The Bone Student Center hosts many different kinds of events in the multiple rooms available. Putting events together for the public requires a team effort among the center’s dedicated employees.

Director of the Bone Student Center, Michelle Paul, informed that a lot of planning and details go into putting together an event and having it completely set up and ready for use when the client arrives.

“We have lots of different meetings that go on behind the scenes. Every Monday morning we have a weekly meeting where we look two weeks out on what’s going to go on in the Bone. We look at every single event,” Paul said.

There is a process that the employees of the Bone follow in order to create a smoothly run event. The client must first schedule the event.

“We are the initial point of contact for all clients. We book over 4,000 events a year,” Jennifer Booher, coordinator of Student Center Events, said.

“Our job is to first of all find a space for them, then find out the logistics of the event. What kind of set up are they having, catering, what about parking … all those things,” Booher said.

“We input it into what’s called our EMS, Event Managers System, which is a software program. It keeps track of everything. It does our inventory, it does our space reservations, it does billing, it does all kinds of great stuff,” Booher added.

Once the event is scheduled, the operations team is informed of what the event will need and how it should be set up. The schedulers use the EMS to create a sort of set-up map.

It is a piece of paper with pictures of tables and chairs that give the operations team an idea of what the space is supposed to look like.

“They create a drawing for us, and they can be relatively basic or they can be very elaborate. It all depends on the need of the event,” Jean Darnall, operations supervisor, said.

“It is just trying to find what [the clients'] needs are and going from there,” Darnall added. 

Dave Schiller / Daily Vidette Senior Staff: Michelle Paul, director of the Bone Student Center, works from her office on the first floor on Friday afternoon.

However, the process is not yet complete.

“So, you’ve scheduled your event, the operations people set the room up, if you have any kind of audio visual, if you have a projector, you have a laptop or you are playing anything where you need sound or you need lighting, the third department that plays a key role is our production people,” Paul said.

There are many different personnel working throughout the Bone Student Center.

“There are 27 full-time members on our staff and then we usually average about 175 student employees. It’s a very big operation. We are open Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday we are open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m,” Paul said.

With a hard-working operations team like this in place, it’s good to know that, although the Bone Student Center hosts many outside events, the students come first.

“We’re a really busy place. Our focus is students. The majority of our funding comes from student fees and so our first priority is to host student events as much as we can,” Paul said.