As a freshman you either enter into your first year with a major selected and a perfect plan in mind or you are undecided and want to test the waters for potential majors or even concentrations.  That was me my freshman year, I wanted to go into Business Administration and eventually open my own company but changed to Hospitality Management with a concentration in Events and something else had occurred.  

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I attended this event known as COB Fest my first year at Ferris State, COB Fest is a festival feel but each booth has representatives from an RSO (registered student organization) showing off a major within the College of Business.  This is a fun way to learn about the major with a group of students pursuing the same path as you.  I learned more about the Marketing program and started to go to the AMA meetings, this led me to pick up a second major with Marketing and a focus on the Digital aspect of it.

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Little did I know three years later I would be on the team that runs the event and had the honor of working with the RSO's and other students involved in the 401 Event Management 1 class.  The theme for this event was based on a movie where each RSO had to decide on a movie that pertains to what they represented.  My role this year was registering and greeting the RSO's as they arrived and assisting the on-site contact with set up and specific information.  We had activities based on movies per RSO and with the goal in mind being the interaction between the students and the organizations,  tickets with great prizes were being raffled off.  

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Just like every great movie there are individuals to credit, in this case they are our stakeholders and client(s), throughout the event planning process you will gain an idea for who the stakeholders are and defines your client(s) in order to build the profile.  This information is following: 

Stakeholders:                           

President Eisler, Dean, COB Faculty, and finally the COB Students

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Just like any other event, marketing is crucial especially in our case.  Our team relied on the professors and other faculty to promote our event.  They decided to give extra credit for those who attended and those who joined the RSO corresponding to their major, creating this incentive encouraged students to show up to our event and helped our team reach our goals and objectives.  Speaking of.... When listing out goals and objectives you have to make sure they are SMART [specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time]. 

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Our objectives:

 increased student retention, increased student involvement, display the value of RSO involvement, and to gather 250 students in attendance.  Last year this event accounted for 150 students, this year we had roughly 240 students which shows an increase of almost 60% of student participation.​

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Documents we had created as well as a photo album is posted below!

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Master Budget- 

The master budget provides us with the 

information we need for the financial side.  It 

states what we have spent and we can divide

up between needs and wants

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Risk Analysis- 

This analysis provides us with a list of things 

that could go wrong and what we need to pay

close attention to.

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SWOT Analysis- 

A SWOT analysis allows our team to decide 

where our strengths and weaknesses, threats 

and opportunities lie, That way we know how 

to prepare!

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Task List-   

List of things needed to be done

for the event!  

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Site Map-  Used to figure out which booth fit best and where.

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Production Schedule-                                                                    

With this we were able to 

say who did what and

where we had been 

needed at what time!

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Supplies List-  With a supplied list we sorted out what

each of us needed with our kits.

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RSO List- ​

Here is a list of the RSO's included in this event.

This list is what I went through once they showed

up to the venue.  They told us ahead of time

what they may need at their booth!

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COB/Vendor Contacts

Christine Hilla - Main Contact / P: X2494

Sharon George - Financials / P: X2734

Paul Kwant - Music / P: X3053

Alysha West - Photography / P: X2420

Student Volunteer:

Emily Taylor - Assisted with set up and tear down

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This event had taken place on september 20th starting at 5 pm on Ferris State University's main campus in Big Rapids, MI.  The IRC Connector was the perfect location for it as it provided an area for students to arrive and leave when needed according to classes and it had been a central location in the College of Business, fitting our target audience perfectly.