Voting Center

Candidate Information

Lincoln Walburn, Sr. Associate Director for Facilities & Operations, University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign (walburn@illinois.edu)

Strategic Issues

I believe several interconnected strategic issues will shape ACUI’s continued success: strengthening international engagement, sustaining progress toward the Association’s strategic priorities, ensuring long-term financial sustainability, and positioning the Association and its members for rapidly evolving technology. First, ACUI should continue examining how effectively it engages its international partners. Our identity as an international association is strengthened when perspectives from across our membership inform our conversations, priorities, and decisions. Participation at events is one visible measure, but the broader strategic question is whether international members have meaningful opportunities to engage with and influence the Association. The Board should continue considering barriers to participation and whether ACUI’s programs, services, and leadership opportunities reflect the breadth of the communities we serve. Second, three years into implementation of ACUI’s strategic plan, maintaining momentum toward its priorities is essential. Component groups play an important role in advancing projects that support the pillars of the plan. The Board’s role should remain strategic: providing direction, supporting alignment, monitoring progress, and ensuring the Association remains focused on its intended outcomes while empowering staff and volunteers to determine how best to accomplish the work. As implementation continues, the Board should also remain attentive to changes in the higher education environment that may require priorities to evolve. Financial sustainability is another significant strategic concern. Institutions continue to face financial pressures, and professional memberships, conference attendance, travel, and professional development can be relatively easy expenses to reduce. This creates both a financial and value proposition challenge for ACUI. The Board must continue asking whether the Association’s membership model, programs, and services provide sufficient value to institutions and individual members while ensuring decisions support ACUI’s long-term financial health. Financial sustainability should not simply mean reducing expenses; it requires thinking strategically about how ACUI remains valuable, accessible, and financially resilient. Finally, artificial intelligence and rapidly changing technologies present both opportunities and challenges for ACUI and the profession. The current AI Task Force is examining the impact of artificial intelligence on community building in higher education and identifying opportunities for its responsible and positive use within college unions. With its recommendations coming before the Board, the strategic question will shift from understanding AI’s potential impact to determining how those findings should inform the Association’s direction. The Board should consider how emerging technologies affect ACUI’s strategic priorities, the evolving competencies of our profession, and the ways the Association supports its members. Just as importantly, ACUI should remain attentive to the human side of technological change, ensuring that innovation strengthens rather than diminishes the community-building work at the heart of the college union profession. Across these issues, I believe the Board’s responsibility is not to prescribe every solution, but to ask the right questions, establish direction, monitor progress, and ensure ACUI remains relevant, sustainable, and positioned to serve its members into the future. 

Skills and Perspectives Contributed

I believe my greatest contributions as an ACUI volunteer come from my ability to listen, ask thoughtful questions, consider issues from multiple perspectives, and remain focused on making the best decision for the Association and its members. When working with colleagues I do not supervise, I do not believe my role is to push others toward my preferred outcome. Instead, I listen, take in the available information, and ask questions that help the group consider different perspectives and move toward an informed decision. My professional background also allows me to bring a broad perspective to conversations. While much of my career has been within college unions and student affairs, I have also worked within an academic unit and in facilities project management. Combined with my educational background in student affairs, educational leadership, and project management, these experiences allow me to consider decisions through multiple lenses. I understand the importance of the student experience and community building, while also considering operational, financial, facilities, organizational, and project implications that may not always be immediately apparent. Working across multiple institutions and functional areas has also taught me that there is rarely one solution that works in every environment. Each institution, facility, and community presents different challenges and opportunities. I value learning from colleagues and understanding how their experiences differ from my own. That perspective has helped me approach conversations with an open mind rather than assuming that what worked at one institution will work everywhere. My service on the ACUI Education Council has reinforced this approach, particularly through my interactions with our international colleagues. I have become more intentional about asking whose perspective may be missing from a conversation. Policies or decisions that appear straightforward from a U.S.-based perspective may have different implications for our international members. I have tried to bring that question into our Council discussions, and I would continue bringing that awareness to future ACUI service. I am also comfortable respectfully disagreeing and recognize that thoughtful governance requires preparation before entering the conversation. I take seriously the responsibility to review available information, understand the context surrounding an issue, and come prepared to ask questions and contribute to the discussion. I will make the best decision I can based on the information available and will voice a different perspective when I believe it is important. At the same time, I recognize that serving on a Board means being part of a collective decision-making body. Once a decision is made, I will support the direction of the Board regardless of whether it was my original position. Ultimately, ACUI is my professional home. It is where I have grown by learning from others, asking questions, and recognizing that leadership does not require knowing every answer. I would bring that same curiosity, perspective, and commitment to Board service: contributing thoughtfully, challenging when necessary, and supporting the collective work of the Association. 

Educational Background

My educational background reflects a commitment to continuous learning and applying new knowledge to my professional practice. I earned both my Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice and Master of Education in College Student Personnel from Western Carolina University. My graduate education in College Student Personnel provided the foundation for my career in student affairs and helped shape my understanding of student development, engagement, and the role higher education environments play in the student experience. I later earned my Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership from Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. My dissertation, The Act of Becoming a College Student: A Case Study of Student Veterans’ Experiences Pre-During-Post Military Service, explored the experiences of veterans transitioning from military service into higher education. As a veteran, this research was personally meaningful to me and allowed me to examine how institutions can better understand and support students navigating a significant transition in their lives. The doctoral experience also strengthened my ability to approach complex issues through research, inquiry, and consideration of multiple perspectives. As my career expanded into facilities and capital project management, I returned to Western Carolina University to pursue a Master of Project Management. I wanted a stronger academic foundation for the project management responsibilities I had assumed professionally. The program strengthened my knowledge of areas such as project governance, stakeholder management, risk, planning, communication, and decision-making. Although I am no longer exclusively working as a capital project manager, those principles continue to influence how I approach projects, organizational challenges, and strategic decisions. My formal education is complemented by Lean/Six Sigma training completed while at Miami University. That training introduced additional ways of examining processes, identifying waste, improving efficiency, and approaching problems holistically. Together with my project management education, it has changed how I evaluate challenges by encouraging me to consider the broader system rather than immediately focusing on an individual problem or solution. The common thread throughout my educational background is that I enjoy learning. My education has evolved alongside my career, with each experience providing another perspective that I can apply to my work. I continue to seek opportunities to develop new knowledge and skills through professional education, leadership development, and experiences that challenge how I think. For me, education is not simply the attainment of a credential; it is an ongoing process of becoming a more thoughtful and effective professional. 

Experience

My professional career has provided me with a broad range of experiences across college unions, student affairs, academic administration, facilities operations, and capital project management. Over nearly two decades in higher education, I have worked at multiple institutions and with facilities of varying sizes and complexity. I currently serve as Senior Associate Director for Facilities and Operations at the Illini Union at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. My previous experiences include leadership roles at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Miami University, and Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. Moving among functional areas and institutions has given me the opportunity to understand higher education from different perspectives and recognize that the challenges facing our members rarely have a single solution. ACUI has been an important part of my professional development since 2010. My volunteer service began regionally, where I served as Recreation Team Lead and later as the final Region 12 Conference Program Team Chair prior to ACUI’s regional restructuring. I also served on the 2015 Annual Conference Program Team for the conference in San Antonio. At the international level, I served twice with the Education and Research Fund team and later on the Assessment, Research, and Evaluation Program Team before joining the Education Council, where I currently serve as a co-convener. My work with the Education Council has been particularly meaningful. The Council recently completed the 2026–29 Education Plan and has begun reexamining ACUI’s Core Competencies to ensure they continue to reflect the needs of our membership and the changing higher education environment. This work has allowed me to engage in conversations about the future of our profession while learning from colleagues whose institutional and international perspectives differ from my own. Sharing knowledge has also been an important part of my ACUI involvement. Since my first regional conference presentation in 2011, I have presented at regional and annual conferences and ACUI institutes on topics including technology, emergency and risk management, student veterans, Lean principles, assessment, project management, campus master planning, and facility projects. I view presenting as an opportunity to contribute what I have learned back to the Association and profession. Service and leadership have also extended beyond my formal positions. I have volunteered as an advisor to both a Student Veterans Association and a fraternity, supporting students in finding community, developing as leaders, and navigating their college experience. My Marine Corps service and lifelong involvement in Scouting, where I earned the rank of Eagle Scout, helped establish an early foundation of service and leadership. Even my experience as a baseball and softball umpire has reinforced the importance of preparation, sound judgment, clear communication, and remaining composed when decisions are challenged. Collectively, these experiences have strengthened my commitment to ACUI and its members. I want to help ensure ACUI continues responding to the evolving needs of our membership, providing leadership within higher education, and remaining at the forefront of strengthening campus communities.