CUPSO 2026 Annual Conference Session Descriptions

Here you can explore descriptions of the various sessions on the CUPSO Annual Conference Agenda. Descriptions are provided alphabetically, by title.

A    B    C    D    E    F    G    H    I    L    N    O    P    R    S    T    U    W

A

Anchorage Museum Exploration and Tours
Description Coming Soon

B

Beyond Research to Building Trust: Focus Groups as Engagement 
Focus Groups are often criticized as extractive research tools or spaces where communities are asked to share experiences with little immediate benefit to themselves. This Lightning Talk draws on a partnership between the Walter Rand Institute, Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine, Inspira Health, and the Rutgers School of Nursing to reimagine this model. Catalyzed by trusted community partners, focus groups for this South-Jersey based project not only provided rich qualitative data but became spaces for real-time education, trust building, and action. We explore ethical and methodological considerations for research that prioritizes both rigor and responsiveness.


 

Building Stronger Rural Futures
This panel will explore effective, evidence based strategies for strengthening the capacity of rural communities to take action and drive meaningful change. Rural areas across the country continue to navigate persistent challenges, from poverty and limited housing options, healthcare shortages, and aging populations, to lack of a strong pipeline for local leadership and deteriorating infrastructure. In this session, CUPSO members working in rural and frontier states will share how they have partnered with communities to mobilize local assets, elevate local leadership, and cultivate vibrant, desirable rural communities. 


 

Building Successful Collaborations Across Multiple States and Institutes
This roundtable session draws on a successful collaboration between public service researchers at the University of Wyoming, University of Montana and Boise State University regarding tourism  growth in the rural west, drawing on economic and community data around tourism visitation, housing affordability, youth out-migration, workforce shortages, and resident sentiment. The roundtable will highlight the benefits and challenges of creating a multi-state, multi-institute collaboration. Participants will explore actionable strategies for developing collaborative, and multi-state research that identifies and responds to strategic inflection points in communities they serve to collaboratively promote proactive, data-informed decision-making and communication from higher education and local governance. 


 

C

Capacity Management for Public Service Professionals
University-based public service organizations must constantly balance three competing priorities: advancing the public good; operating as a sustainable business; and attracting, retaining, and developing staff. Without the proper tools, these priorities along with the management of multiple concurrent projects can become reactive, making it difficult to align impactful work commitments with internal limitations. This workshop will focus on building organizational capacity by assisting leaders and project managers to move from reacting to proactive, capacity-informed decision making. Participants will be introduced to a practical capacity management framework designed to address complex organizational structures using tools you already have at hand. 


Conflict Resolution for Public Events
Guided by two conflict resolution practitioners, this interactive workshop will focus on managing participants during public events (workshops, meetings, listening sessions, etc.) Participants will explore the psychology of public frustration, recognize the signs of escalating conflict, practice strategies to defuse tension and maintain control during heated discussions, and develop personal confidence in managing confrontational moments. By providing participants the opportunity to reflect on the “meeting from hell,” this workshop will explore personal perceptions of conflict, valuable steps in meeting preparation, key meeting roles, and how to set the tone with public participants. Participants will leave equipped to prevent the “meeting from hell.”

D

Deepening Impact within Your Ecosystem
University-based public service centers exist to integrate research, practice, and policy to advance societal change, yet many are navigating shifting policy environments, evolving stakeholder expectations, and increasing resource uncertainty. The challenge is not only sustaining the organization, but also clarifying and deepening its impact within the ecosystem it serves. In this roundtable-style workshop, Purdue University's Center for Early Learning (CEL) and Saath Partners will share how CEL used systems thinking to redefine its role within Indiana’s early learning ecosystem. Participants will have an opportunity to identify common types of strategic inflection points that affect public service centers, apply a simple systems-thinking approach to map their ecosystem and clarify where their center creates distinctive value, and generate actionable next steps to realign strengths, partnerships, and activities with evolving system needs. 

Designing Training that Builds *Both* Skills and Leaders
Public Service leaders are navigating unprecedented complexity, rapid change, and shrinking organizational capacity. While technical training continues to draw strong participation, leadership development opportunities–particularly those grounded in self-awareness, reflection, and adaptive skill-building–often struggle to attract the same audiences. Yet these “soft skills” are precisely what emerging and transitioning leaders need to manage uncertainty and build resilience. This interactive panel will highlight stories from multiple public service centers of various sizes from across the country that are grappling with this issue; identify strategies for designing, framing, and recruiting for leadership learning opportunities; and create space for participants to explore actionable ideas for their own context. 

E

Empowering Communities to Save Lives
Over the next 15 years, Local governments will receive billions of dollars from opioid settlement agreements that come with strict requirements to ensure funds address the opioid crisis. The University of Tennessee Institute for Public Service’s SMART Initiative supports communities in managing these resources responsibly.  As the technical assistance partner to the Tennessee Opioid Abatement Council, SMART is leading statewide implementation under a $2.4 million contract. By equipping county leaders with the tools and accountability structures needed to steward funds effectively, SMART strengthens collaboration, expands access to critical services, and helps ensure settlement dollars save lives across Tennessee.

F

Federal-State Nexus: Insights for Policymakers
As federal policies shift and spending priorities are reevaluated, it is more important than ever for state and local leaders to have access to summary briefs covering the scope and scale of their state’s economic relationship with the federal government. To aid Utah’s decision-makers, the Gardner Institute produced a series of publications examining key aspects of the Utah/federal government nexus. These briefs provide data and insights on 13 critical topics. This lightning talk will share how these briefs and the videos that accompanied them were used by policymakers and community leaders in early 2025. 

From Data Silos to Shared Infrastructure: Building a Regional Data Ecosystem with the Carolinas Regional Explorer 
The Carolinas Regional Explorer is a scalable data and analytics platform built by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute to support research and policymaking across a diverse 14‑county region. By integrating federal, state, local, and administrative data through the Charlotte Regional Data Trust, the Explorer centralizes information that governments, nonprofits, and practitioners can access based on their needs and capacity. This shared infrastructure reduces duplication, lowers technical barriers, and enables consistent yet locally adaptable regional analysis. This lightning talk will highlight lessons learned, governance and partnership models, and how similar data ecosystems can be replicated to strengthen public service capacity nationwide.

G

Getting to “Yes” on Affordable Housing Policy 
For the first time since data collection began, housing costs in Arizona exceed the national average. Housing prices outpacing income, supply chain disruptions, low vacancy rates, and record levels of evictions and homelessness all contribute to a statewide housing crisis. In 2024, the Arizona Research Center for Housing and Economic Solutions (ARCHES) polled 850 likely voters in Maricopa County on their experiences with the housing market. The poll used an experimental design to test how language usage shapes housing policy support. The results offer insights for fostering constructive community dialogue and avoiding terms that shut down dialogue around housing solutions.

H

Helping Missouri Navigate Competing Models for Kinship Care 
Federal and state policy prioritizes placing children with kin when they cannot remain with their parents. To support this goal and provide access to federal Title IV-E funds, The Institute of Public Policy and the Human Services Research Institute are helping the Missouri Department of Social Services (DSS) and five kinship navigator programs (KNPs) select and prepare to replicate a federally-rated Title IV-E program. Because Missouri’s KNPs vary in services, tools, and data systems, the team engaged stakeholders and compared existing models to identify the best fit. They are now working with DSS and the KNPs to assess alignment and prepare for successful statewide implementation.

Higher Ed at the Inflection Point 
This opening roundtable will provide a chance for Leaders of Public Service Organizations (PSOs) to connect around challenges and opportunities. We will also have an opportunity to discuss the role of PSO’s at a critical moment when higher education faces major headwinds including erosion of public trust, questioning of higher ed's value proposition, federal and state funding changes, and looming demographic declines. How can PSO’s help universities use these challenges as an inflection point to transform and improve, conserve, or right-size? Led by Phil Dean, Chief Economist and Research Director, Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah and former budget director for the State of Utah, this roundtable will draw on applied examples from the Gardner Institute as a starting point for a discussion of how CUPSO members are uniquely situated to help our institutions bridge the gaps between the university, policy makers, and the broader public.

I

Intergovernmental Services Agreement (IGSA) Framework: An Essential Foundation for Innovation
This lightning talk will showcase innovative projects completed through the Carl Vinson Institute’s IGSA framework, with a focus on environmental management, planning, and design. It will also highlight the administrative systems that make IGSA work—from contracting, budgeting, and compliance to risk management and partnerships with contracting offices and legal counsel. Together, these examples illustrate the procedural structures that support efficient project delivery while maintaining strong accountability and transparency.

ISER 65th Anniversary Celebration
Description Coming Soon

L

Leadership: Tapping into Your Core Values 
Values-based leadership is essential for building trust, clarity, and integrity in public service organizations, yet how often do we pause and reflect on the values that guide our work? This interactive mini‑workshop introduces the importance of leading from a foundation of core values and explores how values shape everyday decisions and behaviors. Participants will engage in a hands‑on values‑sorting exercise to identify and clarify their own core values and consider how those values show up in their leadership practice. The session concludes with a practical framework for facilitating similar conversations with their teams, helping leaders cultivate shared values that strengthen team culture and align collective effort.

 
Leading Through Change: Riley Center's Role in Supporting AI Adoption
As Artificial Intelligence reshapes the professional landscape, public service organizations face a critical question: What is our role in helping state, local, and nonprofit partners navigate this shift? This lightning talk outlines how the Riley Center has begun exploring this challenge through three primary domains: leadership training, collaborative learning, and data sharing.

Legislative Leadership Development: Connecting State Legislators with Your Resources
This lighting talk will share specific examples of Legislative Leadership Education that have been provided to the Georgia General Assembly, including New Legislator Orientation, the Biennial Institute, and the Georgia Leadership Institute. It will explore meaningful leadership development content for state legislators, strategies for connecting public service and outreach resources with legislative leadership programs, and effective systems for program evaluation. The roundtable discussion will dive more deeply into how centers can replicate these efforts to strengthen their own State Legislatures. 

Leveraging AI to Improve Your Communications Game
This session explores practical ways organizations can use generative AI and interactive data tools to enhance communication, accessibility, and decision‑making. Presenters will showcase how AI-powered resources—such as chatbots trained on organizational publications and websites—can make complex research more discoverable, generate insights into user intent, and inform smarter content strategy. Complementing these approaches, the session will demonstrate how static reports can be transformed into dynamic, easy‑to‑navigate Power BI dashboards that allow users to filter, visualize, and interpret data in more meaningful ways. Together, these tools illustrate how applied AI and data visualization can elevate the user experience, strengthen engagement with key audiences, and support more informed policymaking and resource allocation.

n

• Navigating AI Integration in Local Public Service
  Description Coming Soon
  
  Navigating Political Neutrality: What it Gives Us – And What it Costs Us
  Political neutrality has long been a core value for many public service centers. But it can feel unachievable in reality – especially in an increasingly polarized world. What does neutrality help us achieve as university-based public service organizations? Who appreciates it? Who doesn’t? What do we achieve and what do we forego in our effort to be neutral? This roundtable will invite a frank and open discussion on the pros and cons of political/policy neutrality when it comes to funding applied research, professional public service programs, and technical assistance for state agencies and local governments. The group will be invited to explore questions like:
   - What does this mean for the future of our work?
   - Is being “bipartisan” a substitute for “neutrality?”
   - Does it help to find and align with other neutral institutions (and what are those)? 
   - What does the rise of unaffiliated voters mean for neutrality in government work?
  
  NextGen Leaders for Public Service: Does it Increase Student Interest in Public Service? 
  The Schaefer Center for Public Policy launched its NextGen initiative in 2022 to inspire University of Baltimore students from all majors to pursue public service careers. Since then, students in the program’s paid internships have contributed over 103,000 public service hours in more than 630placements. This lightning talk will present early evaluation findings on how the program shapes students’ views of public service and strengthens their professional skills, with results disaggregated by key student demographics, when possible.

O

Opening Roundtable for CUPSO Staff
Description Coming Soon

Oregon Trust in Elections Project: Research-Practitioner Partnerships for Civic Engagement
The Oregon Trust in Elections Partnership brought together election administrators and researchers to better understand—and strengthen—public confidence in Oregon’s elections. Working with the UC San Diego Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections, the Elections & Voting Information Center co‑designed a research agenda with the Oregon Association of County Clerks, county election offices, and the Secretary of State’s Elections Division. The team fielded a new statewide survey exploring voter knowledge, confidence, and perceptions of election administration, with special attention to urban–rural differences. An experimental component tested short election‑process videos, which measurably boosted viewers’ confidence in elections. 

P

Participatory Data Governance: A Shared Commitment to Use of Data Throughout the Data Lifecycle
We have greater opportunities than ever before for complex data about people and places to inform complex policy problems. But how do we ensure that data is used ethically? Participatory data governance is the intentional involvement of people with diverse experiences, expertise, and skill who have shared decision-making about how data are used. In this session, we will share what participatory data governance looks like at the Charlotte Regional Data Trust, discuss the challenges and payoff of establishing meaningful participation across the data lifecycle and provide steps for how you can implement best practices in your own work.

Poster Showcase
Description Coming Soon

Progressive Walking Tour
Description Coming Soon

Public Service Across Alaska: From Urban to Remote
Description coming soon

R

Rallying Around Reading
Third grade reading proficiency is a quiet crisis–an issue that impacts all facets of society and yet rarely gets the attention that it deserves. The Wichita Collective Impact (WCI) effort led by the Public Policy and Management Center with other community organizations has been a three-year effort to get momentum to move this issue forward. Learn about our journey of using what we do best – data integration, building coalitions, and navigating politics (yep, even in student reading) to chart a course forward. This lighting talk will share the wins, the losses, and the lessons learned. 

S

Strategic Planning Yourself
In our roles leading public management/service organizations, we so often teach others how to do things, but we seem to forget how to do them ourselves or don’t practice what we teach. Time management seems to be one of the leading topics that we struggle with simply because our workloads and demands are such that we put ourselves at the bottom of our priority list. But we cannot pour into others if our cups are empty. (Note: Kristi has offered to present a more complete version of this workshop at the fall conference in Boston. This session will both preview and help shape that session.) 

Strengthening Educational Equity and Instructional Quality
This lighting talk highlights two applied policy research initiatives conducted in partnership with Delaware state agencies to strengthen educational equity and instructional quality across diverse learning contexts. While distinct in population and context—one focused on statewide curriculum alignment and the other on education within secure residential settings—both projects share a common framework: collaborative, cross-institutional research designed to address complex, real-world policy challenges. Each initiative required coordination across university teams, state agencies, and impacted stakeholders; rigorous qualitative and quantitative inquiry; and the development of practical recommendations that moved from report to implementation. 

Structuring an Evaluation from a Failed Research Plan 
The Idaho Policy Institute (IPI) was asked to evaluate an NSF grant after the initial evaluator’s report was rejected. The big challenge: existing evaluation elements—interviews, surveys, reflections—couldn’t be changed. This lightning talk shares how IPI redesigned the evaluation within those constraints, added continuous feedback processes, and worked with faculty across four universities to strengthen their own research practices. The session highlights successes and lessons learned, with broader implications for applied policy work including improving data quality, rebuilding confidence after a negative review, and helping researchers understand the value of qualitative data in community‑engaged work.

T

The Domino Effect: Automating Program Evaluation Creates Capacity and Greater Impact 
For years, the Missouri Teen Pregnancy Prevention evaluation relied on manual data entry, repetitive reporting, and rigid timelines that left little room for deeper analysis. That changed when we asked: What if more of this could be automated? We redesigned the process using Excel macros, Power BI templates, Python-based automation, and cross-team collaboration to replace time‑consuming tasks with scalable systems. The result was not just efficiency but new capacity—space for longitudinal insights, clearer communication with stakeholders, and a modernized approach to managing complex data. A once static process is now a flexible system that enables greater impact.

 

U

Understanding Alaska's Indigenous Context
Alaska is home to over 150,000 Indigenous people, 229 Federally Recognized tribes, 12 regional Native corporations, and 225 Native village corporations. In addition, there are Native non-profit organizations and health consortia, and a host of other Indigenous entities across the state. The legal, political, and social status of Indigenous peoples in Alaska differs from elsewhere in the US, as do many of the challenges and opportunities for Indigenous communities and residents. This panel will feature leaders from a diverse array of Indigenous organizations sharing about the unique Indigenous governance, economic, and social structures of the region.

Understanding and Assessing Civic Health in Turbulent Times 
Civic health reflects the strength of local democracy: how much do people trust each other, show up at public meetings, get involved, help their neighbors? This lightning talk will highlight ways to amplify civic engagement in the communities you serve and to measure the impact of your initiatives. Based on the work of the Carsey School’s New Hampshire Listens, and its Civic Health Assessment, this talk will address challenges to civic health and demonstrate appropriate techniques for measuring civic health.


W

When Big Change Feels Constant
How do university-based public service organizations weather constant change in our own circumstances? This lighting talk begins with how to determine whether you are in the normal “churn” of change, or whether a particular inflection point (or set of changes) is, in fact, a paradigm shift. It will focus on challenges to leaning in strategically and how to invest (strategically and fiscally) at a time when uncertainty rules. It will also address the tension between being nimble versus maintaining strategic and mission integrity.