In his new book That Used to Be Us Thomas Friedman highlights four big challenges that face our society: globalization, hyper-connectivity, the national budget, and energy and climate. “These four challenges and how we meet them,” writes Friedman, “will define our future.”

Higher education has an enormous role to play in helping to meet these challenges. It is our brain trust and builder of knowledge, educator and developer of talent. Professional and continuing education plays a uniquely important role because it is through professional and continuing education that schools, programs, and units extend their resources to audiences far beyond their walls. The voice of professional and continuing education is the voice that speaks to the adult and nontraditional learner; it is the voice that engages, connects, extends, and bonds.

The University Professional and Continuing Education Association is the premier, international association for educators, administrators, and staff working in those areas. The annual conference is the place for professional education for those individuals; it is the meta venue for the work we do.

The theme of the 2012 UPCEA Annual Conference is Resilience, and the programmatic focus of the conference is sustainability. The two are different sides of the same coin: to be resilient, we must be sustainable; and if we are sustainable, we will be resilient. To meet the challenges that Friedman highlights, we must understand the issues, strategize about how to meet them, and plan next steps. The 2012 conference is designed to help participants do that.

The 2012 UPCEA Annual Conference consists of six distinct tracks, five of which are aligned with key areas of practice, and the sixth focuses on building a deep understanding of sustainability and resilience. The tracks culminate in “colleague conversations”—deeply intensive concluding sessions designed to ignite discussion and share best practices.

This is a critical time. The 2012 UPCEA Annual Conference will help participants address the critical challenges that face us today and that will continue to face us well into the future.

Conference Highlights: