Council on Athletics in Higher Education (CAHE) Pre-Conference

49CAHE Pre-Conference Call For Proposals & Volunteers

Proposals and Volunteer Interest Forms due Thursday, April 30, 2026 at 3:00pm Pacific Time

Review the Call For Proposals Learn more about Volunteering 

The purpose of the Council on Athletics in Higher Education (CAHE) is to promote research on and advance understanding of athletics in U.S. higher education and build virtual and in-person communities between scholars, practitioners, and students in higher education, sport management/administration, sport sociology, and other adjacent fields (e.g., law, economics, finance, advising). CAHE serves as an ongoing network for the exchange of ideas and information related to athletics' role in and impact on higher education. CAHE shall pursue these purposes by providing opportunities for researchers, practitioners and policymakers to share research findings to advance research, policy, and practice.

CAHE’s Pre-Conference, “Contested Grounds: Memory, Power, and the Place of Athletics in Higher Education,” positions intercollegiate athletics as a critical site for examining how higher education’s power dynamics are produced, maintained, disrupted, and increasingly challenged. As a longstanding cultural tradition in U.S. higher education, contemporary intercollegiate athletics reflects political logics and ideologies rooted in American colonization that continue to shape how sport is experienced and understood. Since the 19th century, intercollegiate athletics has served as a space in which power operates within universities, shaping whose bodies are celebrated, whose labor is valued, and whose voices are supported. To date, intercollegiate athletics represents one of the most powerful and visible institutional spaces of the American university, occupying land (e.g., athletics facilities) and shaping memory and place through school traditions, sporting events, and identities.

For decades, college athletes have contested these embedded politics and ideologies, producing a rich history of athlete activism and social movements that assert their rightful place within both sport and education. With this perspective, CAHE seeks to honor these histories and memories by centering college athletes and athletic environments, challenging narratives that (dis)place college athletics within educational research. As legal, economic, and cultural shifts (e.g., NIL, athlete employment debates, gender equity, racial justice movements) unfold, athletics continues to emerge as a site of collective struggle over institutional values, resources, and futures. By exploring athletics’ place in higher education, this pre-conference aligns with the broader conference call to rethink who and what controls institutional spaces, how memories shape present inequities, and how collective movements can reimagine higher education. 

We invite CAHE Members to attend our Virtual Pre-Conference Gathering on Tuesday, October 20 as we begin shaping our content together. The Virtual Pre-Conference Gathering will be curated by the CAHE Pre-Conference Chairs.

For our In-Person Pre-Conference Forum in San Juan on Tuesday, November 3, we invite members to submit proposals to present research on college athletes and athletic environments. Below you will find specific formats accepted for the In-Person Pre-Conference. 

In-Person Proposal formats accepted (Tuesday November 3, 2026)