Carrie Anderson 6/22/06
Title:
Setting a New Course
Header:
LMU lecturer Carrie Anderson [CFA ’97] is about to introduce the university’s first class in Event Management, a relatively young academic discipline.
Feature:
For the past six years, LMU lecturer Carrie Anderson [CFA '97] has taught a wide variety of undergraduate communications courses.
Anderson has educated her students at LMU and other Los Angeles area colleges about a range of related topics such as organizational communication, public speaking, business and professional communication, small-group and interpersonal communication, advanced organizational communication, introduction to communication research, communication studies, and internships.
But beginning in the fall 2006 semester, Anderson will present the LMU debut of a relatively contemporary, relatively practical topic in academia: event management.
“People have always been planning events,” Anderson says, “but attention to it as its own field is definitely new in the past couple of years.”
That’s evidenced in part by a recently published event management textbook, which Anderson will incorporate into “INDA 498 – Event Management,” a class open to all juniors and seniors who have passed prerequisite courses. Anderson’s work will be hands-on; teamwork will matter, responsibilities will be serious, and results – success or failure – will be tangible.
“It's not like a traditional course where there are a lot of tests and a lot of reading,” Anderson says. "So students may think, ‘Oh this is an easy course.’ But it's hard work, because it's real-world work. If they don't do their work, it’s not just, ‘Oh I'm going to receive a bad grade on this.’ The event might not happen. There are real-world consequences. I think learning that, even in itself, will be a valuable skill for students.”
Topics to be covered during the course – tenets in event management – include logistics, public relations, and sponsorship. By the conclusion of the semester, students will have compiled a portfolio that shows off the work they did on various projects.
None of this would be possible, Anderson points out gratefully, without the advocacy of Dr. Dean Scheibel, the associate dean of the Communication Studies Department, who pushed for the course’s inclusion, she says.