Building Confidence in Planning: Developing Planning Skills
Working Group

Join a Peer Working Group on Building Confidence in Planning

Whether you’re stepping into new planning responsibilities or looking to strengthen your existing practice, building confidence as a planner takes time, support, and reflection. This peer working group creates space for thoughtful conversation, shared learning, and skill-building across a range of planning experiences. Guided by an experienced higher education planner, the conversations are designed to help participants explore real-world challenges, exchange strategies, and learn from each other as they sharpen their planning mindset and approach.

Who Is This For

This working group is for higher education professionals who are actively building their planning skills and want to grow their confidence through peer support and shared learning. You’ll find it especially valuable if you:

• Are taking on new planning responsibilities and want to approach them with clarity.
• Support planning efforts in your department, unit, or institution.
• Want to improve how you contribute to planning conversations and decisions.
• Are looking for a space to reflect on challenges and learn with others facing similar situations.

Benefits

• Direct access to a small network of peers navigating similar challenges.
• A facilitated space to test ideas and refine approaches in real time.
• A break from institutional silos—engage in open, cross-institutional dialogue.

What to Expect

• Honest conversations with peers who are strengthening their planning skills.
• Facilitated prompts from an experienced planner that surface practical lessons, frustrations, and wins a supportive environment to reflect, share, and ask questions tools and strategies that help you grow your voice and impact as a planner.
• Connections with peers that can evolve into lasting professional support.

What Not to Expect

• A rigid structure that prioritizes content over conversation
• Dense slide decks or presentations
• One-way lectures or expert-only delivery
• Formal training or certification

Schedule: 10/22, 11/19, 12/17, 12pm-1pm (ET)

Facilitator

Dr. Lynn Akey

ChancellorUniversity of Wisconsin-Parkside

Registration

Note: This conversation will not be recorded.

Deadlines

You will receive an email, including meeting links, approximately one week prior to the beginning of the first session.

Registration will close on October 17, 2025 at 12:00 PM Eastern.

Please contact the us at registration@scup.org with any questions.