Transforming Academic Conference Management: How Fourwaves Streamlined CHEP 2025
With more than 400 attendees and more than 200 abstracts annually, the organizers faced logistical hurdles. Discover how switching to Fourwaves solved their biggest challenges, enhancing the attendee and organizer experience alike.
Academic conference with poster sessions and presentations
Higher Education (Virginia Tech – Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning)
Exchange cutting-edge research, share best practices, and collaborate.
Virginia Tech and CHEP: Connecting Educators for Better Learning Outcomes
For the past 17 years, the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy (CHEP) at Virginia Tech has attracted attendees from across the United States and internationally. Held annually at the Inn at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, CHEP provides an essential space for educators, graduate students, and administrators to exchange cutting-edge research, share best practices, and collaborate on innovative teaching strategies.
The conference features a range of research presentations, practical workshops, and a lively poster session. The 2025 edition gathered more than 400 enthusiastic delegates united by the theme "Embracing the Future of Learning."
CHEP has always been a dynamic platform for educators to network, share groundbreaking ideas, and explore innovative teaching practices. Our goal is simple: provide a stellar experience so attendees can focus entirely on learning and collaboration.
Conference Organizer, Virginia Tech
The Challenge: Managing Event Management Complexity and Attendee Communication
Before adopting Fourwaves, the CHEP team encountered persistent logistical problems. The existing conference management system was custom-built by a local web developer, creating fragmented processes that made organizing abstract submissions, peer reviews, session scheduling, and registration very cumbersome. Registrants often lacked clarity about event details, resulting in extra work for organizers to clarify important information.
This complexity became a critical barrier to maintaining attendee satisfaction and ensuring smooth event execution.
Before Fourwaves, we had a million pieces that didn’t seem to fit together. Our proposal submission system caused confusion, scheduling became chaotic, and messaging was consistently our biggest challenge. We knew we needed a better system.
Conference Organizer, Virginia Tech
Fourwaves: A Making Conference Planning Effortless
CHEP organizers selected Fourwaves after evaluating multiple event management platforms. Unlike competing options that were either excessively complex or overly expensive, Fourwaves provided an intuitive, integrated solution focused on simplifying conference logistics.
Abbie and her team were particularly impressed with how intuitive Fourwaves was from the outset, requiring minimal training for everyone involved. The user-friendly interface enabled the team to manage abstract submissions and peer reviews effortlessly.
In addition, Fourwaves' platform made it easy to quickly generate professional, ready-to-use conference materials such as proceedings booklets and session schedules. The clear dashboards provided instant visibility into submission statuses, peer review scores, and timetabling details, which allowed organizers to stay organized and keep participants informed without confusion.
Finally, Fourwaves’ back-end management enabled smooth coordination throughout the event, dramatically reducing administrative workloads and empowering the CHEP team to focus more energy on creating a valuable experience for attendees.
Beyond these core advantages, the CHEP team also benefited from several other powerful Fourwaves features:
- Front-facing event website: Provided an attractive, easy-to-navigate public website to showcase event details, attract attendees, and communicate essential updates.
- Flexible categorization: Enabled the straightforward categorization of submissions into practice sessions, research sessions, and posters, streamlining decision-making and planning.
- Real-time updates: Allowed instant visibility of reviewer feedback and submission statuses, accelerating communication between organizers, reviewers, and presenters.
- Automated reporting: Generated customizable reports and data exports (.csv), easing administrative tasks and post-event analysis.
- Collaboration-friendly design: Facilitated teamwork by allowing multiple organizers and reviewers simultaneous, secure access to conference data.
Fourwaves completely changed our approach to managing proposals. Our review committee, 45 people strong, praised its simplicity and effectiveness. It was so seamless, our team wishes they could use it for grant submissions and award nominations too.
Conference Organizer, Virginia Tech
Future Plans: Building on the Momentum and Boosting the Event Attendee Experience
With the overwhelmingly positive response to Fourwaves at the 2025 conference, Virginia Tech plans to continue using the platform in future editions of CHEP. The organizers will further enhance user engagement around registration and submission processes, eliminating any remaining hurdles attendees might encounter.
Moreover, inspired by the success and ease provided by Fourwaves, Virginia Tech is exploring the possibility of adopting similar processes for other academic activities and administrative functions.
About the Virginia Tech Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
Virginia Tech’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning is dedicated to advancing teaching practices and supporting educators at all levels of their professional journeys. The annual Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy serves as a key initiative in their mission to foster academic excellence, collaboration, and innovation in education.