A look back at Currents magazine provides a historical record of the profession’s evolution. Our cover stories through the years show not only advancement’s growth, progress, and sophistication, but the evergreen topics that continue to define this work.

The CASE Graduate Trainee Program is designed to help early-career advancement professionals form relationships that build career foundations and unlock opportunities. Here, meet six individuals—both GTP participants and the advancement professionals who worked with them during the program—who experienced these relationships, which helped them thrive in their careers.

In 1977, CASE members reported that conferences and learning opportunities were “the council’s most valuable single service.” That value has not wavered through 50 years. Today, CASE’s more than 70 in-person conferences and online trainings, seminars, and courses serve thousands of advancement professionals.

CASE’s 50th anniversary is also a time to look to the future. Five advancement leaders share thoughts on the challenges ahead, along with what makes them optimistic in this roundtable discussion.

CASE has offices in Washington, D.C., London, Singapore, and Mexico City, and member institutions in 80 countries worldwide. Advancement professionals gather for CASE programs in cities from Seattle, Washington, U.S., to Cartegena, Colombia, to Riga, Latvia, to Melbourne, Australia. CASE’s international presence is at the core of its mission. Here are 50 years of milestones along our global journey.

Advancement professionals are diligently focusing on DEIB initiatives within their teams.  And more and more of them are beginning to look outward as well. Two advancement professionals with wide experience working in the DEIB space offer practical strategies to more effectively identify, involve, solicit, and steward alumni of color.

Colleges and universities have been working on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for decades, but higher education leaders say the last two years have sparked a shift. The 2020 racial reckoning and Black Lives Matter movement, campus protests, and pandemic pressures have changed the conversation, expectations for, and nature of diversity leaders’ work. Here’s what advancement professionals should know about diversity leaders’ roles in higher education today—and the future of DEIB work for development.

The Open University is open to everyone regardless of age, income, geography, and background, and with no requirement for entry qualifications for the vast majority of courses.

Since the late 2000s, many Canadian institutions have worked on reconciliation with Indigenous communities: resetting and reimagining relationships after many years of systemic inequities. Here's how the University of Calgary developed and implemented its Indigenous strategy—a complex, interconnected, and collaborative journey.

Long before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially released a statement declaring racism is a serious public health threat in April 2021, faculty and staff of public health colleges around the country were considering how they could reckon with the subject.