How the 2025 CollegeSource Annual Conference helped attendees ‘Level Up’
The 2025 CollegeSource Annual Conference, held from June 16-19, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay in beautiful San Diego, CA, brought together 181 dedicated professionals from 113 institutions across the country. This event continues the tradition of empowering attendees to maximize the use of CollegeSource products such as TES, Transferology, and uAchieve, fostering an environment of collaboration and innovation.
This year’s conference adopted a retro video game and arcade theme, with the concept of “Level Up” integrated throughout the event’s session topics, networking event activities, and decor. With this nostalgic nod, attendees enjoyed a lively and engaging atmosphere while exploring the latest tools and best practices to elevate—or level up—their skills and knowledge.
Our conference week photo album is now live and packed with highlights you won’t want to miss. Dive in to relive all the incredible moments!
Our user community came together in San Diego, CA, for the 2025 CollegeSource Annual Conference to participate in a week filled with 60+ sessions and exciting activities.
What attendees had to say
The conference was a resounding success, with overwhelmingly positive feedback from attendees regarding the content, format, and location. Here’s what they had to say about their experience this year:
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- “The location has to be mentioned; it was an incredible place for the conference. San Diego, in general, has so much to offer, but the hotel was perfect for our stay. I highly recommend returning next year! Aside from the location, I most enjoyed the sessions. The valuable information I learned here and can now take back and implement at my institution is going to make a world of difference for my team.”
- “This was an amazing conference. As a first-time attendee, I was blown away by the quality of the sessions and the friendly, helpful staff. I left with connections to other institutions, ideas for my own team, and I am eager to come back next year. Well done and thank you!”
- “The overall friendliness, generosity, helpfulness, and family feeling of the staff truly make me feel good about CollegeSource products. There was a good balance of session time/breaks/networking opportunities. Pretty good variety of session topics.”
- “Besides the amazing sessions themselves, I enjoyed how close they were to each other. The buildings were easy to get between, so it felt like the breaks between sessions could be used as breaks and not just to run to the next one.”
- “This was my first year attending this conference, and I wanted to attend to learn more about TES and Transferology, as these are what my campus uses. I enjoyed hearing most about how community colleges are using the tool from an advising perspective, as that related to my role the most. I enjoyed the location, food, and layout of the conference. I thought the marketing was really well executed, everything matched the theme, and all the decorations were super cool. Loved the swag bag as well. I think the sessions were laid out well with timing, and the breaks in between were helpful! I enjoyed the flow and thought the timeline of events was well thought out.”
The 2025 CollegeSource Annual Conference offered a unique setting to learn and network with fellow users from peer institutions.
Key highlights of the conference
Networking and collaboration
The conference provided valuable opportunities for higher education professionals to connect, share insights, and build relationships within the CollegeSource community. One such opportunity was the Wizard Bar, where product experts met one-on-one with users to tackle challenges and provide assistance. Additionally, our courtesy shuttle loop encouraged users to mingle with peers during a night out on the town after the day of programming on both Monday and Tuesday.
Comprehensive learning and customer-led sessions
CollegeSource staff and a whopping 30 users led a diverse range of presentations for varying skill levels. These sessions offered practical knowledge and innovative solutions for effectively leveraging CollegeSource products. Based on attendee feedback from last year, we made sure to collaborate with even more customers to add additional user-driven content, enabling attendees to learn from their peers’ personal experiences and use of our tools. Thank you to our customers who took the stage to share their knowledge and tips.
Intensive pre-conference training
59 attendees took the opportunity to deepen their expertise at five pre-conference sessions, two of which were certification tracks. By the end of the week, 24 participants earned TES Administrator Certification and 6 earned Transferology Administrator Certification. Kudos to all who “Leveled Up” with pre-conference training, and congratulations to our latest cohort of certified professionals.
Keynote session
The CollegeSource Keynote featured insightful remarks from CEO Kerry Cooper and President Dr. Troy Holaday, along with an overview of the week ahead by VP of Sales and Marketing, Alanna Fenton-Esquinas. The leaders of CollegeSource provided updates on the continued growth and exciting new developments across our solutions, along with thoughts on the current state of Higher Ed and a call to embrace diversity.
Troy Holaday shared the following product activity highlighting increased engagement:
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- TES – now houses over 167 million courses (+8.3M) and 196K catalogs; TES is used in all 50 states with over 814K hours of work by users (+7%), and 94.7% of evaluation tasks were approved
- Transferology – over 36 million equivalencies (+8.5%), 1.3 million sessions (+16.5%), and 2 million match views (+7.5%)
- uAchieve – 49 million audits were processed, and over 27K degrees were found through Degree Discovery
A focus on wellness
Our wellness keynote featured guest speaker Shannon Jordan of the UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness, who presented Mindfulness-Based Stress Management and the Seven Strategies for Well-Being. In this eye-opening session, attendees learned multiple exercises to help transform their relationship to stress.
An evening to remember
After a few days of rigorous session programming, we let loose at the Wednesday Evening Reception with Dinner. Throwback arcade machines such as Pac-Man and Space Invaders were highly popular, along with Shout House’s dueling piano performance. Attendees could also exchange tickets earned throughout the week for engaging in sessions and in the halls at a prize booth filled with an assortment of fun goodies.
Awarding best practices
We were proud to recognize exceptional institutions with the CollegeSource Best Practices Awards, affectionately known as The Sourcies, on stage at the keynote session. This year’s recipients included the University of Missouri – Kansas City, California State University, Fullerton, San Diego State University, and Virginia Tech. Congratulations to all our deserving winners for their outstanding contributions and innovative use of CollegeSource solutions. Learn about the 2025 Sourcie winners.
Additional activities
Beyond professional development, the conference also encouraged attendees to stay active, offering multiple sessions of yoga and group walks (plus complimentary water sport rentals included with each stay at the Hyatt Regency!). We also continued our amazing partnership with the San Diego Blood Bank, collecting 13 units of blood in support of community needs. The donations help save lives in the community, so we greatly appreciate all who took the time to give blood.
See you next summer!
2026 CollegeSource Annual Conference
Thank you to all who attended, presented, and contributed to making the 2025 CollegeSource Annual Conference a resounding success! We look forward to seeing you again next June in San Diego for another fantastic user gathering. Details on the dates, location, and registration will be available before the end of the year, so be sure to keep an eye on the newsletter for more details.
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