2026 Canadian Connect, Enrich, and Exchange

Wednesday, October 14th, 2026

Thursday, October 15th, 2026

Join members from NACAS East, NACAS West, and the NACAS National Boards in a welcome and overview of what to expect throughout the day with our hosts at George Brown Polytechnic.

All Welcome

Artificial intelligence is often discussed in higher education as a classroom problem: academic integrity, assessment design, policy, and student use of chatbots. But the deeper transformation is institutional. What happens to colleges and universities when high-level cognition becomes cheap, ubiquitous, and embedded in the systems students, staff, faculty, and partners use every day?

This talk argues that auxiliary services will be central to answering that question. Dining, housing, retail, transportation, student unions, campus cards, conference services, bookstores, procurement, and campus commerce are not peripheral to the university’s mission. They are where students experience the institution most directly: where belonging is built, friction is felt, trust is earned, and institutional values become visible.

In an AI-integrated world, the competitive advantage of higher education will depend less on controlling access to information and more on delivering formation, community, accountability, and trusted human environments. For auxiliary services leaders, this creates both urgency and opportunity. AI will reshape expectations for personalization, service quality, workforce design, accessibility, safety, sustainability, vendor partnerships, and revenue models. But the goal is not simply to automate the campus. It is to ask which parts of campus life should become more intelligent, which should remain deliberately human, and how auxiliary services can help universities adapt with purpose rather than panic.

Participants will leave with a strategic frame for thinking about AI beyond tools and tactics: as a force that will reshape the lived experience, operating model, and value proposition of higher education itself.

Speaker: 

Mark J. Daley

All Welcome

This roundtable session will provide an open forum for ancillary leaders to share strategies, successes, and stumbling blocks through operational areas of dining, housing, bookstores, parking, conferences & events, and more. Come prepared to both focus-test strategies and solutions for your table-mates, as well as receiving the same for your own campus concerns!

Institutions Only

Join key volunteers from the NACAS Canadian Committee and learn how to utilize year-round benefits and how to get involved within the volunteer community.

Institutions Only

The Cross-Canada Check-up provides a platform for ancillary service professionals to discuss critical issues affecting their operations as we head into 2027. Participants will explore key topics shaping ancillary services, including enrollment challenges, financial pressures, and emerging opportunities amidst the uncertainties of the higher education landscape.

Institutions Only

Friday, October 16th, 2026

*Schedule Subject to Change