Gearing Up for NASPA’s 2025 Strategies Conference

Gearing Up for NASPA’s 2025 Strategies Conference

-Sean Fearns and Richard Lucey, Jr.

  We always look forward to this time of year as we continue our partnership with NASPA—Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, and help to cosponsor its annual Strategies Conference. Attending this year’s conference in Boston gives us the chance to see longtime friends and colleagues, and develop new professional relationships with individuals and organizations from across the nation.

It promises to be a very busy and productive week at the conference for us as we participate in a variety of sessions in which DEA is either presenting or helped to organize. Here’s a brief summary of the conference sessions in which you can interact with DEA staff and/or see our resources:

Wednesday, January 15, 9:00am – 5:00pm (ET)

Join Rich Lucey, Dr. David Anderson, Dr. Shawnte Elbert, Dr. Allison Smith, Kelly Truesdell, and Dr. Katrin Wesner-Harts as they present Leveraging Drug/Alcohol Misuse Prevention Strategies: Grounded, Practical, and Impactful Leadership. With drug and alcohol misuse continuing to affect students’ success, mental health, and quality of life, enhanced leadership is essential for making a substantive difference. During this full-day pre-conference session, campus and organization leaders will gain confidence and enhanced competence for leading quality prevention efforts with an extensive ‘tool box’ of resources, strategies, and skills. Highlighting aspirational and practical leadership, emphasis is on implementing grounded, data-driven, evidence-informed, locally appropriate, and comprehensive approaches.

Thursday, January 16, 2:30pm – 3:30pm (ET)

Join Rich Lucey and Dave Closson as they lead a roundtable discussion titled What Prevention Resources are Needed Across the Professional Experience Continuum? During this session, Rich and Dave will facilitate conversation with attendees around gaps in training topics and resources needed by campus- and community-based professionals to prevent drug use and misuse among college students. With a particular emphasis on the wide range of knowledge and experiences of professionals - from entry-level to seasoned - information from this discussion will be used by DEA and their prevention partners as they consider additional resources to develop for the field.

Thursday, January 16, 5:30pm – 7:00pm (ET)

Join us as we host a poster session on www.campusdrugprevention.gov, DEA’s website for professionals working to prevent drug misuse among college students. This session gives attendees the opportunity to not only learn about this resource, but also provide DEA with feedback about potential content for the site that would be beneficial to their prevention efforts.

Friday, January 17, 10:00am – 10:15am (ET)

Join us as we announce the winners of the 9th Annual Red Ribbon Week Campus Video PSA Contest, cosponsored by SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.

Friday, January 17, 10:00am – 11:30am (ET)

Join Rich Lucey, Dr. Dolores Cimini, Paula Swinford, and Ahmed Hosni for an extended workshop session titled Elevating and Reimagining AOD Prevention Practices Within a Health Promoting Campus Framework. Join a panel of prevention and recovery professionals and health promoting campus thought leaders to learn about how AOD prevention and intervention science and our collegiate recovery practices align with the Health Promoting Campus framework and how we can address concerns that our work is rooted in historical and cultural inequities. We will explore how we might reimagine our efforts in the language of the Health Promoting Campus and establish metrics and outcomes that support the pillars of equity and social justice within this framework.

Friday, January 17, 1:15pm – 2:15pm (ET)

Join Rich Lucey and Erin Ficker as they lead a roundtable discussion titled Strategies for Prevention Success During Times of Disruption. Colleges and universities often confront crises and events that disrupt established routines on campus. In the 2024 edition of DEA's publication Prevention with Purpose: A Strategic Planning Guide for Preventing Drug Misuse Among College Students, an innovative chapter identifies strategies for prevention success during times of disruption. During this session, Rich and Erin will facilitate conversation about the various ways in which attendees have achieved prevention success to support student health and well-being during periods of turmoil.

Friday, January 17, 4:30pm – 6:00pm (ET)

Join Rich Lucey, Dr. Jason Kilmer, Dr. Allison Smith, and Dr. Katrin Wesner-Harts as they present Failure is an Option: Learning from Efforts that Don’t Go as Planned. This panel presentation will challenge definitions of "successful" and "unsuccessful" by highlighting “failed” efforts in preventing alcohol and other drug misuse among their campus's students. The critical importance of redefining success and deriving meaning from unsuccessful efforts will be highlighted and explored. There will be sufficient time for attendees to interact with the panelists and discuss similar experiences that have occurred on their campuses.

Saturday, January 18, 8:30am – 9:30am (ET)

Join Rich Lucey, Haley Mangette, and Elizabeth Peeler as they lead a roundtable discussion titled Beyond Failure: What Comes Next. Following Friday’s session on “Failure is an Option,” attendees at this session will engage in guided meaningful conversations around challenges faced in implementing alcohol and other drug misuse prevention initiatives that don’t yield expected results. Gather with others in this roundtable to reflect on alcohol and other drug misuse prevention failures, and how others have or plan to transform them into successes. This session aims to promote learning from setbacks and reframe failure to positively affect prevention strategies and to reduce alcohol and other drug misuse in higher education.

Lastly, don’t forget to check out DEA’s resources at our booth in the exhibit hall, all of which are intended to help support you in your efforts to prevent drug misuse among college students.

We offer our congratulations to NASPA for their amazing efforts in once again hosting this first-class national event for student affairs professionals and other campus- and community-based staff. Best wishes for a great conference and thank you for everything you do to help ensure the safety and health of our nation’s college students!

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Sean Fearns joined DEA in 1998 as part of the team in the Office of Public Affairs that developed and opened the DEA Museum in 1999. In 2015, Sean was promoted to Chief of DEA’s Community Outreach and Prevention Support Section. In this capacity he is responsible for guiding a diverse and creative staff to develop and implement strategic national partnerships with other organizations that help educate the public on current drug threats facing the country, communicate the Administration’s key drug misuse prevention messages, and reduce the demand for those drugs.

Rich Lucey has more than three decades of experience at the state and federal government levels working to prevent alcohol and drug use and misuse among youth and young adults, especially college students. He currently serves as a senior prevention program manager in the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Community Outreach and Prevention Support Section. Rich plans and executes educational and public information programs, evaluates program goals and outcomes, and serves as an advisor to the Section Chief and other DEA officials on drug misuse prevention and education programs. Rich formerly served as special assistant to the director for the federal Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and worked as an education program specialist in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. In 2024, Rich was awarded the National Prevention Network's Award of Excellence at their annual conference in recognition of his national efforts to prevent drug use.