As the Student Life Director, I have had the opportunity to be involved in planning and executing multiple types of campus events. From routine student life meetings to immense occasions like Commencement, I’d like to take you behind the scenes of the university and give you some insight into how universities plan events.
Event planning in higher education is a team sport. There is a leader directing the team and making sure that goals are met, but the weight of planning and executing should not fall solely on the leader. Instead, my experience has been that a leader’s first task in planning an event is to select members of a team that will plan the event together. Often, each member of the team is chosen for a specific purpose, whether that is their connections in the community, their experience with a similar event, their expertise with decor, knowledge of caterers, or any number of other factors. Regardless, each person on the team is there for a reason and adds to the conversation when meetings are held and decisions are made.
The best teams I have been a part of have been those in which the leader clearly communicates their intent, communicates any boundaries we need to be aware of, and then exercises trust by empowering the team to come up with ideas and make them happen. In my experience, such teams’ events are often the most successful. When a well-picked team understands the leader’s intent and its members are released to walk out their roles to the best of their abilities, the result far exceeds what the one leader planning by themselves would achieve.
Watching teams like this, which can plan and run large events like Commencement, the Dr. Steven Crowther Memorial Charity Golf Tournament, and more, all while maintaining efficient and effective campus operations, has been an enlightening experience. It has been a privilege to be on some of these teams. Since 2024, I have served in the Student Services lane at Manna University and have had the privilege of leading some of these teams. In Fall 2024, I was at a conference for a network of churches connected to Manna University. While there, it occurred to me that this type of event would be the perfect place to hold an alumni event! Many of our student body attend online from various locations around the world, so they are not often in one place, much less in a place on campus. However, many of the pastors and staff of the churches in this network are alumni or active students at Manna University, and I realized that if we planned well, we may be able to have a very successful alumni event in the midst of a conference.
In May of 2025, we did just that. I knew ahead of time that Manna Church, one of the churches in our network, has an annual conference called the Multiply Conference, which is attended by numerous pastors, staff, and SERVE team members from Manna Church locations across the country. Many of these pastors, staff, and SERVE team members are Manna University alumni, so in February we set out to add value by offering an Alumni Dinner on an evening of the conference in May. The first thing I did was talk to a member of our team who has a skill, a passion, and experience in decorating for events. I spoke with her about what I had in mind for the event, and asked if she liked the idea, and if so, how she would decorate it. She gave great insight, and I asked her to join the team. I also spoke with our Advancement Director, who has a heart to engage our alumni, and asked if she would help in the planning process. We developed a basic framework for the event, decided on the decor we would need, the caterer we would use, and where the event would happen. Then, in March I sent out digital invitations to our alumni and current students informing them of the event. I collected RSVPs and we planned for the number of confirmed guests, with margin.
For the day of execution, the aforementioned team held primary roles, but we were not able to do it alone. We also leaned heavily on the Student Government Association. The Manna U SGA is a team of active students who help get their fellow students connected, share helpful feedback about the university, and work to bring improvement. I am constantly on the lookout for students who demonstrate leadership and care for the university, so that I can tap them on the shoulder and invite them to run for the SGA and join our team. The SGA serves as a planning team, brainstorming ideas and sharing their thoughts that I would not be able to come up with on my own. The SGA also helps put these ideas into practice. If you see a Manna U Student Life event happening, there’s a good chance it wasn’t me behind it, but rather members of our Student Government Association. Just like any of the campus events at Manna University, they all start with a team.
Daniel McBride, Student Life Director