2026 TACCM Conference Breakout Sessions
AI for Turning Marketing Data Into Strategy
AI | Data
Sebastian Troitino, Lee College
Community college marketers have plenty of data but often little time to turn it into direction. This session shows how to use AI to analyze marketing performance, spot meaningful trends, and turn raw metrics into clear, decision-ready insights. Attendees will leave with practical frameworks and prompting approaches to strengthen reporting, strategy, and communication with leadership.
Shoot to Social: Turning Content Into Results
Social Media | Photography
Jorge Palacios, Trinity Valley Community College
Plan your content with purpose from the start. Learn how to approach a shoot with the final platform in mind so nothing goes to waste. We’ll break down how to structure content for reels, promos, and ads, plus what works on social media. That includes strong hooks, fast pacing, and captions that keep people watching and drive action.
Shoot to Social: Turning Content Into Results Presentation
AP Style Trivia
Communications
Selene Rodriguez, Veronica Salinas & Joey Gomez, South Texas College
In this session, Communication professionals will have the opportunity to test their Associated Press Style knowledge through an interactive trivia game that will be both fun and educational. So, whether you want to show off your skills or learn something new, this session has something for everyone.
Leading Under Pressure: Managing Stress with Small Teams and Big Expectations
Management | Teams
Barbara Baggerly-Hinojosa, Leadership Empowerment Group
This workshop equips leaders with practical strategies to manage stress while navigating limited resources, small teams, and high-stakes projects. Participants will explore how to prioritize effectively, maintain team morale, and lead with clarity under pressure. Through real-world scenarios and guided reflection, leaders will learn how to balance productivity with well-being while maximizing impact. By the end of the session, participants will leave with actionable tools to sustain performance without burnout.
Leading Under Pressure Presentation
Just a Girl and Her Canva Subscription
Social Media | Digital
Shaydi Clary, Trinity Valley Community College
Hell hath no fury as a social media girl with her Canva account! Canva has become a trendy tool known for its user friendliness and popular template designs, but have you unlocked how much you can use Canva for? From deep diving into Stranger Things, Spotify Unwrapped and more, Shaydi will dive into fun ways to amplify the use of Canva for social media.
Just a Girl and Her Canva Subscription Presentation
What Are You Telling Your Students?
Communications
Elizabeth Garza, Victoria College
When information about the same program, deadline, or even differs across a college's website, emails, text message, flyers, and social media, students can quickly become confused about what is accurate or what action they should take. Conflicting details can lead to missed opportunities, frustration, and a loss of trust of the institution's communications.
Inclusive Marketing Without DEI: Belonging, Access, and Enrollment
Communications | Strategy
Dr. Reginald Lewis, Tarrant County College, and Kirsten Cutshall, Steel Advertising
The presentation focuses on how community college marketers can continue communicating access, belonging, and support for all students in a politically restrictive environment where traditional DEI language and frameworks may be limited. Grounded in Dr. Reginald Lewis’s book, Belonging is the Brand: Inclusive Marketing in Higher Education, the session explores how to maintain inclusive excellence through compliant, student-centered marketing strategies-ensuring representation is preserved, trust is protected, and enrollment goals are supported without violating current legal or policy constraints.
Inclusive Marketing Without DEI Presentation
More Than a CMS: What a Web Migration Forces You to Fix
Web
Jonathan Blundell, Dallas College
A web migration often sounds technical-move content and launch a new CMS. But even “lift-and-shift” projects expose bigger issues: ownership, technical debt, accessibility, analytics, and training. This session shares Dallas College’s move from SharePoint to Terminalfour, highlighting challenges, lessons, wins, and how onboarding editors reshaped workflows and content quality.
More Than a CMS Presentation
Winning WCAG Compliance with a Small Team
Accessibility | Asset Management
Brittany McAdams, McLennan Community College
This presentation tells the story of how McLennan Community College achieved WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance with a small team. It highlights the challenges of managing thousands of webpages, establishing trust in accessibility data, and meeting federal deadlines. Through quick wins, smart prioritization, and content reduction, the team has built momentum, scaled accessibility efforts, and created a campus-wide culture of accessible content creation.
Winning WCAG Compliance with a Small Team Presentation
TACCM 101: Getting the Most Out of Your Membership
Management
Elizabeth Garza, TACCM President, and Mary Hind, TACCM Vice President
New to TACCM or just need a refresher? TACCM 101 is your go-to session for navigating the essentials of membership and making the most of your account. We’ll walk through how to manage your Club Express profile, add team members to your institutional membership, and access key member benefits and resources. Plus, get a preview of exciting initiatives, opportunities, and events TACCM has planned for the year ahead.
TACCM 101 Presentation
Brand Aligned, Individually Defined: Standing Out While Staying on Brand
Design
Kristan King and Alyssa Zwiener, San Jacinto College
This session explores how San Jacinto College’s Marketing Department Design Team conducted a strategic brand audit across several key departments. The team looked at their current materials, found common design patterns, and identified areas that could be clearer and more consistent. From there, they created a unique look for each department while still following the College’s overall brand guidelines. Attendees will learn how to balance creativity with consistency and help departments stand out while staying on brand.
Brand Aligned, Individually Defined Presentation
Social Media Student Experience
Social Media | Communications
David Fallavollita, Dallas College
If your social media feels like it’s not reaching students, it probably isn’t. In this session, we’ll break down how shifting from institutional messaging to student-driven content can transform engagement. See how Dallas College is creating content with students through trends, real-time moments and community participation. Make your social feel less like a company/college and more like a conversation.
Social Media Student Experience Presentation
Victoria College's Centennial Celebration: Unlocking 100 Stories for 100 Years
Communications
Lila Stanley, Victoria College
Victoria College’s centennial celebration unlocked 100 stories over 100 years, highlighting students, alumni, employees, and community impact. Learn how we built a sustainable storytelling engine, engaged with the community, and turned a milestone anniversary into lasting brand impact.
Victoria College's Centennial Celebration Presentation
Your Campus in Focus: Organizing Photography for Stronger College Marketing
Asset Management | Photography
Benjamin Briones, South Texas College
This session explores best practices for organizing, backing up, and managing campus photography assets. Learn how to create folder structures, naming systems, keywording workflows, and storage solutions that make images easy for marketing teams to find, use, and share internally and externally.
Your Campus in Focus Presentation
Beyond Social: Reaching Today's Students When the Targeting Disappears
Social Media | Strategy
Sandra Henry-Gauna, Genius Monkey
Facebook and Instagram have been issued mandates restricting the targeting of age, gender and location of ages 18 and younger. But, fear not! You can still recruit future students. Learn why programmatic, AI-built audiences and a multi-DSP strategy are now table stakes for community college recruitment marketing.
Beyond Social Presentation
The 1,000,000-Mile Website: How Strategy, Smart Design and Routine Maintenance Beat the Redesign Cycle
Web | Asset Management
David White, San Jacinto College, Beth Carron, iFactory
Your website is one of your institution’s largest investments and most important promotional tools. The question isn’t whether the site will need attention but whether you’ll address it incrementally or wait until a costly rebuild feels like the only option. In this session, San Jacinto College will detail how they are working to keep their website running strong for years without a full redesign. They’ll demonstrate elements that make long-term website health possible and detail how content management system tools can help you catch small problems before they become expensive ones. Attendees will participate in a self-assessment to evaluate their own website’s maintenance readiness.
The 1,000,000-Mile Website Presentation
How a Pokemon Card Started a Sticker Revolution
Design
Shaydi Clary, Trinity Valley Community College
Dutch Bros isn’t the only place offering monthly stickers. Trinity Valley Community College does it too! What started as a takeaway from an NCMPR conference has grown into a simple, effective way to build student engagement and excitement, powered by original sticker designs from the TVCC Marketing and Communications Office.
How a Pokemon Card Started a Sticker Revolution Presentation
Divide and Conquer: How to Handle Communication Coverage across Multiple Campuses
Communications | Strategy
Selene Rodriguez, Veronica Salinas, and Joey Gomez, South Texas College
As Communication Specialists for South Texas College, with six campuses across two counties, coverage has been made easier by assigning reporters to each campus. This presentation will dive into how this strategy has been helpful for STC and how it could be helpful for other colleges in similar situations, how coverage has increased since this change and how receptive each campus has been to having a dedicated reporter.
Divide and Conquer Presentation
The New Student Trust Crisis: How Higher Ed Brands Earn Belief in a Skeptical Era
Communications | Strategy
Malika Keshu, AtmosphereTV, Kirsten Cutshall, Steel Advertising
This session examines the critical factors driving the erosion of trust in higher education and explores how student expectations have fundamentally shifted in response. We will highlight the unique, inherent advantages community colleges hold in this changing landscape and demonstrate how marketing teams can capitalize on these strengths. Finally, you will discover how marketing teams can build credibility through more human, transparent, and emotionally intelligent communications.
The New Student Trust Crisis Presentation
AI in Creative Marketing: The Wins, the Warnings, and What We Learned
AI | Strategy
Amanda Fenwick, San Jacinto College, Kirsten Cutshall, Steel Advertising
AI can make marketing more efficient, but employing it means taking some risks. In this presentation, hear about real examples of how AI was used in creative development, from breakthrough efficiencies to unexpected moments. Learn what worked, what didn’t, and how to use AI responsibly without losing brand voice, originality, or purpose.
AI in Creative Marketing Presentation
The Reel World
Social Media | Strategy
Andi Atkinson, Houston City College
This session explores how to create compelling social media reels that capture attention, strengthen your brand, and keep your audience coming back for more. You’ll discover practical strategies for planning, producing, and repurposing promotional content, plus tips for sustaining a steady stream of fresh, engaging videos that truly resonate with students and stakeholders.
The Reel World Presentation
Speaking their Language: Tips to Create Meaningful Campus Stories for Your Prospective Students
Communications | Strategy
Kimberly Selber, The University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley
This session explores how institutions can create meaningful, audience-centered storytelling by developing a deeper understanding of their audience through audience insights, stronger creative briefs that align with strategy and authentic stories that resonate across multiple platforms. It will also examine how artificial intelligence can support, not replace, the creative process.
Speaking their Language Presentation
Stop Throwing Spaghetti: Research-backed Advertising Strategies that Stick
Communications | Strategy
Dewey Price, 25th Hour Communications
Ditch the messy “see what sticks” approach and move toward marketing that actually moves the needle. In this session, we’ll explore how research transforms a campaign from a shot in the dark into a precision-built success story. We’ll break down the specific methodology behind one college district’s stunning 12% enrollment increase for their adult learner population, proving that when data-driven insights, not just gut feelings, drive the creative and messaging, the results are anything but accidental.
Stop Throwing Spaghetti Presentation