A Student’s Step-by-Step Guide to Leading an On-Campus Event

Hi, I’m Michael and I’m an Autodesk Design and Make Student Ambassador. I’m always looking for ways to help elevate my peers and local communities, and a great way to do that is through on-campus events at your college or university.

My first “event” (more on the quotations in Step 2) was a bit overwhelming to host. Being unaware of what to consider, the preparations that needed to be done, and the resources I had available, made it a bit more difficult to organize than it should’ve been. 

This guide should hopefully steer you toward success for your first campus event. The fundamental steps remain the same at every college, but each school has its own procedures so make sure to check with your school and adapt as needed.

The first thing we have to do is identify exactly what we want to do. Do we want to host a workshop? Who will it be you leading it? Will you have help? Will you work on a project and have people following along? Will it be interactive? Or do you want to give a presentation lecture style? Should people ask questions along the way or wait until the end? Will you talk the entire time, or will it be interactive with activities? Maybe you just want to talk about a cool software you’ve been using and share the amazing things you’ve done and how.

Regardless of your reasons for hosting an on-campus event, you have to think: “Why? What is the community impact?” Being clear about your expectations for the “event” will help you be successful as you plan it and navigate the approval process from your school.

Now that you have a solid idea of what you’re hoping to plan, the next step is to decide how you want to organize it. The process will look a little different depending on what you’re envisioning. Planning it on your own would look different than it would if it were in conjunction with a professor or with a student organization. In my experience, hosting on campus events with registered student organizations (clubs) is easier because they have an easy and well-defined path to make the event happen and members that'll attend. It is still possible to create an event on your own, but that will require more effort on your part to reach the right school officials. Usually, the “student life” (or similarly named department) is where you’d go, but the campus department closest related to the objective may be able to help. For example, you would want to reach out to the student life and engineering departments at your school if you want to host an AutoCAD workshop. Reaching out to the engineering department is a must if you want to locate labs where computers have AutoCAD so participants can follow along. 

When I hosted AutoCAD and Fusion360 workshops, they were in collaboration with the Florida Engineering Society and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. NOTE: Be careful what you call your on-campus event since each school will interpret it differently. At my school, a “workshop” and club meeting is different than an “event” and is easier to schedule in terms of bureaucratic approvals. Being an executive member on the boards simplified the process, but if you’re not, feel free to reach out to the relevant student organizations on your campus. They’re most likely more than willing to collaborate. From there, the process will vary by school but for me, it involved:

1. Budgeting your event will be at least two weeks out. That is essential since the approval, planning, and marketing process takes time.
2. Determining a range of dates and times that would be best for the event. How long do you want the event to be? Make sure to check your event doesn’t overlap with important campus or sporting events.
3. Obtaining approval from the club advisor
4. Checking with the engineering department to see if we could use the computer lab with AutoCAD installed.
5. Sitting down with the StudentLife Department and filling out the necessary paperwork.
6. Going back to the advisor and obtaining their signature (your college may ask for more or less signatures).
7. Filling out any hospitality forms for food or snacks during the event (or requesting them from Autodesk).

After planning the logistics of your event, you’ll want to come up with a game plan for the event itself. Advocating for your event to school officials and student organizations likely left you with a clear vision of what you want to do. Now you want to clearly come up with a gameplan for the time you allotted for the workshop. Take into account things like:

1. Time for people to come in late and get settled
2. Distributing food (if applicable)
3. Photo opportunities
4. Merch giveaways and contest-style questions (if applicable)
5. Activities you’re planning to do

The workshops I hosted usually incorporated the previous bullets. Then, I along with one or two other people would deconstruct one of our past projects or come up with a new design that highlights essential basic functions of the program we were teaching (for example Fusion360). We would go step by step and project it on the screens. We would walk around and individually help as needed since there was more than one of us.

Now that you know everything about the event, create a flier. Include a catchy name, the date, the time (include duration), the location, free food (if applicable), and anything else people may need to know. Include catchy graphics and post on social media. Create reel and fun videos too! Share with clubs, post flyers around campus, and tag your college and campus on social media, they’ll often repost!

Above you can see a couple of fliers I used.

By the day of the event, the hard work has been done. Simply arrive at the room early to ensure it is unlocked and everything you need is there. Make sure your collaborators are there and any food or merch if necessary.

Don't forget to take pictures! As a bonus, here are some pictures from AutoCAD and Fusion 360 workshops I've held on campus.

After the event, clean the space you held the meeting in. Make sure to take out any pizza boxes or food and just generally leave the room as you found it.

It is also a good idea to reflect on what went well and what could’ve gone better. As participants what they thought, this will give you a good idea of what to look out for in the future and ways to improve.