkes
What’s your Education Abroad superpower? In this session, participants will reflect and develop their professional “origin story” and think about what unique talents they bring to the field and apply them to identified professional goals/next steps. Through interactive activities, participants will get the opportunity to practice sharing their international ed “superpowers” and form international ed “super groups” that will go on to significantly contribute to the field’s knowledge economy.

Friday, March 21, 2025  

Management for Humans: Leading Staff with Authenticity & Compassion
Friday March 21, 2025, 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. US EST
CEA CAPA Speaker: Dr. Martha Johnson
In recent years International Offices have faced unprecedented upheaval, unforeseen challenges and changing ways of working. The growing importance of diversity, inclusion and wellbeing in the workplace underscores the need for managers to respond to staff’s individual needs. Speakers will discuss how authenticity, accountability and compassion helped navigate uncertainty within their teams and build inclusive workplace cultures. Attendees will be invited to share their experiences as well.

Invisible Worlds
Friday March 21, 2025, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. US EST
CEA CAPA Speaker: Michael Woolf
The space occupied by ghosts, goblins, myths and legends, has shrunk, but not everywhere and not as much as we suppose. This session uses myth, not in the contemporary sense as something untrue but as a story and presence embedded in collective consciousness, representing accepted and influential narratives. If we pay attention to the invisible and imagined, what might we reveal about the dreams and fears of our students, the places and communities they move through, and even ourselves?

How the Sausage is Made: Exploring Diverse Possibilities for Partnership
Friday March 21, 2025, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. US EST
CEA CAPA Speaker: Dr. Stina Dufour
Hot dogs, like partnerships, are often oversimplified in the public imagination: ubiquitous & with ingredients of mysterious origin, whose core components come in mismatched quantities. Yet in practice, they feature countless ingredients and styles. Using the Forum Standards as a signature ingredient, seasoned practitioners representing the institutional & provider perspective offer recommended pairings for EA professionals to create partnerships that may satisfy their institutional goals.