SSA 2013 Annual Conference - Columbus, OH - July 12-14, 2013

On July 12-14, 2013, secular students from all over the eastern United States will descend on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, OH to attend the legendary Secular Student Alliance Annual Conference! This will be the undoubtedly be single greatest weekend of your entire life, but don't take our word for it! Drew Pruitt, member of SSA at University of Nevada-- Las Vegas, has written about why you should attend.

Don't forget that this year we have two conferences!  Looking for information about the conference in Las Vegas, NV?  Head over here!

What's Happening Now?

Registration is now open! You can now register yourself or your group for the conference.

If you did not order your conference t shirts in your registration form, have no fear! You can order them separately here.

Get Leadership Travel Aid Funding!  You can submit a Leadership Travel Aid application to help get you and your group to our conference. Apply now since funding is limited. If you have any questions about the funding or application process, feel free to shoot us an email!

Please note that at this time any new applications have the chance of being put on a waitlist because demand for travel aid has been so great. If you have any quesitons about that, please let us know.

Do you have space to offer in a vehicle or are you looking for a ride to the conference? We have a handy Rideshare board here that you can post offers at. The password to access the board is "ssarocks".

What's Going On This Year?

We're going to have four concurrent sessions during the conference, including a series of hands-on workshops! Wow! You'll be able to select the talk or workshop that is most relevant to you – and if you bring other group members, you can all see different talks!  But if you miss one, no worries! You can find them all on our YouTube channel.

Speaking of bringing group members, we're bringing back the popular the group registration!  It's only $145 to register a group of five  students or advisors from the same SSA affiliate group. That's over $70 in savings on the conference registration cost!

Is your group's advisor über-involved?  Great - bring them along!  You can bring your advisor as part of the group registration rate.  There's also an advisor registration rate if they register individually. And based on the success of last year's Advisor Track, we'll be repeating it this year: each conference has a full afternoon of advice, training and peer networking on the best ways to advise an SSA affiliate group.  Be sure to let your group's advisor know!

Hungry?  We know that food is not only essential to life, but also to networking and good times.  That's why we feed you at the conference!  We'll bribe you with breakfast and coffee on both Saturday and Sunday morning to get you out of bed!  Friday night starts off with a pizza-and-registration party, and your registration includes Saturday's catered lunch (with gluten free and vegetarian/vegan options).  So the only meal you're on your own for is Saturday's dinner, and there are lots of awesome, inexpensive options near the conference venue.

Since we know students aren't made of money, we've made sure we have conference housing at an affordable cost! Rather than booking expensive hotel rooms, we reserve Ohio State dorm rooms for you.  Space in an air-conditioned multiple-occupancy room (usually four students) is only $23 a night, and includes a fridge, microwave, linens and - yes - towels.  Single rooms are only $60 per night (for those of you who don't like other people).  And if you'd rather stay in a hotel, we've reserved a block of rooms at a discounted rate at the nearby Holiday Inn Express.  Check out our housing page for details.  You'll also want to check out our travel page to get details on how to get to Columbus as well as ways to raise the money to pay for it.

While we're talking about cool stuff, check out this fantastic interactive Google Map of the conference area!  We've even marked all the places you can get ice cream.

We'll be offering our free airport pick-up/drop-off service for students flying in.  When you register for the conference, you can enter your flight information right then and there to request a ride, or you can request one later on.

The SSA Annual Conference just keeps growing and growing...