As Co-Lead of ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect, a re-imag­ined col­lab­o­ra­tion between ASUG and SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances insti­tu­tions, I recent­ly had the hon­or of attend­ing this year’s SAP Aca­d­e­m­ic Com­mu­ni­ty Con­fer­ence North Amer­i­ca. Held July 20 – 21, at the SAP Cus­tomer Suc­cess Acad­e­my and SAP Engi­neer­ing Acad­e­my in San Ramon, Cal­i­for­nia, the onsite event fea­tured over 40 dif­fer­ent insti­tu­tions join­ing togeth­er to share knowl­edge, trade ideas, and gain inspiration. 

“Learn to learn,” said Kari­na Edmonds, SVP, Glob­al Head of Acad­e­mies and Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances at SAP, kick­ing off the pro­ceed­ings. ​“We are always learn­ing.” These words strong­ly res­onat­ed with atten­dees, as SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliance fac­ul­ty joined togeth­er to deliv­er this open­ing keynote ses­sion. Her words held true for every­one at the con­fer­ence, from vis­it­ing fac­ul­ty to SAP exec­u­tives, as all of us seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to share best prac­tices and lessons learned. 

One stand­out ses­sion, ​“The World Café: Devel­op & Grow Your SAP Pro­gram on Cam­pus,” offered a fresh and effec­tive struc­ture for ensur­ing everyone’s voice was heard. Atten­dees were ran­dom­ly assigned to small groups. The groups then rotat­ed through five 15-minute round­table dis­cus­sions, shar­ing ideas around how best to expand class­es, uti­lize admin­is­tra­tion sup­port, and engage with stu­dents. One of the biggest take­aways was that ​“stu­dent sup­port and fac­ul­ty sup­port go hand-in-hand.” 

Day-two TRED (Teach­ing, Research, Edu­ca­tion, and Diver­si­ty) talks fea­tured fresh ideas to keep stu­dents engaged. Nan­cy Jones, from San Diego State Uni­ver­si­ty, brought an inno­v­a­tive approach to keep­ing stu­dents engaged, using web-based ani­mat­ed soft­ware Pow­toon to cre­ate car­toons that describe process­es, which went above the nor­mal, dry text-book instruction. 

The dynam­ic duo of Lou Thomp­son and Mary Beth Goodrich, both from The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Dal­las, co-pre­sent­ed around their top ten lessons learned in teach­ing SAP and uti­liz­ing teach­ing aids. One way Lou keeps his stu­dents engaged is to reward stu­dents who can solve oth­er stu­dents’ prob­lems. Mary Beth, mean­while, uses a ​“Cir­cles” plat­form to allow stu­dents to con­nect, net­work, and trou­bleshoot issues as a group. (A fun fact I learned about these two is that Lou’s dog, Del­la, and Mary Beth’s dog, Scout, are poten­tial­ly soul­mates, accord­ing to their own­ers, who can’t wait to intro­duce them.) 

I had the hon­or of pre­sent­ing along­side Paul Kurchi­na, Com­mu­ni­ty Advi­sor at SAP, in the Con­nect with ASUG & SAP Com­mu­ni­ty Deep Dive ses­sion. It was great to hear from fac­ul­ty as they shared their ideas about how ASUG can bet­ter engage stu­dents as the ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect pro­gram starts to gear up. Stu­dents are the future of every indus­try, and it is impor­tant to bring engag­ing con­tent to Chap­ter meet­ings to earn their inter­est. Engage­ment ideas includ­ed host­ing com­pe­ti­tions, speed ​“dat­ing” for resume read­ings and net­work­ing, and incor­po­rat­ing more ERP­sim games that sim­u­late SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA envi­ron­ments to empow­er stu­dents to man­age their own vir­tu­al companies. 

Car­oli­nas, Dal­las-Fort Worth, and Michi­gan, will be the first three Chap­ters to incor­po­rate ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect at their fall Chap­ter meet­ings. Hav­ing expe­ri­enced the pow­er of these facil­i­tat­ed dis­cus­sions and net­work­ing first­hand, I can’t wait to get start­ed on the ​“glow­ing up” of ASUG Cam­pus Connect! 

Gwen­dolyn Glas­ner is Man­ag­er of Chap­ter Ser­vices at ASUG.