2025 CQI Conference

Conference Dates: October 28 & 29, 2025
Location: IHotel and Conference Center, Champaign, IL

ABOUT THE 2025 CQI CONFERENCE: "Driving Continuous Quality Improvement into the Future."
The 2025 Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Conference marks a decade of progress, innovation, and impact. As we celebrate 10 years of excellence, this year’s conference is dedicated to celebrating and learning from the past, embracing the present, and shaping the future of quality improvement.

Throughout the conference, we will explore cutting-edge strategies, emerging technologies, and best practices that help organizations continuously evolve and improve. The focus of this year’s conference is to teach valuable lessons and equip attendees with practical tools and forward thinking approaches to:

  • Set clear and visionary goals for their organizations
  • Adapt to change with flexibility and resilience
  • Embrace innovation and take calculated risks to drive progress
  • Understand the ripple effects of decisions in quality improvement
  • Collaborate effectively to build strong, future-ready teams
  • Apply future-back thinking—envisioning the ideal future and mapping a path to achieve it
  • Authentically engage lived experience and community members in all aspects of the CQI process
  • Use new technology and techniques to turn data into the evidence needed to understand performance and make informed decisions

PURPOSE OF THE CONFERENCE AND TARGET AUDIENCE
The CQI Community Group’s annual conference is a capacity building and networking event. This milestone event will bring together leaders, practitioners, and visionaries from diverse sectors, including healthcare, social services, education, and business. Through dynamic featured speakers, interactive workshops, and thought-provoking discussions, attendees will gain valuable insights into how continuous improvement principles are shaping the future of work, service delivery, and community impact.

Our audience is primarily CQI staff, but also includes leadership and direct-service staff from community-based, academic, state, and government settings. It is an opportunity for people from a variety of professional backgrounds to come together to explore strategies for developing, managing, and participating in the CQI process that will lead to better outcomes for children, adults, families, and communities. The conference will be geared toward attendees with basic to advanced CQI knowledge and skills.

CQI IS FOR EVERYONE
When we say CQI is for everyone, we mean everyone. The CQI Community group promotes diversity among workshop presenters and is committed to building a vibrant and empowered community. We encourage submissions from a variety of professional affiliations (government, academic, corporate, non-profit, or community-based providers), organization sizes (small, medium, or large), experience levels (whether you are a subject matter expert with a research team or a quality improvement peer with a great idea), and geography (both inside and outside Illinois). Collaborative sessions representing multiple organizations are also encouraged. We want to hear from you!

Join us as we reflect on a decade of achievements, share success stories, and set the course for the next era of transformation and innovation to ignite the future of quality improvement.

Register for the 2025 CQI Conference!

Early Bird registration for the 10th annual CQI Conference is now open! Register early to save and secure your spot. Registration is $300 for general attendees through August 31, 2025. On or after September 1st, the rate will increase to $350. Registration includes 2 full days of educational and networking sessions, plus breakfast, lunch and snack each day, and CEUs if applicable.

Use the following link to register and submit your payment: https://my.socialwork.illinois.edu/eventreg/register.asp?id=2237 You can pay by credit card within this link. If additional paperwork for your organization is needed (such as an invoice or W9 form), please contact sw-expenses@illinois.edu.

If needed, please make checks payable to University of Illinois.
Mail to:
School of Social Work
Attn. Amy Hiles
1010 W. Nevada St
Urbana IL 61801

If you have submitted a proposal to present at the conference, please wait until final decisions on presentations have been made. Instructions for accepted presenters will be sent separately.

Conference Dates: October 28 & 29, 2025
Location: IHotel and Conference Center, Champaign, IL

2025 Conference Hotel Information

Please note that although the IHotel is the most popular hotel due to the location, IHotel only has a limited number of rooms — less than the number of attendees for the conference — and there is another event happening at the Conference Center at the same time as the CQI Conference. If you call, IHotel does have a waiting list available. Other hotels are listed below and are often times less than a mile from the conference location. The IHotel has a large parking lot attached to the conference center and parking is free.

If your team is coming to the conference and the group is larger than 5 people, it will be easier and highly encouraged to arrange your own block of rooms with any of the hotels for direct billing. Heidi Meyer (hrmeyer@illinois.edu) can help facilitate those arrangements and secure the rooms for the entire team separately.

IHOTEL
1900 S FIRST STREET
CHAMPAIGN
Rate: $179.00 King / $199 2 Queens
https://tinyurl.com/yfkcmwm6
Block Code: CQICONF25
Guest Password: !Uvf6
Block dates: Monday, October 27th, Tuesday, October 28th and Wednesday, October 29th
Any guests making reservations by phone at 217-819-5000 must mention the block code CQICONF25 to any of our Guest Service Agents.
Cutoff date for reservations: September 27, 2025

HOLIDAY INN (0.8 miles)
101 TRADE CENTRE DRIVE
CHAMPAIGN
Rate: $110 / night
Block date: Monday, October 27th and Tuesday, October 28th
Cutoff date for reservations: September 27, 2025
Check-in time is 3:00 pm and check-out is 11:00 am
https://tinyurl.com/ydy6m44r

HYATT PLACE CHAMPAIGN (2.2 miles from Illinois Conference Center; located downtown Champaign)
217 N NEIL STREET
CHAMPAIGN
Rate: $135.00 King / $145.00 2 Queens
Booking link for guests to use. The group code for them to use is G-CQI1:
https://tinyurl.com/4cnf5k96
Or call the hotel directly at 217.531.2800 option 0 and ask for the CQI Conference 2025 Room Block.
Block dates: Monday, October 27th, Tuesday, October 28th and Wednesday, October 29th.
Cutoff date for reservations: September 26, 2025.
Cancellations must be 48-hours prior to arrival

Hilton Hotels

HILTON GARDEN INN (0.9 miles)
1501 S NEIL STREET
CHAMPAIGN
217.352.9970
Rate: $179.00 / night

HOMEWOOD SUITES (0.9 miles)
1417 S NEIL STREET
CHAMPAIGN
217.352.9960
Rate: $179.00 / night

Link for both Hilton Garden Inn and Homewood Suites: https://tinyurl.com/mry8hv2v
Group Code is: Q25
Block Dates: Monday, October 27th, Tuesday, October 28th and Wednesday, October 29th
Cut of date for reservations: September 28, 2025

Sponsor the CQI Conference

The 2025 Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Conference marks a decade of progress, innovation, and impact. As we celebrate 10 years of excellence, this year’s conference is dedicated to celebrating and learning from the past, embracing the present, and shaping the future of quality improvement. The conference will be held in-person on October 28 & 29, 2025 in Champaign, Illinois. We will continue to utilize the Whova event app, which allows participants and presenters to access the conference schedule, sponsors, and fellow attendees before, during and after the event. To learn more about the CQI Community Group, visit our website: CQI: About Us.

You can help with the conference’s success by becoming a sponsor. Below is a list of benefits for sponsoring at various levels:

If you would like to support this year’s conference at one of the sponsorship levels or would like to suggest another way to contribute to the conference (e.g., sponsoring a lunch, special event, giveaways), please contact Heidi Meyer (hrmeyer@illinois.edu) or Amy Hiles in the Business Office of the School of Social Work at University of Illinois at amyhiles@illinois.edu or (217) 244-8464 to process your transaction. This year’s annual conference, "Driving Continuous Improvement into the Future" is being planned with the assistance of the University of Illinois’ School of Social Work.

Your generous sponsorship will support CQI professionals to build capacity that will impact the children, youth, and communities we serve.