2027 Access, Connection, Engagement (ACE) Symposium

June 9-11, 2027 | Tucson, AZ

This national forum invites academic nursing administrators, faculty, and staff to engage with leading experts committed to the access and connection work of nursing education. Attendees will gain valuable insights and practical strategies for schools transitioning from awareness to action in preparing students to provide quality healthcare to all in an ever-changing landscape.

Conference Outcomes

• Examine factors that influence well-being across academic and practice settings, including burnout, incivility, bullying, overwork, moral distress, professional devaluation, and uneven experiences of support.
• Discuss how access, connection, and engagement shape whether students, staff, faculty, and nurses in practice feel healthy, psychologically safe, connected, valued, supported, and prepared.
• Explore how academic and practice environments can create different experiences of belonging, workload, opportunity, voice, progression, and professional respect across roles, backgrounds, identities, abilities, and lived experiences.
• Identify strategies to strengthen civility, fairness, connection, support, shared accountability, and professional dignity across classroom, clinical, and workplace environments.
• Identify systems-level approaches to reduce burnout, improve retention, support progression, and sustain the nursing profession across education and practice.

Who Can Attend

Academic nursing administrators, faculty, and staff.

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